    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [December 10, 1999]
    [Pages 2252-2261]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Chamber of Commerce in Little Rock, Arkansas
    December 10, 1999

        Thank you. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you,
    Shelby; and thank you, Joe, for your leadership. They've both been friends of mine a
    long time, and it's good to see this chamber so well led. And thank you,
    Joe, for your pledge of support.
        Congratulations to Bob and to
    Beverly on the well-deserved award. I'm
    delighted to be up here with Dr. Reed and
    Jesse and Janet, and to
    be here with all of you. I thank Senator Pryor and Congressman Snyder for joining
    me, and Mayor Dailey. I think our speaker, Bob
    Johnson, is here, and I was accompanied this
    morning by Secretary Riley, the Secretary
    of Education, from Washington, and Rodney
    Slater, the Secretary of Transportation. I thank them for coming with
    me.
        I want to thank you for this award. Herschel Friday was a friend of
    mine. I was sitting here, racing through my mind, over all the things he
    asked me to do over the 12 years I was Governor, all the time there was
    one more emergency at Oak Lawn Park, which he and I had a vested
    interest in. I don't know if Beth Friday is
    here, but I want to thank them both for their friendship, and thank you
    for this

    [[Page 2253]]

    award. And Beth, if you're here, I love you, and I'm glad to see you.
    Thank you.
        I also want to thank the Philander Smith choir. You know, whenever I
    have to take a trip, I stay up late the night before, and I try to get
    all the work done that I might have done in the office if I had stayed
    there. I talked to Hillary last night
    for the last time about 1 o'clock in the morning. She said to tell you
    hello, and she's doing well, and Chelsea's
    doing fine.
        But anyway, when I got up this morning, I was a little tired. I
    walked in here, and I heard the Philander choir singing, and I'm ready
    to speak now. [Laughter]

    U.S Military Aircraft Tragedies

        Let me say something I'm sure a lot of you know, but this is my
    first opportunity to speak to the press today. I want to express my
    profound sadness for the crash of the C-130 that flew out of the Little
    Rock Air Force Base, crashed in Kuwait last night with--96 people were
    on board; 3 were killed; 21 were injured. They were trying to land in
    terrible, terrible weather. And I thank them for their service, and I
    extend my deepest condolences to the families of those who were lost.
        We also lost a helicopter off the coast of San Diego yesterday with
    18 people aboard; 11 were recovered safely. We have not recovered the
    other seven, and our thoughts and prayers are with them. I say this just
    to make a simple point, that you might mention the next time you see
    someone in uniform. We do not have to be at war for that to be dangerous
    work. Most people have no earthly idea how dangerous it is to fly those
    fast planes and to fire those powerful weapons and to undergo the
    rigorous training that they have to undergo.
        We are richly repaid for it. We didn't lose a single pilot in combat
    in the action in Kosovo, but it is inherently dangerous work. So when
    you see some people from the air base, thank them for putting their
    lives on the line for the rest of us every day.

