[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[January 17, 2001]
[Pages 2933-2943]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to a Joint Session of the Arkansas State Legislature in Little 
Rock, Arkansas
January 17, 2001

    Thank you very, very much, and good afternoon. This is the first 
time in over 20 years I've been here when I don't have to get asked for 
a racing pass. [Laughter] And I heard somebody utter that hated phrase, 
and I understand that, for a variety of reasons, you've all gotten rid 
of that burden. So progress continues. [Laughter]
    Governor Huckabee, Lieutenant Governor 
Rockefeller, Senator Beebe, Speaker Broadway, General 
Pryor, Secretary Priest, Jimmie Lou, 
Charlie, Gus, my 
friends. I'm delighted to be joined by Senator Pryor, about whom I would like to say more in a moment; 
Congressman Snyder, Congressman Ross, and a large number of people who came here with me from 
Washington.
    I want to say that I am honored that the last trip of my Presidency 
is to come home to Arkansas and home to the legislature where I spent so 
many happy days. [Applause] Thank you.
    There are a lot of people in this body who got their start in 
politics, working with me, a few who got their start in politics working 
against me--[laughter]--and some who got their start doing both--
[laughter]--depending on the issue and the time.
    I brought with me a large number of people from Arkansas today. And 
I would like to mention them and a few others because I would like to 
begin by telling you that in these last 8 years, over 460 people from 
our home State worked in this administration and helped to make America 
a stronger country, and I am very grateful to all of them.
    Mack McLarty, my first Chief of 
Staff, my first Envoy to the Americas, is here today. When he led the 
White House, we made four of the most important decisions we made during 
the entire 8 years: The historic balanced budget agreement where Senator 
Pryor cast the tie-breaking vote--so did 
everybody else; it passed by one vote in both Houses--the NAFTA 
agreement, which joined us with Mexico and Canada; the family and 
medical leave bill, the Brady law, and many others. He did a superb job.
    I want to thank the three Arkansans who have served in my Cabinet: 
Rodney Slater, who is here today, our 
Secretary of Transportation; Hershel Gober, 
who is Secretary of Veterans Affairs and started out helping me with 
veterans

[[Page 2934]]

in Arkansas and in New Hampshire and has been absolutely superb; and 
James Lee Witt, who could not be here today 
because disasters don't only occur in Arkansas, there are other places 
as well, although I know you've been through a doozy lately. I want to 
thank Buddy Young, who worked 
with him as our regional official in Texas, who is here today.
    Two other former legislators, in addition to Mack, have been part of this administration: Gloria 
Cabe, who served with many if not most of you 
here; her daughter also works in the White 
House, in the White House Counsel's Office, and she's here today; and 
Carl Whillock, who, after he was a legislator, 
became the president of Arkansas State University, head of the Co-ops. 
But he's most important to me because the first trip I took out of 
Fayetteville, in the first race I ever made in 1974, was across the 
hills of north Arkansas with Carl Whillock, when only my mother thought 
I had any business in that race. And I thank them for being here.
    I'd also like to just acknowledge a few people. As I said, some of 
them are here, and some of them aren't. Bob Nash, 
who's been with me for 21 years, and his wonderful wife, Janis 
Kearney, my diarist, who's here. Nancy 
Hernreich, who's not here, who's been with 
me since I first ran for attorney general and has worked for me for 15 
years, just got married to the brother of Montine McNulty, from Pine 
Bluff, and is about to move with him to Hong Kong; Stephanie 
Streett, my wonderful scheduler, who's 
going to be working with me here in Arkansas; Craig Smith, who did a great job in handling appointments here and 
was my political director, came home to actually work this trip, to go 
out at the grassroots where he began. I want to thank Mike 
Gaines, who ran the Parole Commission, 
still is; Ken Smith; Mike Gauldin; Jana Prewitt; Jim Bob 
Baker, who's done a great job in 
the Agriculture Department; Maria Haley; 
Robyn Dickey; young Debra Wood, who's been with me the whole 8 years, just working like 
a beaver in the White House; Mel French, our 
protocol chief and, for many years, her deputy, David Pryor, Jr.; and Marsha Scott, who has 
kept in touch with so many of you for me over these last 8 years.
    I want to thank Wilbur Peer and Harold 
Gist. I want to thank Caroll Willis, who's been at the Democratic Committee this whole 
time, who's been wonderful beyond my words to say; and Lottie 
Shackelford, thank you. Debbie 
Willhite and Ada 
Hollingsworth came home, and they helped 
us in a lot of ways, even though they weren't strictly on the payroll.
    There are also tons of young people who have come to Washington and 
worked, just out of college or just out of law school. And I used to see 
them around and be so grateful that they could have an opportunity to 
have this experience, and I thank all of them for their work.
    Three of my high school classmates are here today, who live in the 
Washington area and flew home with me: Dr. Jim French, who is a surgeon in Washington; Carolyn Staley, who runs the Adult Literacy Foundation; and my good 
friend Phil Jamison, who was the president of 
our class in high school, who retired from the Navy and stayed on to 
work in the Pentagon on nuclear weapons issues and did a lot of the 
pivotal work we have done with Russia over the last 8 years, which gave 
me an enormous amount of pride to know that a guy from my home town knew 
all about that and made me look like I knew what I was talking about 
from time to time.
    I remember the first time I spoke here. It was in 1974, when I was 
permitted to come in here and ask for House members to help me in my 
very first race. I lost the election. If I hadn't, I probably never 
would have become President. Every time I see Congressman 
Hammerschmidt, I thank him for 
beating me.
    I didn't lose my passion for public service, and it's been with me 
ever since. In the last 25 years I have stood in the well of this 
chamber many times. I have lobbied in the halls and the committee room 
back there as attorney general, when David Pryor was my Governor. I stood here five times to take the oath 
of office as Governor of my State. Two months out of every 2 years, with 
the help of a number of my legislative aides who are here today, Bill 
Clark and Hal Honeycutt and Bill Bowen, who was briefly my 
chief of staff, when even I was intimidated, we would argue and argue 
and work and work until we hammered into law our dreams for the future 
of this State.
    I'd like to thank some people who aren't here, some of whom are no 
longer living: the late Judge Frank Holt, who gave me my first chance to 
work in a campaign in 1966; my great friend Senator Bill Fulbright, who 
lived long enough to see me become President and to receive the Medal of 
Freedom, who gave me a job when

