[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 16 (Monday, April 26, 1993)]
[Pages 611-615]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Community in Pittsburgh

 April 17, 1993

    Thank you so much, Senator Wofford, Governor Casey, Commissioner 
Foerster--happy birthday--and Commissioner Flaherty. I am so glad to be 
back in Pittsburgh in Allegheny County.
    Now, where's the band who played for us, up there? The Richland High 
Marching Band, thank you very much.
    I want to say, Mayor, it's always good to be with you and be in your 
city. I want to also acknowledge the presence here today of Congressmen 
Coyne, Klink, Murphy, and Murtha, all of whom have supported this 
economic program to get our country moving again, and a person who has 
made some decisions that are very good for Pittsburgh and USAir and, I 
think, for the future of the country, the Transportation Secretary, 
Federico Pena, who is here with us.
    I want to say a lot of things about the economic program, but before 
I do, let me say what--since all of you heard the radio address and the 
interview, you know that this morning the jury in Los Angeles handed 
down a verdict in the Rodney King case. You don't know that? I thought 
you heard it. Well, let me say that they did. The jury found two of the 
defendants guilty and two of the defendants not guilty. The jury 
convicted the officer, Officer Powell, who was shown on the film, who 
did most of the beating, and the sergeant who was in charge of the group 
of police officers who were there. The jury acquitted two of the other 
officers, including the one who was a rookie and the one who was on the 
film and, in part, trying to deflect some blows from Rodney King.
    Now, I want to say just a few words about that, because I think, 
frankly, our attitude about each other may have as much to do with the 
progress we need to make in the future as any specific law we can pass. 
This verdict was a tribute to the work and the judgment of the jury and 
the efforts of the Federal Government in putting the case together. It 
was, once again, a reminder that our courts are the proper forum for the 
resolution of even our deepest legal disputes. And it did establish what 
a lot of people have felt in their hearts for 2 years, that the civil 
rights of Rodney King were violated.
    But I ask you to think about the deeper meaning of this whole issue. 
All across the world today people are fighting with each other and 
killing each other because of their racial and religious differences. In 
eastern Bosnia, in the town of Srebrenica, Muslims and Serbs that lived 
together for centuries, and tens of thousands of the Muslims are now 
about to be forced from their homes through a process called ethnic 
cleansing and because the Serbs had decided that they just can't live 
unless they can live alone and without others who are different from 
them.
    Our country has always been about something different from that. We 
see these kinds of racial and ethnic conflicts on every continent all 
across the globe. But we've always been about something different from 
that. I once gave a speech to a university in Los Angeles County where 
there were students from 122 different countries. There are now people 
from 150 different racial and ethnic groups in that county alone. And I 
say to you, my fellow Americans, unless we really do believe that 
underneath the differences of race and religion and ethnicity, 
underneath the differences of political party and political opinion, 
there is a core in each one of us, given us by God, in which we share in 
common, which obliges us to respect one another and to wish to live 
together in harmony and peace, none of the other things I came to talk 
to you about today can come to pass.
    For the people of Los Angeles and the people of this country, all 
around the country, who need more opportunity, the time has

[[Page 612]]