    Chamber of Commerce

        Shelby mentioned a couple of times that I
    have worked very closely with this chamber for a long time. I don't know
    how many times I went to your old building trying to hustle some
    business for the greater Little Rock area or deal with some issue that
    was before us in common. I think you picked the right changes; there are
    big--I mean, the right theme. There are big changes coming. And the pace
    of change will only accelerate in the years ahead. I love the logo. I
    asked Shelby who designed the logo, and he told me, and congratulations
    to you.
        I think that what I would like to do today is to talk a little about
    the library and, first, a little about the last 7 years and the next 14
    months that I have left to serve as your President. I want to begin by
    thanking the people of Arkansas who gave me the chance to serve for a
    dozen years as Governor, without which I could never have become
    President, who gave me the chance to learn over those dozen years what
    makes things really work, which is very often not what dominates the
    headline, the time, and the energy and the emotions of people in
    Washington.
        I want to thank those who serve in this administration. We have been
    so blessed. I want to begin by mentioning Mack McLarty, who came down with me today. He was my first Chief
    of Staff; he oversaw the passage, by a single vote in both Houses, of
    the '93 economic plan, which was the single most important thing that
    gave us this economic boom, that got rid of that deficit, that drove the
    interest rates down, and got investment up in this country. He also
    oversaw the passage of NAFTA, the Brady bill, the family and medical
    leave law, and set in motion a teamwork that, according to one Harvard
    scholar, he said I had the most loyal Cabinet since Thomas Jefferson's
    second administration. That is in no small measure because of the
    leadership that Mack McLarty gave to the White House in those early
    days. And I thank him for it, and equally, for his later work as our
    Special Envoy to Latin America, where we have reestablished ties that
    had been too long neglected with so many countries.
        I want to thank Secretary Slater, who
    is here with me today; James Lee Witt, the
    most popular FEMA Director in the history of the country; Bob
    Nash; Bruce Lindsey;
    Nancy Hernreich, who came down with me
    today; Mel French, our Protocol Ambassador;
    Janis Kearney; Carl Whillock, who came with me today, the farmers' advocate in the
    Department of Agriculture; Mike Gaines now
    runs the Federal Parole Commission; my scheduler, Stephanie
    Streett; Carol Rasco, my former Domestic Policy Adviser, now runs the
    national America Reads program, has over a thousand colleges in America
    with young

    [[Page 2254]]

    people volunteering to go into the grade schools and make sure every
    child can read independently by the age of 8; Brady Anderson from Helena--a lot of you know him--is now the
    Director of the Agency for International Development, the most important
    agency in the Federal Government in dealing with the poor countries of
    the world; Craig Smith was my political
    director and had a number of other important jobs in the White House--
    probably the least political person to work with us from any State;
    Hershel Gober, the Deputy Secretary of
    Veterans Affairs; young Kris Engskov from
    Berryville is here with me today. I first met him when he was 4 years
    old. Now he's my personal aide. So between Kris and Nancy, at least
    Arkansas still runs most of my life.
        There are literally scores of others I might mention from our State
    who have come to Washington, who are never noted in the press but who
    serve with real distinction, and I am grateful for them. And you should
    be proud of them.
        Now let me just take a minute to sort of walk back through memory
    lane. In October of 1991, when I declared for President on the steps of
    the old State House, I did it because I became convinced that there was
    a limit to what Arkansas could do unless America changed direction and
    because I really felt that our country had an enormous potential to make
    the most of these big changes we've been talking about.
        But it was a time of economic distress, social decline, deep
    political division, and the whole enterprise of Government had been
    profoundly discredited. It's almost impossible to remember what it was
    like just a few short years ago.
        I felt, based on what I had learned working with you, that the
    country ought to work more like we tried to work. Yes, we'd have our
    political differences; yes, we'd fight at election time; sometimes, we'd
    fight in-between; but that we ought to have a unifying theory of the
    public's business. And so I asked the American people to give me a
    chance, along with Vice President Gore, to implement a vision of
    opportunity for every responsible American, to challenge every citizen
    to be responsible, and to build a community that involved all of our
    people in a world where America was still the leading force for peace
    and freedom and prosperity.
        And we battled through the politics; we battled through a whole
    flurry of special interests; we battled through our fair share of
    mistakes; but we never forgot who we were working for or what the
    mission was. And I hope that all of you, without whom I would never have
    become President, can take some pride in the results.
        We have the longest peacetime expansion in our history. In February
    it will become the longest economic expansion ever, including that which
    embraced World War II. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years,
    the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20
    years, the highest homeownership in history. We have the lowest African-
    American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded, the lowest
    female unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest poverty rate among
    single-parent households in 46 years, the first back-to-back balanced
    budgets and surpluses in 42 years, and the Federal Government is now the
    smallest it's been in 37 years. It worked, and I thank you.
        Along the way, the society got stronger. We have the lowest crime
    rate in 25 years, and I might add the Brady bill background checks
    stopped 470,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers who shouldn't have
    gotten handguns from buying them, and not single Arkansan missed a day
    in the deer woods because of it.
        About 20 million people have taken advantage of the family and
    medical leave law. I meant to ask Secretary Riley and forgot to, how many millions, but as many millions of
    young people are now getting the HOPE scholarship, the $1,500 tax
    credit, which effectively makes community college available for 100
    percent of the people in America today.
        Ninety percent of our kids are immunized against serious childhood
    diseases. In 1994, when the Vice President and I said we wanted to
    connect all our classrooms and schools to the Internet, 3 percent of our
    classrooms and 14 percent of our schools had some Internet connection.
    Today, over 50 percent of our classrooms and over 80 percent of our
    schools are connected, and we'll be over 90 percent in the new
    millennium.
        This is changing the nature of opportunity in America. I also know
    that something that's been very interesting here that the Governor and
    others have been interested in this State is providing health insurance
    to children. There are 2 million more children with health insurance
    under the Child Health Insurance Partnership we formed with the States
    in the Balanced