[[Page 2935]]

I was flat broke, just so I could finish college, and I'll never forget 
it.
    I would like to thank the Members of the congressional delegation, 
present and past, who stood with me in these last 8 years, in the tough 
times and the good times, especially David Pryor and Dale Bumpers, without whom I 
can't imagine how this last 8 years would have been possible. I thank 
you, my friends.
    I'd like to thank Hillary. If she 
hadn't moved to Arkansas and married me, I doubt the rest of this trip 
would have happened. She was a great first lady for this State. She did 
an amazing job in Washington and did things that no one has ever done 
that will benefit this country for decades to come. And I am so proud of 
her, I could pop today. I want you to remember when she does great 
things in the United States Senate, she learned all of her politics 
wrestling with you. [Laughter]
    I am delighted that my mother-in-law, Dorothy Rodham, is here, and my stepfather, Dick Kelley--I thank them for being here; Lynda Dixon, who was my secretary as Governor and has run our office 
here in Little Rock, along with Representative Mary Anne Salmon.
    And I am delighted that Chelsea could 
come home with me. As it happens, on the way home, on the way here from 
the airport, we passed two of her schools, 
Mann and Booker Arts Magnet School, where she spent so many happy years 
and learned a great deal about her lessons and about life. And the 
friends, the schools, the churches, the associations she had here had a 
lot to do with the person she is today, and I'm very grateful for that.
    Finally, I would like to thank the people of this State who elected 
me five times, for sending me to Washington to carry the lessons that I 
learned from you and the progress that we tried to make here to the rest 
of the country.
    Everything that I have been able to do as President is, in no small 
measure, a result of the life I lived and the jobs I had in Arkansas. My 
conviction that politics requires a vision and a strategy based on sound 
ideas and a belief that you can make a difference--from education reform 
to economic policy, to welfare and health care, to building one America, 
those things were formed here.
    I know that when a person gets ready to check out of an office, 
there's always a lot of retrospectives. And I have followed them in the 
local press: Did this administration make a difference for Arkansas? Did 
it make a difference for America? So I am going to do an unconventional 
thing; I think I will start with the facts.
    First of all, when I came in, I think a lot of people thought, well, 
you know, we'd just move the whole Federal Government down here. But the 
problem is, we had a $290 billion deficit, and then the price of getting 
rid of the deficit turned out to be losing the Congress for our party. 
And so then the people that were in control had other ideas about where 
the money ought to go from time to time, when we finally had a little.
    Notwithstanding that, look what happened this year. We funded the 
Delta Regional Authority, $20 million the first year. We got funds for 
the Great River Bridge and for the Highway 82 Bridge. We had 500--Rodney 
said--Rodney said in this year's transportation budget there's $592 
million for Arkansas. That's more than your per capita share.
    We worked very hard, especially with Senator Lincoln and Congressman Snyder, to 
save the mission of the Little Rock Air Force Base and to get the C-130J 
there. There is $25 million in the budget this year for a simulator and 
millions more for an operations and maintenance center. I think you're 
okay.
    We got $18 million for a quality evaluation center at the Pine Bluff 
arsenal. And as we try to reduce the dangers of chemical and biological 
warfare, I think that arsenal can have a very important mission in 
America's future. I've talked to Representative Ross about it, and I 
hope, after I come down here, I can work with you to think about what it 
should be doing in the 21st century.
    There were $38 million for seven water projects, an expansion of the 
Forrest City prisons, $5 million for research for the Arkansas 
Children's Hospital. We funded the Dale Bumpers Rice Research Center and 
the Agriculture Research Center. The Little Rock VA got some money for a 
research annex. I am very happy that we got $2\1/2\ million for the 
Diane Blair Center at the University of Arkansas. And we finally got the 
upper payment limit for the medical center okayed, and that's worth $35 
million, and I think it saved the medical center. At least that's what 
Dale Bumpers tells me it did.
    Earlier, of course, there was over $40 million for the airport in 
northwest Arkansas. And when my library and center get built here, I 
expect it will be a project on the order of $200 million,

