[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 51 (Monday, December 27, 1993)]
[Pages 2616-2617]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Signing the National Child Protection Act of 1993

 December 20, 1993

    I'm delighted to see all of you here. And I want to especially 
recognize Secretary Shalala and my good friend Marian Wright Edelman. 
Senator Biden, thank you for being here, sir; Congresswoman Schroeder; 
Congressman Edwards; and my former colleague and longtime friend 
Governor Jim Thompson from Illinois; Oprah Winfrey; Lynn Swann; and 
Andrew Vachss. Thank you all very much for helping this day to come to 
pass.
    The holiday season is a time for sharing the warmth of human contact 
with families and friends. And making this a joyous and safe time for 
children everywhere is important. That makes this legislation, the 
National Child Protection Act, especially significant. With it we can 
give a great gift, a much improved system for protecting our children

[[Page 2617]]

from being abused or harmed by those to whom we have entrusted them.
    Not unlike the Brady bill, this law creates a national data base 
network. This one can be used by any child care provider in America to 
conduct a background check to determine if a job applicant can be 
trusted with our children, and if not, to prevent that person from ever 
working with children.
    For the first time, we'll have a system in place to protect the many 
millions of American children who receive care and supervision in formal 
day care and in other settings from other organizations. This law will 
give us the tools we need to safeguard children from those who have 
perpetrated crimes of child abuse or sex abuse or drug use or those who 
have been convicted of felonies. It's very important that we give 
working parents peace of mind about child care.
    A majority of mothers with young children now work outside the home. 
Six million children are placed in formal day care settings every day. 
Balancing work and family is hard, and parents are worried about their 
personal security and the security of their children in an increasingly 
violent world.
    Like the Brady bill and the crime bill, which I hope and believe 
will pass soon, this act will help us to take our streets, our 
neighborhoods, the institutions we rely on, back for American values and 
American children. There is nothing more important that our Government 
could be doing now.
    Like all change, passing this important law has not been easy. And 
there are many to thank. First of all, I thank you, Oprah, for a 
lifetime of being committed to the well-being of our children and for 
giving child abuse issues such wonderful coverage on your show. You 
wrote the original blueprint for this law, and we're grateful, becoming 
a tireless advocate for its passage, lobbying Members of Congress of 
both parties for more than 2 years, and lobbying the President--people 
occasionally do that, too. All of us, but especially our children, owe 
you their gratitude.
    Now we can help to prevent child abuse with this measure, not just 
to catch people who do it. It's a great cause and a remarkable 
achievement, and I want to thank all the rest of you who were involved 
in it.
    Finally, let me say, especially for the benefit of the Members of 
Congress here, this is the last piece of legislation I will sign from 
this session of Congress. It wraps up a very productive session, a 
session that dealt with family leave and motor voter and a new economic 
plan that brought low interest rates and recovery, with the national 
service bill that I think will galvanize the imagination of a whole 
generation of young people, with new trade legislation, and with the 
Brady bill. But this is a good bill to end on, a bill that ends where 
all of us should begin, by putting our children first.
    Thank you very much. I'd like to invite you all to come up here for 
the signing.

Note: The President spoke at 11:54 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Marian Wright Edelman, 
president and executive director, Children's Defense Fund; Oprah Winfrey 
and Lynn Swann, television hosts; and Andrew Vachss, originator of the 
concept of the legislation. H.R. 1237, approved December 20, was 
assigned Public Law No. 103-209.