    [[Page 2255]]

    Budget Act of 1997, something that's very important to Hillary. In the
    last budget, we provided funds to help the hospitals who are unduly
    burdened by the Medicare cuts and provide special funds to train young
    doctors at children's hospitals throughout America, something that will
    really help the Arkansas Children's Hospital here, and we're very proud
    of that.
        While the economy got better, the air got cleaner; the water got
    cleaner. We set aside more land in protected areas than any
    administration in the entire history of the country except those of
    Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. And here's something you might like to
    know that you deserve more credit for, the people do, than our
    particular administration, although we have accelerated it quite a bit:
    The United States, in the production of the volume of waste of all
    kinds, whether it's what you throw away in the garbage at home or in
    industrial prospects, is at a 20-year low, even though we have 50
    million more people than we had 20 years ago. We are the number one
    recycling nation in the entire world now, and you can be proud of that.
        We've also had 150,000 young people serve our communities in
    AmeriCorps, like those I met just down the block from the Governor's
    mansion when the terrible tornado whipped through Little Rock not very
    long ago.
        America has been able to be a force for peace and prosperity in the
    world. We've had over 270 trade agreements. We just saw another
    successful move in our long efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
    I announced a couple of days ago that the Israelis and the Syrians would
    come back to the United States next week, after 4 long years of not
    talking, to try to finish the work of making a lasting peace in the
    Middle East. That's a pretty good Christmas legacy to give, and I'm
    thrilled about that.
        We have worked to make our children safer from the kind of problems
    that will dominate the 21st century: the ethnic and racial cleansing and
    religious cleansing you saw in Bosnia and Kosovo; the presence of
    terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. And I can say
    to you today, after 7 years, I am grateful that I've had the chance to
    serve. I am more convinced than I was when I went there that we had the
    right mission with the right ideas. And I am absolutely convinced that I
    never would have been able to do what I have done to play my part in
    this remarkable renaissance if I hadn't had the dozen years I had
    working with all of you as Governor. And I thank you for that.
        Now I'd also like to say that I get a little nervous when I get
    awards. Normally, I don't think Presidents should get awards, at least
    when they're alive. [Laughter] I mean, the job is honor enough.
    Although, I must say, I like this one. I'm going to put it up in the
    White House. But I think it's important to remember that a significant
    chunk of the time that I have been given to serve is still out there.
        They said we wouldn't get anything done this year, and then at the
    end of the budget session we had 100,000 more teachers to bring smaller
    classes to the early grades; we had 50,000 more police to keep the crime
    rate coming down; we had 60,000 housing vouchers to help people move
    from welfare to work and find a place to live, to keep the welfare rolls
    coming down; we doubled the amount of funds for after-school programs,
    something that's really important to increase learning and keep our kids
    off the street when they may not have any adult supervision.
        For the first time I got the Congress to give me some money to give
    States to identify schools that are failing and turn them around or shut
    them down, something I think is very important.
        There are a lot of things I tried to do I didn't pass: the Patients'
    Bill of Rights, the minimum wage, the hate crimes legislation, aid for
    school construction. I'll try to get them next year.
        I think Arkansas has done well in these last 7 years. You know, the
    whole time I was Governor, we went through that terrible time in the
    eighties when we had a bicoastal economy and the country looked like it
    was doing well, but the middle of the country wasn't. And then we had
    the recession that everybody suffered through. Not a single month--I had
    one month the whole time I was Governor, until 1992 when I ran for
    President, only one month when our unemployment rate was below the
    national average. Then it got down below the national average in 1992
    because, I think, of the accumulated efforts that a lot of us made over
    many years. In 1992 we ranked first or second--I never saw the final
    figures--in job growth in the entire country.
        But the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent when I took office, and
    it's 4.3 percent today