[[Page 2936]]

something that I believe will make a big difference, not only to central 
Arkansas but to the whole State.
    But what's really important, it seems to me, is that Arkansas shared 
in what happened to the country. So when people ask you if it made a 
difference, here are a few numbers you might want to keep in mind: 35 
million people have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law, 
which I signed after it was vetoed by people who said that it would hurt 
the economy. If I was trying to hurt the economy, I did a poor job.
    We have 22\1/2\ million new jobs, a 30-year low in unemployment, a 
40-year low in women's unemployment, the lowest Hispanic and African-
American unemployment ever recorded. Thirteen million more people get 
some form of college aid, thanks to the HOPE scholarship, the lifetime 
learning tax credit, the Pell grant, which will go to $3,750 this year. 
Seven million people have moved off welfare--a 60-percent drop in the 
welfare rolls; 3.3 million children now have health insurance under the 
Children's Health Insurance Program. And Governor, I want to thank you 
for your interest, and Mrs. Huckabee, in getting our kids health 
insurance. It's the first time in a dozen years the number of people 
without health insurance is going down.
    Two million children have moved out of poverty; 1.3 million children 
are in after-school programs or summer school programs as the result of 
Federal funds that did not exist on the day I became President. In 4 
years we've gone from an experimental program at $1 million to one of 
over $1.5 billion, serving 1.3 million children. There are 4 million 
latch-key kids in this country, a lot of them in Arkansas, and I think 
we ought to keep working until every child has a wholesome school to 
stay in after school rather than going back on the street, something to 
say yes to, rather than getting in trouble.
    Six hundred and eleven thousand felons, fugitives, and stalkers were 
unable to buy handguns because of the Brady law, and yet, not a single 
Arkansas hunter missed an hour in the deer woods; no sport shooter 
missed a single contest. Two hundred thousand young Americans have 
served in AmeriCorps, a lot of them right here in Arkansas. When the 
tornado hit the capital neighborhoods--and I saw all the trees blown 
down in the backyard of the Governor's mansion, and I went over to the 
grocery store that was flattened--I saw young AmeriCorps kids from all 
over this country, working here in Arkansas to try to help fix things 
and clean things up, and I am grateful for that. And I might say, I 
learned a couple of days ago that those 200,000 people in 6 years are 
more people than have served in the Peace Corps in the entire 40 years 
of its existence. [Applause] Thank you.
    One hundred and twenty-five thousand community police officers on 
the street; crime at a 25-year low; 37,000 teachers hired all over 
America in the early grades, on our way to 100,000 and a class size 
average of 18 in the first three grades; 90 percent of our kids 
immunized against serious childhood diseases for the first time in the 
history of the country. We had Betty Bumpers and Rosalynn Carter over at 
the White House the other day to celebrate that. The largest increase in 
Head Start in history; the highest homeownership in history--the first 
time we've ever had more than two-thirds of the American people in their 
own homes.
    We have a $500-a-child tax credit; we have 200,000 more people 
getting child care assistance. The student loan program costs $9 billion 
less than it did when I started, to people who are borrowing. The direct 
loan program saves the average college student $1,300 on a $10,000 loan. 
Interest rates, long-term, are lower today than they were when I took 
office, even though we've had an 8-year expansion. Average interest 
rates, because of turning deficits to surplus, saves people $2,000 a 
year on $100,000 home mortgage.
    We've had over 300 trade agreements in the last year alone, 
agreements with China, with Africa and the Caribbean Basin, with 
Vietnam, and with Jordan. We have the smallest Government in 40 years, 
since Dwight Eisenhower was President of the United States, since 1960. 
Two-thirds of the regulations under the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act have been eliminated. Hundreds of programs are gone, and 
I'll give anybody $5 that can mention five of them. I take it back. I'll 
give you $100 if you can mention five of them. [Laughter]
    When we started, the deficit was $290 billion. Now we have a $240 
billion surplus. In our last three budgets, we will pay down--pay down--
about $600 billion of the Nation's debt, putting us on track, if we stay 
there, to be out of debt by the end of the decade, for the first time 
since Andrew Jackson was President, in 1835.

