    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 25 (Monday, June 27, 1994)]
    [Pages 1303-1305]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    The President's Radio Address

    June 18, 1994

        Good morning. For a year and a half now, I and my administration
    have worked very hard to do the right thing by ordinary Americans, to
    restore the values of community, opportunity, and responsibility that
    have always strengthened our country. Thanks to you, we're getting the
    job done on many fronts.
        We've reduced the deficit dramatically. We're going to have 3 years
    of deficit reduction for the first time since Harry Truman was
    President. We've expanded trade and increased investment in our people's
    education and training and in new technologies. All of this has produced
    steady growth in our economy. There are now 3.4 million new jobs in the
    economy in the last 16, 17 months, more than in the previous 4 years
    combined.
        Meanwhile, we've worked hard to give more of our children a better
    education, more of our workers a chance to meet the changing demands of
    the job market. This week we offered a plan to end welfare as we know
    it, a plan that will encourage personal responsibility and help
    strengthen our families through tougher child support, more education
    and training, and an absolute requirement to go to work after a period
    of time.
        We've broken 7 years of gridlock to pass the family and medical
    leave law to give working families the security of knowing they won't
    lose their jobs if they have to take time off from work for a child's
    birth or a sick parent; 7 years of gridlock to pass the Brady bill to
    help keep more of our citizens and

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    police officers alive by keeping guns out of the hands of people with
    dangerous criminal or mental health records. And then our efforts to
    reform health care, to provide health care to all Americans: For the
    first time ever, a committee of Congress has recommended private health
    insurance for every American family. We're trying to break 60 years of
    gridlock and stranglehold by special interest on health care.
        Now, each of these accomplishments is important in its own right.
    But all of them take on an even greater meaning when we see them as part
    of our larger mission. That mission is to make it possible for all
    Americans, without regard to their race, their gender, their income, the
    region of the country from which they come, to be able to make better
    lives for themselves, to face the future with all of its changes with
    the enthusiasm and confidence that they should have. Our goal is not to
    hand anyone anything but to improve the economy, offer opportunities,
    strengthen families and communities so that people can assume the
    responsibility to make a better life for themselves.
        No issue poses the need to come together more to deal with the
    problems that we face than does the cancer of crime and violence that is
    eating away at the bonds that unite us as a people. I saw it again this
    week when I visited a housing project in Chicago called Robert Taylor
    Homes.
        I went there once 3 years ago, so I'm pretty familiar with all the
    wonderful people who live there, the good things they're trying to do,
    and the terrible problems they face from violence and guns and drugs. I
    went there because it's a good place to emphasize to all Americans that
    we have begun a nationwide effort to drive the guns, the gangs, and the
    drugs from public housing and from all neighborhoods where Americans
    feel terrorized. I wanted to underscore how important it is to empower
    our people to take back their homes, their streets, and their schools
    wherever they live. Unless we do something about crime, we can't be
    really free in this country, we can't exercise the opportunities that
    are there for us, and our children can't inherit the American dream.
        Now, our administration and the Congress must do our job on crime so
    that the American people can do their job in the communities where they
    live. We have waited 5 long years, through partisan and political
    gridlock, for a crime bill that will address the growing crisis. That's
    long enough. The crime bill, which has now passed both Houses of
    Congress, but which must be reconciled into one bill and passed one more
    time, does provide us with the tools we need to help prevent and punish
    crime.
        Congress is on the verge of adopting this crime bill. It contains
    almost all the elements of the anticrime plan I've been promoting ever
    since I started running for President. Now it's time to pass the bill,
    to stop talking, to stop posturing, and pass the bill.
        The crime bill will put 100,000 more police officers on the street.
    They'll be visible. They'll know the children and the neighbors. They'll
    give our communities the power to keep themselves safer. Properly
    trained and properly deployed, 100,000 more police officers on our
    street will lower the crime rate and increase security.
        The bill will enforce our sense of safety in many other ways. We did
    what many said couldn't be done, including in this bill a ban on assault
    weapons. I saw hundreds, I mean hundreds, of those assault weapons in
    one little police cubicle in the office in Robert Taylor Homes just on
    Friday. We have got to take these weapons of killing away from people
    who are putting the police at a disadvantage and terrorizing our
    children and our neighborhoods.
        This bill will provide for capital punishment for anyone who kills a
    law enforcement officer. It will give serious repeat offenders what they
    have earned, a life sentence, by making ``Three strikes and you're out''
    the law of the land. It will make it illegal for teenagers to possess
    handguns unless they're under the supervision of a responsible adult. It
    will make our schools safer by giving the most dangerous school
    neighborhoods in the country more resources to provide for safe schools.
        But providing more police and tougher punishment isn't enough. We
    have to deter crime where it starts. This proposal also gives people
    something to say yes to. It provides jobs for thousands of young people
    from high-crime neighborhoods, particularly those

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    who stay in school, off drugs, and out of trouble. It gives funds to
    keep schools open after hours. It adds support for boys and girls clubs,
    for community activities like midnight basketball. It builds better
    partnerships between our police and our young people.
        An investment in a child is not only a contribution to America's
    future, it's a real stroke in the war against crime. Those on the
    frontlines of crime, our police officers, have witnessed firsthand the
    explosion in youth crime and violence, and they know this is true. A
    coalition representing more than half a million law enforcement officers
    nationwide has just written to me and said, ``We support the inclusion
    in the crime bill of substantial funds for prevention programs. They can
    help make a difference.''
        Here at the Robert Taylor Homes on Friday I saw young people wearing
    T-shirts for peer groups, for adopt-a-grandparent's program, for
    antidrug programs, for midnight basketball programs. I met adults
    working in tenant patrols. All these prevention programs are unleashing
    the grassroots energy of responsible residents who understand that they,
    too, have a duty to try to do something about crime. They're young,
    they're old, they're middle-aged; they want to take their streets, their
    neighborhoods, their communities back. And we owe it to them to support
    them. We can only do it if we keep the prevention component of the crime
    bill.
        Now is the most crucial time to make sure your Congressmen know you
    want action on the crime bill. There has been enough talk. We have
    broken years of gridlock to get the bill through both Houses of
    Congress. But unless it comes to my desk and I sign it, all this effort
    will have been for nothing. We can give the families of this country the
    chance to control their own neighborhoods, to raise their children in
    safety and security. That's what real freedom requires. We can't give up
    until we've got it.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 11:07 p.m. on June 17 at the Robert
    Taylor Homes community center in Chicago, IL, for broadcast at 10:06
    a.m. on June 18.