    [[Page 2256]]

    here. And in many other ways I think you've done well. I could mention
    some specific things, but I'd like to talk about the general things.
        The average Arkansas family now has $25,000 less Federal debt than
    you would have had if we hadn't passed the economic plan in '93 and the
    Balanced Budget Act in '97. The average family in this State and
    throughout the country, paying a home mortgage, has interest costs that
    are about $2,000 a year lower. The average car payment or college loan
    payment is about $200 a year lower. This had made a difference in real
    people's lives.
        And as I look at the next 14 months, and as you as citizens look at
    the coming election season, I just want to ask you, without regard to
    your party, to think about this: What are we going to do with our
    prosperity?
        Over Thanksgiving, Hillary and I gathered up everybody in our flung
    families we could; we brought them all in, and then after Thanksgiving,
    we had some more friends come in to Camp David and had a bunch of little
    kids there. I just love having them all around, my two nephews and a
    bunch of other little kids. And this 6-year-old girl looked at me--on
    Saturday after Thanksgiving--she looked at me and she said, ``Now, Mr.
    President, how old are you, really?'' [Laughter] And I said, ``I'm 53.''
    And she said, ``That's a lot.'' [Laughter] And regrettably, I had to
    agree with her.
        Here's what I want to say about that. In my lifetime, in those 53
    years, there has never been another time, not one, when our country had
    this level of economic prosperity, this level of social progress, this
    level of national self-confidence, with the absence of a crisis at home
    or a threat from abroad. Never.
        Now, a lot of us who are old enough to remember the 1960's, remember
    how good the economy was in the early sixties in the country, and how it
    was torn apart because of our inability to fully integrate the civil
    rights challenge at home and deal with Vietnam abroad. This has never
    happened before.
        So the question before us is, what are we going to do with it? And
    as a citizen, I care about that as well as a President. I think there is
    a heavy responsibility on us, not just the President and the Congress
    and not just people in Government but the whole country. We have never
    had this happen, and you know as well as I do that nothing lasts
    forever. It keeps you going through the tough times, but it's important
    to remember in the good times.
        Here we are, on the edge of a new millennium with the first
    opportunity in our lifetime as a country to really shape the future of
    our dreams for our children. And I hope and pray that I can devote every
    waking minute of the last 14 months of my Presidency and that the
    American people will devote their energies and concentration in their
    own lives and their vote as citizens to making a decision based on
    shouldering the responsibility to shape that future for our children.
    And that means big changes. What are they? I'll just mention three or
    four and end with what I'm going to do when I leave you today.
        Number one, we've got to deal with the aging of America. The number
    of people over 65 is going to double in the next 30 years. I hope to be
    one of them. It's going to double in the next 30 years. That will be two
    people working for every one person drawing Social Security. Social
    Security Trust Fund is projected to run out of money in 2034.
        The Medicare Trust Fund, when I took office, was scheduled to run
    out of money this year. We've pushed it back to 2015 now. We've got to
    do something about this. Now, let me say there is a big difference of
    opinion about whether--between the two parties about whether Medicare--I
    mean Social Security should have individual accounts, and if so, how
    should they be designed, and should we partially or completely privatize
    the system. And most Republicans think we should do some of that, and
    most Democrats think we shouldn't.
        But let me just tell you one little simple thing: If we took the
    interest savings we have from paying down the national debt because
    we're not spending the Social Security surplus anymore, if we just took
    the interest savings and put it back in the Trust Fund, we could put
    that Trust Fund out to 2050, which would take us out beyond the life
    expectancy of almost 100 percent of the baby boomers, after which the
    demographics start to get better again.
        Now, we've got the money to do that now. We don't have to raise your
    taxes. We don't have to stop spending money on anything else. We don't
    have to do anything. It'll never be this easy again. And believe me, it
    hasn't been this easy for our predecessors, and we ought to do this.