[[Page 2937]]

    This has allowed us, among other things, to pass pension protection 
legislation that has strengthened the pension protection for 40 million 
Americans, to put 25 years on the life of Medicare for the first time in 
25 years. And if the interest savings from paying down the debt as a 
result of Social Security taxes are put against Social Security--which 
is something I've been trying to do for 2 years--if they do that next 
year, it will extend the life of Social Security 54 years, to 2054, 
almost long enough to get us beyond the lifespan of all the baby 
boomers, when the demographics of America will begin to right themselves 
again.
    We have cleaner air, cleaner water, cleaner drinking water, safer 
food, twice as many toxic waste dumps cleaned up as in the previous 12 
years. And today we announced that we were setting aside eight more 
national monuments, which means this administration has now protected 
more land than any administration in the history of the country, except 
that of Theodore Roosevelt.
    Per capita income after inflation is up an average of $6,300. Median 
income is over $40,000 for the first time in the history of the country, 
and wages have gone up 9 percent, as poverty has dropped 20 percent. So 
for the first time in decades, this was an economic recovery that I'm 
proud to say did produce more billionaires and millionaires, but also 
helped people in the lowest 20 percent of the wage earning bracket with 
the highest percentage gains in the last 3 years.
    So that's what happened. And what I want to say to you is, one of 
the things that I tried to remember every day was that being President 
is a job, like being Governor was a job. And it matters how hard you 
work, but it also matters whether you've got the right ideas. And a lot 
of the ideas that I had came out of the experiences we shared together 
during the 1980's, when times were tough in Arkansas. We did not have an 
unemployment rate below the national average in the last 10 years I was 
Governor a single time, until 1992, when we ranked second in the country 
in job growth.
    But I learned a lot as we worked, day-in and day-out, together, 
across party lines, across regional lines, to try to actually do the 
people's business. And I've said before and I'll say again, one of the 
biggest hazards of any national capital is--America is no different from 
others; I followed this pretty closely in other countries--is when you 
set up a Government so far away from the people, it is easy, when you 
realize maybe you get your 15 seconds on the evening news, to believe 
that politics is all about rhetoric and positioning. But it's not. It's 
a job. It really matters what you do, whether your ideas work, and 
whether you have a team of people who can translate those ideas into 
reality.
    I tell everybody who listens to me that it's a team sport, that I 
may be the captain of the team, but if you don't have a team, you're 
going to lose every time. And so just once more, I would like to ask all 
the people who came here with me today from Arkansas, who have been part 
of this last 8 years, to stand, because they were a big part of our 
team. You all stand up. [Applause]
    Now, I'd like to just mention three or four specific areas where I 
think your relationship to the National Government is important and 
where I hope our country will continue to move forward. The strategy we 
followed in education, which is still key to everything else, was very, 
very important, basically, higher standards, more accountability, 
greater investment, and equal opportunity--a simple strategy, but it's 
working.
    We provided, for the first time, funds for States to identify 
failing schools and help local districts to turn them around or put them 
under new management or start charter schools. There was one in the 
country when we started; there are over 2,000 now. Reading and math 
scores are up in the country; SAT scores are at a 30-year high, even 
though more people from more disadvantaged backgrounds are taking them; 
a 50-percent increase in the number of kids in America taking advanced 
placement tests; 300 percent increase in Hispanic students over the last 
7 years; 500 percent increase in African-American students. The African-
American high school graduation rate is virtually equal to the white 
high school graduation rate in the country, for the first time in the 
history of America.
    And more and more people are going on to college. But we have some 
significant challenges out there. We have the largest and most diverse 
group of students in our schools in history. Arkansas is now in the top 
three States in the percentage growth of its Hispanic population, as all 
of you doubtless know better than I.
    I just hope that you will continue to work and to urge the Federal 
Government to work with you in making progress in these areas. We

[[Page 2938]]