come to go forward, to rededicate ourselves to the civil rights of all 
Americans, to rededicate ourselves to the fight against crime and drugs 
and violence, to put 100,000 more police officers on the street, to pass 
the Brady bill and try to reduce the vulnerability to violence and 
crimes by people, to commit ourselves to a new agenda of expanding 
opportunity and empowerment. But in the beginning must be the 
willingness of every American to assume a personal responsibility to 
respect the differences of his or her fellow Americans and rejoice in 
what unites us as human beings. Surely the lasting legacy of the Rodney 
King trial ought to be that, a determination to reaffirm our common 
humanity and to make a strength of our diversity. And if we can do that, 
then we can get on about the business of this great land.
    I want to, before I talk a little bit about the stimulus program, 
also say a special word about the gentleman who introduced me and those 
of you who sent him to the Senate. When Pennsylvania elected Harris 
Wofford against all the odds less than 2 years ago, you started a 
movement not just that led to a change in Presidents but that led to a 
change in America. I'm here to tell you today that Pennsylvania sent 
shock waves to the country by electing Harris Wofford because 
Pennsylvania was saying we expect our Government to solve the health 
care crisis, we expect our Government to solve the jobs crisis.
    I wonder how many people would have even taken seriously the 
campaign that I undertook to try to break the gridlock and change the 
whole way Washington works, to reduce the influence of special interests 
and put the American people, their jobs, their health care, their 
education first, to try to change the welfare system and start a system 
of national service so people could earn their way through college, I 
wonder if any of that could have happened if Pennsylvania hadn't said in 
a loud, screaming, clear voice by electing Harris Wofford, the time has 
come to change the direction of this country.
    I also want to ask you for your understanding and your patience. 
Senator Wofford has been working hard on this health care issue ever 
since he got to the Senate, but you can't change the health care system 
unless the White House and the Congress are in harness. And I, my wife, 
and our administration are working on this health care issue to put the 
White House and the Congress in harness to ensure affordable health care 
to all Americans.
    I also want to say, again, how much I appreciate USAir and the 
employees for giving us this wonderful terminal to meet in today.
    And now let me talk about what Governor Casey spoke about. When I 
became President, I promised a long-term economic plan, no short-term 
miracles but a real effort to turn this country around. And I presented 
that plan to the Congress. They have to vote on it twice, first in broad 
outlines and then in the details. They adopted the outlines, the so-
called budget resolution, in record time. They have never moved so 
rapidly.
    It changes the whole way the Federal Government takes care of your 
money and has your priorities at stake. It emphasizes a dramatic 
reduction in the Federal deficit and, at the same time, increasing 
investment in jobs, in education and health care and communities and the 
things that will make the country grow over a 5-year period, not a one-
shot deal, over 5 years. It does it by a combination of strict budget 
cuts and raising some more money. Seventy percent of it comes from 
people with incomes over $100,000 a year to try to restore some fairness 
to this Tax Code that has gotten so unfair in the last 12 years. This 
program is a good program. It is what I campaigned on.
    Then I asked the Congress to do something I didn't really campaign 
on but that I decided was important, to adopt a short-term jobs program 
to immediately create a half a million jobs in this economy. And I'll 
tell you why I did it, even though we never talked about it in these 
rallies when I came here. Because I looked around the world and I saw 
that every advanced economy in the world is having trouble creating 
jobs, every one. Then I looked at America, and I saw that the economists 
were saying that we have been in an economic recovery for a year, and 
the unemployment rate is higher now than it was when we were in the 
depths of the recession.
    So America is like a lot of these other countries. If you look at 
the overall figures--

[[Page 613]]

a lot of you are responsible for this, by the way--productivity, our 
output per working person, is up. Some profits of our corporations are 
up, stock market at record-high levels. Now interest rates are going 
down because we're committed to reducing the deficit. And a lot of you, 
as a result, have refinanced your homes or gotten a lower mortgage or 
interest rate on a car or other consumer interest rates. People have 
been able to get business loans or refinance them.
    That's all good. But where are the jobs? This is a sweeping, 
worldwide problem for wealthier countries. But it is your problem and 
your community's problem if you or your neighbors don't have one. And as 
a result of the incredible pressures on business today, we see that even 
in this so-called recovery, we're having no new jobs created and we're 
having 100,000 Americans a month lose their health insurance. I say we 
can do better. And we have to try to do better.
    So we came up with the idea of not having the Government create a 
job for everybody that's unemployed--you know we don't have enough money 
to do that with the deficit as high as it is--but of having a very 
carefully targeted jobs plan to create a half a million jobs and hope it 
would operate like striking a match, and then that would get the economy 
spurred, and other new jobs would be created. It was a disciplined, 
limited, targeted plan, clearly designed to get this economy going again 
in the short run. That is what I've asked the House and the Senate to 
adopt. The House adopted the plan right away. A majority of the Senate 
is for it. All the Republicans are filibustering it, which means they 
know it will pass, so they won't let it come to a vote.
    Now, let me tell you what it will do. It will give communities a 
lift by putting thousands of police officers on the street to try to 
make the streets safer. It will invest in roads and streets and bridges 
and cleaner water and sewer systems and put people to work in 
construction work. That is important. It will give cities and counties 
and States some discretionary money to support projects like this one. 
It will create 700,000 jobs for young people who otherwise wouldn't have 
any work this summer to get them off the streets.
    After trying for a long time to pass this program and getting no 
help from any of the Republican Senators--because we have to have at 
least three or four of them to help because it takes 60 people to shut 
off debate in the Senate, not a majority, 60 percent--I offered a 
compromise. Well, you've heard that old saying, it takes two to tango? 
It also takes two to untangle the gridlock in Washington. And I came 
here today asking you to ask Senator Specter to help me untangle this 
gridlock.
    The Republicans say, ``Well, maybe we ought to pay money to extend 
the unemployment benefits of people who are unemployed,'' but not a dime 
to create any jobs. We tried that for 12 years: Pay people to be 
unemployed; don't pay them to work. I say we should do both, take care 
of the unemployed but reduce the unemployed. Put people to work.
    There are those who say, ``Everything's fine. We don't need this.'' 
Everybody who says that has got a job. [Laughter] Everybody who says 
that has got health insurance. Everybody who says that has a good 
education and is going to do fine almost no matter what happens. They 
can take care of themselves. The people who know how many vulnerable 
people there are in America know that we've got to try to do something 
to put the people to work. If it doesn't work, we'll do something else. 
But let's try this. It can work.
    Let me say, in fairness to my opponents--I want you to know what 
their argument is. They say if the Congress passes an emergency jobs 
bill, that adds to the deficit, and we shouldn't do anything to make the 
deficit bigger, nothing, except maybe unemployment benefits. Now, that 
has a lot of appeal. Here's what they don't tell you. We could pass 
every dollar I've asked for in this jobs plan and still be below the 
total spending targets that this Congress established before I ever 
became President, for how much money was going to be spent this year. 
Right, Congressmen? Number one.
    Number two, we have cut and cut and cut spending in this budget, 
over 200 specific spending cuts over the next 5 years that will blow 
away this extra spending. This spending is more than covered by budget 
cuts.