    [[Page 2257]]

        On Medicare, we ought to make some structural reforms that will put
    some more life into the Medicare Trust Fund, take it out over 20 years.
    We ought to let people over 55 and under 65 buy into it. It doesn't cost
    the Treasury any money, and you know, there's tons of people in this
    country who retire at 55 now, and then something happens to them;
    they're not covered by a health insurance policy at work anymore; and
    they can't get any health insurance. It's a huge problem.
        And we ought to provide a voluntary prescription drug benefit,
    because 75 percent of the seniors in this country cannot afford the drug
    regimen their doctors say they need. So I think we ought to do that.
        Now, number two, we ought to recognize that more and more parents
    are working and do more to help balance work and family. I gave the
    States the option to use their workers' compensation and their
    unemployment compensation funds if they wanted to, to experiment with
    paid family leave. There are lots of other things that can be done, but
    you know, only 10 percent of the people in the country eligible for
    Federal assistance for child care are getting it, and I've increased
    child care funding by 70 percent. And a lot of people go to work every
    day, really worrying about whether their kids are in quality child care
    facilities. And it's a big problem.
        The family and medical leave law has been a godsend, but I think we
    ought to broaden it some. And of course, we have to be sensitive not to
    hurt the economy. But if you want people to succeed at work, they can't
    be eaten up inside worrying about their kids, whether they're all right.
        If you have to make a choice, we lose before we start, because the
    most important job of any society is raising children. It is still the
    most important job of any society, including ours, and we forget that at
    our peril. So we've got to find a way, since all parents either want to
    work or have to work, just about, at least the majority, we've got to
    find the way to balance these things better.
        The third thing we have to do, I think, is to work even harder to
    give every child a world-class education. We have the largest and most
    diverse student body in history--the first time--in the last 2 years
    we've got a student body bigger than the baby boom generation. And they
    are going to do great if we give them the tools to do it. I don't want
    to keep you here all morning, and you know how I like to pontificate
    about education, so I won't do that. But you need to make that a factor
    in your decisions, just as I make it a factor in mine.
        The next thing we need to do is to find better ways to balance the
    preservation of the economy and the preservation of the environment. A
    big thing has happened in the last 5 to 10 years that most people don't
    believe has happened. It is now possible to grow the economy and reduce
    the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That's a fancy
    way of saying you don't necessarily have to burn more coal and oil and
    put it out in the atmosphere to get rich. Most people don't believe it,
    but it's true.
        The Agriculture Department had a seminar the other day on biomass
    fuels, ethanol being the most prominent one now. Right now, it's a
    problem. It takes 7 gallons of gasoline to make 8 gallons of ethanol, so
    the conversion ratio is not too good. They're very, very close to coming
    up with the technology to make 8 gallons of ethanol with one gallon of
    gasoline. When that happens, it will change the future of America.
        In the next year or so, you're going to be able to buy cars that get
    70 to 80 miles a gallon with fuel injection engines, some that are
    blended. They start off on electricity, then go to gasoline, then go
    back to electricity, and it's just the beginning. You can get windows in
    houses now that keep out 5 times as much heat or cold and let in 5 times
    as much light. You can buy lamps that just in the life of the lamp, will
    save one ton of greenhouse gas emissions.
        With the changes in the White House we have made in the last 6
    years, just in the White House, we've taken the equivalent of 700 cars
    off the highways. This is a big deal, and it is not a question of, in
    the popular vernacular, hugging trees or growing the economy; it's a
    question of how to do the self-interested thing, which is to improve the
    environment and the economy at the same time, and I predict to you it
    will be a major, major focus for the next 20 years.
        The last thing I'd like to mention very briefly is this, because it
    really applies to Arkansas: We have to find a way to keep the economy
    going and then to bring the benefits of the economy to the people in
    places who haven't been a part of this prosperity. And I just want to
    mention three things. Number one, first things first; we've got to keep
    paying down this