got a billion dollars-plus, a little more than a billion dollars this 
year, for the first time, to try to just give funds to States and school 
districts to help repair old schools or grievously overcrowded schools. 
And I think that's very important.
    There is a limit to how much we can ever expect local property tax 
payers to pay, and very often--you have two things going on now--very 
often the places where the need is the greatest, the property tax base 
is the smallest, which we know a lot about in Arkansas. And secondly, 
ironically, even though we've got the biggest school population in 
history, we have a smaller percentage of those students--excuse me, a 
smaller percentage of property tax owners with kids in the schools--
property tax payers with kids in the schools.
    So we've got to work this out. Now, when we started this, there were 
a lot of people who had genuine reservations--and this is not a 
political deal in the traditional sense in Washington. There were a lot 
of people who honestly thought that the Federal Government should not be 
giving money to States and the local school districts to help with 
school construction or repair because it wasn't something we did. And I 
agree that normally we shouldn't do that. Normally, we should either 
give you the money to spend as you need it or target it on the poorest 
people or the areas of greatest need, like the need to hook up all our 
classrooms to the Internet.
    But this is an unusual time. This is the first time--the last 3 
years--the first time that we've ever had more school students than we 
had in the baby boom years right after World War II. And the student 
population is much more diverse. And after World War II, the National 
Government did help States and school districts to deal with the school 
facilities problem.
    So I hope that you will help us with that, because I think the unmet 
need is somewhere over $100 billion for adequate school facilities for 
our kids. We also are putting more funds than ever before, with total 
bipartisan agreement in Congress, into teacher training, continuing 
development, and funding the master teacher program to try to certify 
board-certified master teachers all across the country, until we get up 
to 100,000 of them, which will be enough for one in every school in the 
country. I think that's very, very important. But I would urge you to 
continue to do that.
    The second thing I'd like to say is, I think that it's very 
important that we keep trying to refine the partnership between the 
National Government and the States in the area of economic development. 
Except for education, I guess I worked harder on just trying to get and 
keep jobs when I was here than anything else, and a lot of you worked 
very closely with me. I'm very grateful for the progress that has been 
made, and I'm especially grateful that we have got a focus now on the 
people and places that have been left behind. Because, in spite of this 
long recovery, there are still places in mountain counties in Appalachia 
and in north Arkansas, there are places in the Mississippi Delta and 
other rural areas, there are inner-city neighborhoods, and worst of all, 
a lot of our Native American reservations, where you can't tell there 
has been an 8-year recovery. I was on the Pine Ridge Reservation a 
little over a year ago in South Dakota, which is near Mount Rushmore, 
and one of the most historic places in all American Indian culture. The 
unemployment rate there is 72 percent. And as a result, all the social 
indicators are terrible. There are a lot of problems there. But 
intelligence is evenly distributed. I was taken around there by a young 
girl who had to move out of her home, was taken in by friends, living in 
the back of a trailer where there were, like, 11 people living. She was 
one of the most intelligent young people I met in the whole 8 years I 
was President. She deserves the same future everybody else does.
    That's why we passed the empowerment zone program that Vice 
President Gore ran for 8 years, and did a 
brilliant job, I think, where we had these zones. But I thought we ought 
to do something to try to essentially make every area in America that 
was insufficiently developed eligible for the same investment incentives 
that we presently give American investors to invest in poor communities 
in Africa or Latin America or poor countries in Asia.
    That's essentially what this new markets legislation is all about. 
We did it in partnership with the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, 
a Republican from Illinois, and I'm very grateful to him for the work we 
did together, and any number of other legislators who are active in it--
J.C. Watts from Oklahoma, a lot of you know; 
Danny Davis, from Illinois, who is from 
Arkansas, the Congressman from Chicago.

[[Page 2939]]

    So I hope that you and, Governor, the 
economic development agencies of the State, will look for ways to 
maximize the usage of this new markets legislation, because, 
essentially, we've got one more piece that I think will pass early in 
this new session of Congress, but what we're trying to do is to give 
people the incentives to put money into places of high unemployment, 
where people are willing to work, and to spread the risk.
    So essentially, what it does, it sets up the system where you can 
get about a 25 percent tax credit for investing in areas with very high 
unemployment, which means your risk is only 75 percent of what it would 
otherwise be, and if you have to borrow money, that up to two-thirds of 
an investment could be guaranteed by a Government mechanism, which would 
give you about 2 percent lower interest rates, which would further 
reduce the risk, which is essentially what we do when we try to set up 
trade and investment agreements all around the world in developing 
countries, where we have an interest in building the trading partners 
for the future and helping democracy. I could never understand why we 
wouldn't do it for people here in America. And I believe we have a 
unique opportunity here to bring free enterprise to people who have been 
left behind.
    I know Arkansas is small enough, you all know each other well 
enough, you've had enough experience with this, we went through all that 
nightmare of the eighties, that it seems to me that this State is in a 
position maybe to take more advantage of that and also to identify what 
still needs to be done, what the National Government can do, than any 
place else.
    I should also tell you that we're now going to have 40 of the 
empowerment zones that we had--not that many, but we had 20 to 30--and 
we're going to have 40 other communities, enterprise communities, 
designed by the Republican Members of Congress. We said, ``Look, why 
don't we just test this? You guys design 40 communities that will get 
the special tax treatment the way you want it. We'll have 40 that work 
the way we think would work best. We'll identify 80 places that will get 
extra help. And then we'll just see what works, and then we'll do what 
works. If your idea works better than ours, we'll do yours. If ours 
works better, we'll do ours. And if some of each works best, we'll do 
that.''
    So there will be approximately 50 or more new community designations 
coming out next year, and I would like to see some of those come to 
Arkansas, as well. And you know, you'll have to go through the 
application process and all of that. But I really would urge you to make 
sure that Arkansas gets a substantial share of those new community 
opportunities because they get extra help to get investment there. And I 
think that will work.
    A third thing I would like to say a little something about is 
welfare reform. We had a huge debate, you remember, back in '96, on 
welfare, but we passed a bipartisan bill that had a majority of both 
parties in both Houses. And you know how it works, and it has worked 
very well. Arkansas's rolls are down 60 percent, and I applaud you for 
that.
    Now, what I would like to suggest is that we won't know how well 
this really works until the economy slows down, which is bound to happen 
someday, but I don't think it's imminent. I don't believe we've repealed 
the laws of the business cycle, but the truth is, because our markets 
are open, it's a great, great hedge against inflation. And because of 
the technology sector, we continue to increase productivity. And if we 
keep driving down interest rates by paying the debt down, which is the 
main thing the Government can do, the aggregate economy will continue, I 
think, to do very well.
    But it seems to me that we need to really kind of--it's time now. 
This will be the fifth year since the welfare reform bill was passed. 
And we need to look and see where it's working and what the problems 
are. And what about people that are hard to place? Are we doing enough 
on job training? Have we done enough on transportation? Are people so 
concentrated that are still on the rolls or people that keep dropping 
out and go back in a hurry, that those are the places that need the new 
markets designation and help? These are the kinds of things that I think 
ought to be done.
    But one of the great stories of the last 8 years is that all of us 
who thought poor people would rather work than draw a Government check 
for not working were right, but that people still have to be able, even 
on modest wages, to succeed at work and at home, which is one of the 
reasons I am disappointed we didn't raise the minimum wage again last 
year. I think it will go up fairly soon in this new session of Congress.

