[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 16 (Monday, April 25, 1994)]
[Pages 853-854]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Signing the National Infant Immunization Week Proclamation

April 20, 1994

    Thank you very much. I want to thank all the people who have 
participated in this wonderful program today and all of you who worked 
to put it together. I want to say a special word of appreciation to 
Secretary Shalala, who is the owner of a current Mustang. [Laughter]
    You know, when we have events like this, sometimes I think that the 
people who are on the stage ought to be out in the audience, and the 
people who are in the audience should be up on the stage, because by and 
large, by the time we have an event like this, what we're doing is 
announcing something that the rest of you have been trying to get us to 
do for 5 or 10 years. [Laughter]
    So I want to begin by just saying to all of you who have labored so 
long in this field, the Members of Congress, the people in our 
administration, to the citizens groups--I'm sorry Mrs. Carter couldn't 
be with us today, but I'm glad Mrs. Bumpers, Mrs. Riegle are here--to 
the advocacy groups, our friend Marian Wright Edelman, the head of the 
Children's Defense Fund, and so many others who are here. You made this 
day possible, and we thank you all for it.
    The second thing I'd like to do is to thank people like Dr. Johnson, 
who are actually out there doing something about all these poor kids 
that a lot of other people just talk about.
    If you think about what the Vice President said and what others said 
about the comparative global statistics and immunization and the trends 
and you think about how many other areas there are like that when our 
country, even though we have a very powerful economy and, thank 
goodness, a growing one with growing jobs where we still have these 
continuing problems, we really, for reasons no one fully understands, 
continue to resist disciplined, community-based organizations where we 
all look after one another without regard to our race or our income. 
We're just not as good at it as we ought to be. And we talk about it a 
lot better than we do it. And I think we all have to admit it. But we 
are trying to do better. And this is a truly remarkable initiative. This 
gives us a chance to put all of our actions where our words are.
    Under our plan, every one of the things we could ever think of to do 
to get kids immunized will be done. And I appreciate what Dr. Johnson 
said about our health care plan because we also try in the health care 
plan to take care of the needs of our children and to do more primary 
and preventive work. And that goes along with the work that Senator 
Kennedy and others have spearheaded to try to expand the reach of Head 
Start to even younger children and to improve its quality.
    We have got to do a better job of dealing with the health, the 
nutrition, the educational, and the emotional needs of our very

[[Page 854]]

youngest children if we expect to have the kind of future that America 
deserves.
    Again, let me say to all of you, I am profoundly grateful for the 
work that has been done. I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of my 
pet projects, the national service program, AmeriCorps. Last year, 87 of 
our national service participants, in our very first summer of service, 
helped to immunize over 100,000 children in Texas. And it was a pretty 
good investment. So we will keep doing that. We'll keep working at it. 
Dr. Satcher, Dr. Elders, and others will keep spreading the word. But we 
know in the end, our ability to succeed depends upon the ability of 
grassroots-based community organizations to reach everybody in a 
disciplined way.
    When I saw Secretary Riley sitting out here, I leaned over to 
Hillary and I said, ``You know, you'd think that as long as we've been 
married, we've been asked and answered all the questions.'' I said, 
``Did you ever get any shots in school?'' [Laughter] And she said, 
``Yes, I did.'' And I got my shots in school. That's where I got them. 
And then I got to thinking, listening to everybody talk, that our 
generation, all of us baby boomers, who are often known for other 
things, have a great debt to the immunization movement. We were the 
first generation of children in the very first year to be immunized 
against polio. My daughter cannot imagine what it's like to go to school 
as a first grader and be terrified that you're going to get polio and 
spend the rest of your life in an iron lung. But all of us grew up with 
that. Surely, those of us who have tangible, personal experience from 
the benefits of immunization can at long last solve this problem.
    When I was a young man, I read a book by a southern author named 
James Agee about the Great Depression called, ``Let Us Now Praise Famous 
Men.'' Some of you may have seen it. It also has some of the most 
astonishing photographs ever taken by an American photographer, a man 
named Walker Evans. In this book, James Agee said something that I have 
carried with me for a long time now, and I'd like to close with these 
remarks and then get on with the business at hand. He said, in every 
child who is born, no matter what circumstances and no matter what 
parents, the potentiality of the whole human race is born again, and in 
him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility 
toward human life, toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of 
error, and of God. That is what we are here about today. And we are 
bound to do a better job.
    I now want to sign a proclamation designating National Infant 
Immunization Week. And once we've done that, we're going to see an 
example of what it is we are all talking about. We are going to see the 
first infant of the week being immunized, right up here by Dr. Mohammed 
Akhter, the public health commissioner of the District of Columbia. The 
parents are Laura Loeb and Howard Morse, and their wonderful little 
daughter, Elizabeth. And for all of you here who are squeamish, relax; 
she is not going to be immunized with a shot. For all of us who had only 
shots in immunization, we sort of resent it, but--[laughter]--modern 
medical practice has permitted the public alleviation of pain. So let me 
sign the proclamation, and then we'll have the immunization.

Note: The President spoke at 11:27 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Betty Bumpers, cofounder, and Lori 
Riegle, spokeswoman, Every Child By Two; Dr. Robert Johnson, director of 
adolescent and young adult medicine, New Jersey Medical School; Dr. 
David Satcher, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 
tape was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.