    [[Page 2258]]

    debt. If we stay on the track we're on now, just on the budget path that
    came out of this last budget session, this country will be out of debt
    in 15 years for the first time since 1835.
        Now, what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, let's take
    ALLTEL--doing reasonably well. We passed the Telecommunications Act.
    It's led already to hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs at great,
    high-tech companies. If the country's out of debt and we're not
    borrowing money, that means there's more money for everybody else to
    borrow. That means lower interest rates for business loans, faster
    expansion, more jobs, higher incomes. It means the average family pays
    less for home mortgages and car payments and college loans. This is a
    big deal. It's a progressive thing to do.
        The second thing we ought to do is work through and keep working at
    it until we reach a national consensus on this trade issue. If you
    watched the so-called battle in Seattle, you know that I said I
    understood why some of the people in the streets wanted to make sure the
    concerns of working people and the environment were taken account of in
    trade. But I think they're dead wrong to believe that you can walk away
    from trade.
        Let me tell you, this country is better off today because for 50
    years we have worked harder and harder and harder to integrate the
    global economy. And yes, if we buy stuff that's made somewhere else,
    it's very sensitive in Arkansas, because we were--50 years ago our per
    capita income was only 56 percent of the national average. So we had a
    lot of low-wage workers. And sure, if we buy stuff made somewhere else,
    where people don't have the incomes we do, it puts more pressure on our
    low-wage workers. But it also creates a lot more high-wage jobs.
        And the answer is to give everybody lifetime training and to have
    the kind of environment where you can get the kind of investments to
    give good jobs to everybody. But we are better off both economically and
    in terms of our security because, for 50 years, we have continued to
    expand trade.
        And if you don't believe it, just look at all the places in the
    world that are in trouble. You know that problem we've had in Bosnia and
    Kosovo I had to send the military to solve. Do you seriously believe we
    would have had to go to war in the Balkans if their per capita income
    were not the lowest in Europe? If it were the highest in Europe, would
    they be fooling around with each other; would they care whether they
    were Muslims or Orthodox Christians or Roman Catholics if they were all
    well-educated and they were used to working together and they had more
    in common than driving them apart?
        Or in the Middle East, one of the problems is the abject poverty of
    the Palestinians. And one of the problems for the Israelis is the limits
    on their growth because they've got to spend so much on defense. If we
    were in better shape there economically and everybody were more
    integrated, don't you think we'd be closer to peace? Do you think people
    would still be fighting there?
        And I'm very proud of the role that I played in the Irish peace
    process and the role America played and the role George
    Mitchell played. But let me tell you
    something. One big reason they made peace in Ireland is that the
    Republic of Ireland had the fastest growing economy in Europe. A lot of
    American companies were shipping data processing--raw files to be
    processed over to Northern Ireland every day and flying them back, and
    all these kids were growing up saying, ``Hey, that's the future we want.
    We've got to let this other stuff go.''
        So we have got to--you've got to help me on this. As Americans, we
    have got to form a new consensus between business and labor and the
    environmental community and everybody else that allows us to continue to
    expand trade. And we ought to put China in the World Trade Organization.
    It's good for our farmers, good for our manufacturers, good for our
    investors, and it will make a safer world for our children and our
    grandchildren. It's a big deal. And I hope you will help me do that as
    well.
        Finally, we ought to give people the same incentives to invest in
    poor areas in America, like the Arkansas Delta, we give them to invest
    in poor areas in Latin America or Asia or Africa. And I'm very proud of
    the fact that this Congress supported my position to relieve the debt of
    world's poorest nations. I want Americans to invest in poor countries. I
    believe if you lift people out of poverty, you minimize their profound
    and primitive racial and ethnic and religious hatreds, and you give them
    something to live for and look forward to when they get up in the
    morning. But our people deserve the same thing.
        Let me ask you this, again: If we don't do this now, if we can't
    bring more entrepreneurs