[[Page 2940]]

    But we've got to make sure that people who are working, particularly 
if they're single parents, can do a good job with their kids, because 
raising children is still the most important job of any society. So 
again, our State is--ironically, it's small enough but also diverse 
enough, that you can really kind of do a mid-course check here, see 
what's working, what's not, what should the Congress do, what should the 
new administration do to help you make this work.
    But this is an enormous story, to see these rolls cut 60 percent, 
and people, just like we always knew, preferring work to idleness as 
long as they can take care of their kids.
    Now, one other thing I'd like to mention, and I alluded to it 
earlier. I know you've had some vigorous debates here in the legislature 
about how best to cover children and what should be done on health care. 
But let me just get to the bottom line. I'll state it again.
    This Children's Health Insurance Program, which is the biggest 
expansion of health care since Medicaid was passed in '65, was a part of 
the Balanced Budget Act in '97. Then it took about a year for the States 
to get their programs up. So essentially, in 2 years, 3.3 million kids 
have gotten health insurance. And it's the first thing that's been done 
in a dozen years to get the number of people without health insurance 
going down. And we all know why it went up. Insurance rates went up; it 
was harder and harder for small businesses to cover their employees. And 
when they couldn't cover their employees, the employees themselves 
weren't making enough money to buy insurance. So we've got the numbers 
going down now.
    There is enough money here in the Congress--they have enough money 
in the projected 10-year budget to afford a substantial tax cut, to keep 
paying the debt down, to meet our investment commitments at the national 
level, and still expand health care coverage. I believe the best way to 
do it is to work with the States to add the parents of the children who 
have been insured under the CHIP program.
    Now, some of those parents, a few of them, have insurance at work 
where they can get insurance, but they can't insure their kids. But most 
of them don't have anything. And if you did that, if you did just that, 
that would cover over 25 percent of all the people left in America who 
don't have health insurance--just that one thing. And the money is there 
to do it.
    The other thing that I've been trying to get the Congress to do that 
is--really there's nothing for you to do, but I think we ought to do 
it--is to give a tax credit to people who are over 55 and have either 
dropped out or retired early and lost their health insurance on the job, 
or who lost their jobs or who work in jobs without health insurance. 
They're not old enough to get into Medicare. Without in any way 
weakening Medicare, if we gave them a 25-percent tax credit, we could 
let them buy into Medicare at cost when they're over 55.
    This is a big deal. And that's 300,000 or 400,000 people. And that's 
another big chunk of folks. But the thing I would like you to focus on--
there will be a debate in this coming Congress, and I think there will 
be bipartisan interest now that the CHIP program is working so well, in 
adding people to the ranks of health insurance. And back in '94, when we 
had this big fight about it, we had a big fight because the economy was 
bad, and there was no way to cover everybody except with an employer 
mandate, which couldn't pass because the economy was bad, or with more 
money, which we didn't have unless we raised taxes, and we couldn't do 
it because we just raised taxes to get the deficit down.
    Now, we are in a position to fund this. And it's very important that 
it be done in the right way. And the States, I think, have experience 
about how this might be done. So I would hope that this is one of the 
things that you would be working very closely with your congressional 
delegation on, because it really is the opportunity of a lifetime. I 
mean, for 50 years American Presidents and Congresses and people around 
the country have been trying to figure out how to get health care 
coverage to everybody. And Hawaii, Minnesota, and North Dakota are about 
the only people that have done it--that is, that are substantially over 
90 percent. So I hope you will do that.
    Another thing I think that might be very valuable to Arkansas is 
that in the previous campaign, President-elect Bush said that he would put more money into public health 
centers if he were elected. And I guess it's the same as it was, but 
when I left office, we were, for example, giving--85 percent of all the 
immunizations in the State of Arkansas were being given by the county 
health departments. Even upper-income people were taking their kids to 
county health departments because doctors