[[Page 614]]

    And third, and the most important thing of all you need to know, is 
that before I became President, just in the last 4 years, a lot of these 
same people voted for the same kind of emergency spending, billions and 
billions and billions of dollars of it, a lot of it for overseas 
spending or other things that didn't have anything to do with putting 
the people of Pennsylvania to work. So they did this before. Let's do it 
for the American people this time.
    What's amazing to me, they also say, ``Well, you can't trust the 
cities and counties with the money. You give these community development 
block grants to the cities, you can't ever tell. Well, they'll fool 
around and build a swimming pool with it.'' [Laughter] I have a couple 
of things to say about that. First of all, it was the Republicans in 
Washington that once championed these community development grants. Your 
late Senator from this State, John Heinz, was a great champion of the 
very thing I'm trying to do, increasing community development block 
grants.
    Before I became President, I heard speech after speech out of the 
Republicans in Washington that I agreed with, saying that people at the 
local level have better sense than we do about how to spend this money. 
How many times did the Congress get that speech from the Republicans, 
``Let the mayors, let the Governors, let the county officials spend this 
money. They know how to do it.'' Well, funny enough, I propose to expand 
that program, and all of a sudden they said, ``Why, you can't trust 
those people. They'll squander the money. They might build a swimming 
pool.'' [Laughter]
    Let me tell you something. I don't know how you feel, but in a lot 
of these cities and small towns and country places, I'd a lot rather 
those kids be at swimming pools this summer than some of the places 
they're going to be. You go to Washington. The President's got a 
swimming pool. The Senate has a swimming pool. Why shouldn't the people 
have a swimming pool? And what about all those people who are going to 
work building those kinds of things in our cities? I'm telling you, 
folks, every argument they've got still comes back to gridlock.
    Now again, I'm going to tell you, this is not the end of the world, 
but we need to keep this country moving. And we need to create some jobs 
now. And we need to stop making excuses. We need to pull together. I 
have reached out the hand of compromise to the Republicans in the 
Senate. I did it all by myself. I didn't have any kind of deal from 
them. I just listened to them. I listened to all those speeches about 
how bad these programs were. So I said, ``Okay, here's a different deal, 
and by the way, how about spending $200 million more to put police on 
the street? Why don't you do that?'' Let's hear what their answer is. 
Why shouldn't we have police on the street where we need it in the 
cities, where we've have to cut back on law enforcement coverage? Why 
shouldn't we have more people working in this country?
    I want to ask you to help us put America back to work. I want to ask 
you to help keep the movement going. I have been very honest with you. 
We don't have any magic bullets. We know there won't be any overnight 
successes. But we know that this economy, like so many countries in the 
world, is not creating jobs. And if people were working, you just think 
about it, if everybody in this country who wanted a job had one, we 
wouldn't have half the problems we've got now. Let's try to put America 
back to work.
    By the end of this month, let me give you one more example, if we 
don't fund this program, the main loan program of the Small Business 
Administration will be shut down. The opposite party for years paraded 
as the champion of the small businesses of this country. That program 
can help start 25,000 small businesses. Small business is generating 
most of the new jobs in America today. That is the kind of thing we have 
done here.
    I ask you, please, not in a spirit of partisanship, not in an 
atmosphere of hostility, not with political rhetoric, just for the 
benefit of the people of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County and 
Pennsylvania and the United States of America, ask your Senator and the 
Senators in the United States Senate to give us a chance to put this 
country back to work, starting Monday.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

[[Page 615]]

Note: The President spoke at 11:16 a.m. in the USAir terminal at 
Pittsburgh International Airport. In his remarks, he referred to Tom 
Foerster and Pete Flaherty, Allegheny County commissioners, and Sophie 
Masloff, Mayor of Pittsburgh.

  On April 17, the Office of the Press Secretary released a statement by 
the President on the jury verdict in the Rodney King case. That 
statement is an excerpt from the President's remarks, printed above.