    [[Page 2259]]

    and more investment and more jobs to the poorest counties in this State
    and in our neighboring States and in Appalachia and in upstate New York
    and rural New England, which is pretty depressed, or on the Indian
    reservations--the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the
    unemployment today is 73 percent--and if we can't figure out something
    to do about this now, when in the world will we ever get around to it?
        And when I leave you, I'm going over to West Memphis and to Earle
    and announce that I'm going to propose in my new budget more than $110
    million to create a Delta regional authority. This will be new
    investment to fund a bill sponsored by Representative Blanche Lambert
    Lincoln and--Senator Lincoln and
    Representative Marion Berry, supported by
    Congressman Snyder and the entire Arkansas
    delegation. I think we'll have big bipartisan support for this. We've
    got to do something about this.
        I headed that Delta Commission more than a decade ago. Maybe the
    time wasn't right; maybe the economy was too tough. We're in good shape
    now. If we can't bring opportunity to these people in our State and
    Nation--I'm telling you I've been there. People are dying to go to work.
    And intelligence is evenly distributed; education is not, but
    intelligence is. We can get this done now. And I ask for your support
    for that.
        Now because I believe this is a time of big changes, to use your
    theme, and because I believe these big questions can't possibly be
    resolved, when I come home to build the library and my policy center, I
    want to deal with a lot of these big questions: How do you close the
    digital divide and use these high-tech advances to benefit every
    American? How do you create good jobs and a clean environment? How do
    you leave behind the ethnic and religious hatreds, the other kind of
    hatred that is manifested in hate crimes in America and the tribal
    slaughters in Africa and all the wars in between? How do you create
    genuine economic opportunity and empowerment for people who have been
    poor a very long time?
        These are the questions, the kinds of questions that I intend to
    work on down to the last hour of the last day of my Presidency, and the
    kind of questions that will be central to me when I come home to build
    the library and the policy center.
        I'd like to begin by just thanking all of you who have supported
    this. I thank the mayor, the city board of directors and staff, and I'm
    sorry for the heat you've taken, but it will be a good investment. I
    thank Paul Harvel and the greater Little Rock
    chamber. I thank Shelby and Joe and the Downtown Partnership. I thank Dr. Alan Sugg and the university system. I thank Skip
    Rutherford for being my point person down
    here; all of you who have worked on this.
        From the day I was elected President, I was determined that when it
    was over, I would try to use this library and policy center not only to
    continue my own interests and passions but to give something back to
    this State and this community that have given so much to me. Like I said
    over and over again, if it hadn't been for you, I never would have had
    the chance to serve. And if it hadn't been for the experiences you gave
    me and the lessons I learned, I wouldn't have been prepared to serve at
    this moment in our history.
        So I want to make some dreams come true here in Little Rock. This
    library can be an energizing force in the life of the city and the
    broader community. It will attract people from all across the Nation and
    all across the world. Lots of visitors and lots of people from business
    and labor and the nonprofit groups in government and journalism.
        It can play an important role in the growth and development of
    greater Little Rock and all of central Arkansas. I am determined that it
    will be, first, a beautiful place. The site is wonderful, and so will
    the building be. It will be architecturally important, and it will be
    state of the art, environmentally and technologically.
        I've talked to Dr. Sugg and the university
    about starting a graduate program in public policy--that's what they
    want to do--to prepare more of our young people for careers in public
    service. And I also want to develop partnerships with corporations all
    across America to bring their young executives here, to get them to
    agree to let their young people take a little time off to be in public
    service without being prejudiced in their rise up the corporate
    hierarchy.
        Let me tell you, there is a program called the White House
    Fellowships--you may know about it--and we just give a few every year,
    enough for all the Cabinet Secretaries and one for me, one for a couple
    of other people in the White House. Hundreds of people apply