[[Page 2941]]

didn't want to buy the liability insurance, and so they'd just go and do 
that.
    But I think that if there is going to be funding for health units, 
which I think would be a very good thing, then the States ought to have 
some significant input into how it's going to be done, so the money will 
be spent in a way that the States--and the Southern States, by the way, 
in general, have historic--for historic reasons, have relied on county 
health units, public health units, more than the rest of the country. So 
that's something else I think you ought to be looking for in this coming 
session of Congress. Are they going to do this? If so, how's the money 
going to be spent? What do you have to say about it? How can it help the 
health of the people of Arkansas, especially the children of Arkansas, 
in the most effective way?
    Let me just make one final comment. I think one of the most 
important contributions that our administration made to life in 
Washington in the last 8 years was arguing that we had to find a way to 
be at peace with each other and to work together across all of our 
differences. If you follow American politics as closely as all of you 
do, you know that a lot of our differences are almost cultural: race, 
religion, the people who live in the West as opposed to people who live 
in the East, and their attitude about protection of public lands. Is it 
gun control or gun safety? All these things that keep--politicians just 
stay away from a lot of these issues because you're afraid, no matter 
which way you move and what you say, it will all blow up on you, and you 
can't get much done, but you lose votes no matter what you do.
    But the truth is, in a highly diverse society, where we're growing 
more and more interdependent both within our country and around the 
world, with the rest of the world, we have no choice but to confront a 
lot of these things. So the work that we've done with this Office of One 
America, I think, is very, very important, with our race report and all 
of that.
    On Martin Luther King's Holiday, Monday, I sent a report to Congress 
on where we are, what progress we've made in building one America in the 
last 8 years, and what I thought the unmet challenges were, from dealing 
with the challenge of racial profiling and law enforcement to closing 
disparities in health and education, to giving back the right to vote to 
ex-offenders once their sentence is discharged, something that the 
Arkansas Legislature did without a word of criticism in 1977--1977. This 
is a big deal. Six hundred thousand people every year get out of the 
penitentiary. You all want me to give more money every year for that 
prison over in Forrest City; people here in the room have lobbied for 
it. Most people who go in, get out. And we have a huge collective 
interest as a people in seeing that when people get out of prison, they 
obey the law.
    You know, you don't want to dog people to the end of their days. If 
you say, ``Here's your penalty; serve it,'' they serve it. And then they 
get out and say, ``And now we want you to be a good, successful, law-
abiding citizen, and by the way, here's a 50-pound weight we want you to 
wear around your neck for the rest of your life. But you've got to do as 
well as we do.'' I just think it's a mistake. And we have got to find a 
way to figure out how, once people pay and they get out--600,000 a year, 
that's a lot of people--we can bring them back into America. I mean, the 
whole purpose of defined punishment is to say when it's over, ``You did 
it, but it's over.''
    And I can tell you, I'm going through this now--Meredith Cabe is one of my pardon attorneys--just dealing with the 
mechanics of this, I just don't--most people who apply for a 
Presidential pardon do it because they want to vote again. But a lot of 
people don't even know how to do it.
    I'm not going to be President in 3 days. We're still getting 
applications in the mail, and it's crazy. Most of these people should 
just be able to vote and be full citizens, because they've paid. I think 
it's an important issue. And as I said, we did it here in 1977, but I'll 
bet you most people in Arkansas don't know that's the law, because only 
about 14 States have done it. So people just assume it's not there.
    The other thing that I recommended and I think is very important is 
not that we re-litigate the last election but that we make sure that in 
every future election in every State in the country, voting is clear, 
simple, unquestionable, and people's votes get counted. And I asked the 
incoming administration to appoint a commission headed probably by 
President Ford and President Carter, but something totally bipartisan, just to look at this. 
Because we all know--I know the history of voting, and voting machines 
are good in a lot of ways because you can't vote twice in the same race 
on a voting