    [[Page 2260]]

    for them--hundreds--and hundreds get turned down who would be about as
    good as the handful, the less than 20 we select every year. And so I got
    this idea.
        Now, I realized how dependent we were on the White House Fellows,
    what fabulous work they did, what great ideas they gave. And think of
    it, if every company of any size would establish a policy that every
    year, one or two or three people, depending on the size of the company,
    could take a year off to serve in State Government, to serve in local
    government, to serve in the Federal Government, in Washington or at the
    regional level, to have the experience of government and then come back
    to the company and continue that career, we could change the nature of
    government, the quality of the ideas, the quality of the work, and the
    quality of the partnership.
        And we could end a lot of the kind of battles that we've seen here
    over too many decades. So this is one of the things that I hope we can
    do, thanks to Dr. Sugg and his leadership on the
    education issue.
        I want to try to find some ways to, as I said over and over, to help
    to bridge the racial and other divides in our society and throughout the
    world. I want to bring here people from Northern Ireland and the Middle
    East and Bosnia and Kosovo. I want people to see members of these
    different African tribes. I'll never forget being in Rwanda after they
    killed over three-quarters of a million people in a 100 days with
    machetes in a tribal war, and Rwanda had been a coherent country for
    about 500 years.
        I talked to a woman, a beautiful woman--Hillary and I were sitting
    there talking to her--all dressed up in her fine native dress. And I
    listened to this wonderful woman, who was still a young woman, talk to
    me about how her neighbors had turned her in as a member of the other
    ethnic group, along with her husband and her six children, and how they
    had come after them with these machetes, and how she was convinced she
    was going to die. And she woke up covered in blood, and saw her husband
    and her six children dead around her, all because they were from another
    tribe. And that would be enough to break most of us, but this woman was
    devoting her life to trying to help other people let it go and get
    beyond it.
        We could, in this State, in this place, become a beacon of hope for
    those kind of people. We could train people in societies where these
    problems exist to get rid of them.
        I think it is truly amazing, at a time when we're talking about
    uncovering the mysteries of the human genome, when a lot of my friends
    in the profession believe that sometime early in the next century
    newborn babies will come home from the hospital with a life expectancy
    of 100 years, when we'll probably find out what's in the black holes in
    the universe, and we're talking about all this stuff, you know, that the
    biggest problem of human society is the oldest one: We're still scared
    of people that are different from us, and we've got to find a way to let
    it go.
        I want to do more on education. I want to do more on all these
    issues I mentioned. I also want this library to be a great place of
    history, and I want to make it interactive, especially for our children,
    with the latest technologies. I want to help our children and our
    grandchildren understand the times and the forces that took me to the
    White House and that I tried to shape and move forward, and then I want
    them to understand how that relates to tomorrow.
        I want this to be a museum but not a mausoleum. I want it to be a
    place with a lot of touch and involvement and learning. I want to give
    our young people a window on the new millennium. And I want them to
    believe when they walk out of there, based on the story of my life and
    the people we tried to help, that every one of them also has a chance to
    make their own history.
        These are the things I want to do with the library here in Little
    Rock, not only to glimpse the future but to shape it and share it with
    our neighbors and our families.
        So I say to all of you, again, thanks for helping me get here;
    thanks for giving us a great 7 years, and thanks for your support of the
    future. But remember, the most important thing of all is your theme is
    right: Big changes are coming. It's the only time in our lifetimes we've
    ever had a chance to make the most of them, and we'd better do it.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:15 a.m. in Governors Halls 2 and 3 at
    the Statehouse Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to Shelby
    Woods, outgoing chairman of the board, Joe Ford, incoming chairman of
    the board, Paul Harvel,

    [[Page 2261]]

    president, Jesse Mason, education chairman, and Janet Jones, former
    chairman of the board, Greater Little Rock Chamber of Commerce; Bob
    Russell, winner of the chamber's Pinnacle Award, and his wife, Beverly;
    Mayor Jim Dailey of Little Rock; Speaker Bob Johnson, Arkansas House of
    Representatives; Trudy Reed, president, Philander Smith College; former
    Senator David H. Pryor; Carl Whillock, Special Assistant to the
    President, Department of Agriculture; Carol Rasco, Director, America
    Reads Challenge, Department of Education; Beth Friday, widow of Herschel
    Friday, former chairman of the board, Greater Little Rock Chamber of
    Commerce; former Senator George J. Mitchell, who chaired the multiparty
    talks in Northern Ireland; Alan Sugg, president, University of Arkansas;
    and Skip Rutherford, executive vice president and director of public
    policy, Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods. Prior to his remarks, the
    President received the Herschel H. Friday Award.