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machine because you can't pull two levers now. But they're expensive. 
They're hard to maintain. When the ones you bought don't work anymore, 
they're hard to get parts to repair, and so that's how people got into 
these punch card systems.
    I personally think that the pencil system I use on my absentee 
ballot here from Pulaski County is a lot better, a lot less subject to 
messing up, and can also be counted by machine, so it can be counted 
more quickly. But this is something that every State needs to be sure 
of.
    The States in this country have done, I think, a very good job of 
making it easier for people to vote. One reason it took so long to count 
these votes in Washington State is--it took 2 weeks or 3 weeks to count 
the votes because over a third of the votes were cast by paper ballots 
in advance of election day.
    By the way, it's going to change everything for all the politicians. 
There is a congressional seat in New Mexico that was won twice by the 
candidate of one party on election day, and both times the other 
candidate was elected because she got so many votes in the 3 weeks 
leading up to election.
    So it is going to change the nature of politics. But the main thing 
is it's voter friendly. So the idea of making it easier for people to 
vote is taking hold in America. But until the recent election, I don't 
think any of us--I know I hadn't--we hadn't paid enough attention to the 
mechanics of voting. For example, the biggest reject State in the 
country--that is where people vote, but their votes are not counted--I 
think was Idaho last year. But because Idaho is overwhelmingly a 
Republican State, the races aren't close, so if 5 percent of the votes 
don't get counted, it never makes any difference. So nobody gets upset. 
They never think about it.
    But now we know that this is not just a problem in Florida; it's a 
problem in other places. And we need to look at everywhere the mechanics 
of voting. Because, you just think about it, in Washington, DC, across 
the river, in the Alexandria public school system, there are people from 
180 different national and ethnic groups in one school system. Their 
parents speak over 100 different languages as their native language. And 
as I said, I know Arkansas is one of the top three States in the country 
in the growth of Hispanic students. As this country gets more and more 
diverse and more and more commingled, it will be more and more important 
for people to believe, not only when their candidates win but especially 
when their candidates lose, that the whole thing was done in the best 
possible way.
    So that's another thing that I would like to see not only this State 
and this State legislature weigh in but every State in the country. This 
is something we can do as a people that there ought to be no difference 
of opinion on. Just--we can figure out the most cost-effective way to 
get the mechanics right. But in this case, the whole integrity of our 
democracy, over the long run, depends upon it.
    Let me just say one other thing. I went back and read my first 
inaugural address in 1979. I got a little plaque from the Arkansas 
Gazette when I gave it, that I put on the wall in the White House, and I 
had it up there every day I was President. And I had a line in it that 
said, ``The people of Arkansas have two emotions in great abundance, 
hope and pride. Without them, there is no such thing as quality of life. 
With them, there is nothing we cannot achieve.''
    I will leave office at noon on the 20th, amazingly grateful that 
somehow the mystery of this great democracy gave me the chance to go 
from a little boy on South Hervey Street in Hope, Arkansas, to the White 
House. I am quite sure there was more than a little luck in that and 
good fortune. I am absolutely positive that I may be the only person 
ever elected President who owes his election purely to his personal 
friends, without whom I would never have won. But I know this: If we 
have the right vision, if we have good ideas, and if we always believe, 
if we are proud of our country and its history and our future is 
absolutely filled with hope, then the best days of this country will 
always be ahead.
    After I became President, I went back and read all the founding 
documents again, to make sure that I knew them as nearly by heart as I 
could. And when the Founders kicked our country off with the Declaration 
of Independence, they said they pledged their lives, their fortunes, 
their sacred honor to the enterprise of forming a more perfect Union--
not a perfect Union but a more perfect Union. And they were smart 
people. What they said is, if we get this right, then all the people who 
come after us will always be able to do better. There will always be new 
challenges, that as long as we are on this Earth and finite human 
beings, God

[[Page 2943]]

meant us to have new problems. But we will always be able to form a more 
perfect Union.
    I will leave that office at noon on January 20th more idealistic 
than I was the day I took the oath of office 8 years before, largely 
because it worked out the way I thought it would based on what I learned 
and how I lived here.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:07 p.m. in the House Chamber at the 
Arkansas State Capitol Building. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. 
Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and his wife, Janet; Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller 
of Arkansas; State Senator Mike Beebe, president pro tempore of the 
senate; State Representatives Shane Broadway, speaker of the house, and 
Mary Anne Salmon; State Attorney General Mark Pryor; Arkansas Secretary 
of State Sharon Priest; State Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher; Arkansas 
Commissioner of State Lands Charlie Daniels; State Auditor Gus 
Wingfield; former Senator David H. Pryor; Raymond Lloyd (Buddy) Young, 
Region VI Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency; Carl Whillock, 
Special Assistant to the President, Department of Agriculture; Montine 
McNulty, executive director, Arkansas Hospitality Association; Jana 
Prewitt, Director of External Affairs, Department of the Interior; Robyn 
Dickey, former White House Office Deputy Social Secretary; Debra Wood, 
White House Office Director of Student Correspondence; Wilbur Peer, 
Acting Administrator, Rural Business-Cooperative Service, Department of 
Agriculture; Harold Gist, Associate Director of Intergovernmental 
Affairs, Department of Transportation; Caroll Willis, director, and 
Lottie Shackelford, vice chair, Democratic National Committee; Debbie 
Willhite, co-executive director, 1997 Presidential Inaugural Committee; 
Ada Hollingsworth, owner, A&A Travel Services; Carolyn Staley, deputy 
director, National Institute for Literacy; former Representative John 
Paul Hammerschmidt; former Arkansas State Highway Commissioner L.W. 
(Bill) Clark; Hal Honeycutt, former director, Arkansas State Game and 
Fish Commission; Bill Bowen, former chief of staff to the Governor of 
Arkansas; former Senator Dale Bumpers, and his wife, Betty; and former 
First Lady Rosalynn Carter. A portion of these remarks could not be 
verified because the tape was incomplete.