    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 25 (Monday, June 27, 1994)]
    [Pages 1344-1347]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks to Summer of Safety Program Participants in St. Louis

    June 24, 1994

        Thank you very much. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. It's
    an honor for me to be back in St. Louis and to be with all these fine
    people who have already spoken. Your mayor was on a roll today, wasn't
    he? [Applause] You gave a great speech. Thank you, Mayor. I want to
    thank the Lieutenant Governor, the other State officials who are here,
    the legislators, the aldermen. I'd like to say a special word of thanks
    to your Congressman, Bill Clay, for his outstanding leadership in the
    Congress and on this issue of national service. And I want to say a
    special word of thanks to Dick Gephardt, the majority leader of the
    House. Without him, we would not have been able to turn this economy
    around, to break the gridlock in Washington, to get this country moving
    again. His leadership has been extraordinary. I want to thank Chief
    Harmon for the enlightened leadership he's providing to this city and to
    this police department and to all the officers, the men and women who
    work with him to try to make this a safer city. And I want to say a
    special word of thanks to Tim Hager. Didn't he do a good job introducing
    me? [Applause] You know, Martin Luther King once said that everyone can
    be great because everyone can serve. This young man had a dream to be a
    United States marine. He fulfilled it. He proved he could make it
    through basic training. And then he had to leave. But he came home and
    joined this program. And I think he captured the essence of his service
    when he said it.
        Let me tell you something, folks, all of us breathed a sigh of
    relief and had a genuine hope when I was able to announce that the North
    Koreans had agreed to suspend their nuclear program and talk to us about
    taking a different course into the future. And that

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    was a wonderful thing. But when thousands of people are murdered on our
    streets every year, when thousands of our children are robbed of their
    future, a big part of our national security is what happens right here
    in St. Louis and on the streets of every community of this country. And
    Tim is helping to protect this Nation's security by participating in
    this program.
        I'm glad to be here in Fox Park. Congressman Clay said he used to
    play softball here, and he claims he was really good. Does anybody
    remember? [Laughter]
        I want you to also know that I hope this day will live in the
    history of this community as the beginning of a real awareness by
    everyone in the community that perhaps the most important thing we can
    do as Americans is to join together at the grassroots and take action to
    get control of our lives, our communities, and our destinies again. As
    Eli Segal said, there will be over 7,000 young Americans working in this
    Summer of Safety program here and at 70 other sites all around our
    country, reminding us that we can do more than complain about what's
    wrong; we can actually get together and take action to do something
    right, to make our people safer and our future more secure.
        In a funny way, the national service program, which is the least
    bureaucratic, least nationally directed program I have been associated
    with, may have the most lasting legacy of anything I am able to do as
    your President, because it has the chance to embody all the things I ran
    for President to do, to get our country moving again, to make Government
    work for ordinary people again, and to empower individuals and
    communities to take control of their own destiny.
        We are, after all, a nation of citizens. Our political system, just
    for example, limits the President to two terms. Our destiny is not
    dependent upon the actions or the success of any one individual. But it
    is dependent upon the shared values, the shared commitment, the shared
    determination, and the shared willingness of a majority of the people of
    this country and a majority of the people in every community in this
    country to seize our own destiny.
        These young people in the national service program--there are 7,000
    this summer; there will be 20,000 in the fall; year after next there
    will be 100,000 of them. And those who work all year long will be
    working to solve the problems of America at the grassroots and earning a
    little credit for themselves toward education, in a job-training program
    or in a college. We're going to help them become better and more
    successful Americans because they're going to help us to be better
    Americans as well where we live.
        You know, at the very height of the Peace Corps, which did so much
    to capture the imagination of my generation 30 years ago, the most who
    ever served were 16,000 in one year. We'll have 20,000 this fall,
    100,000 year after next, and I hope I live to see a permanent program
    with at least a quarter of a million young Americans every year, working
    to move this country in the right direction.
        This all sounds pretty high-flown, but let me tell you, it's really
    personal. And we started with the Summer of Safety because there is
    nothing more important than order and peace in a free society. It's a
    really personal thing. I'll bet you if I ask you to raise your hand,
    every one of you just about knows someone in your family who's been
    victimized by some kind of crime in the last 10 or 15 years, maybe in
    the last 10 or 15 months.
        Some of you may remember Samuel Smith, who used to live in this
    neighborhood. Last Thursday he was found dead, killed in an attack that
    may have been drug-related. He was 12 years old, the 23d child killed in
    St. Louis so far this year. You probably know about Joseph Gray, who
    stopped to use the phone outside the market at Shenandoah and California
    in Fox Park 2 months ago. He was robbed and gunned down with an AK-47.
        We all know that this problem is out of hand. We know that this is
    the greatest country in the world with the strongest economy in the
    world. But we already have more people in jail as a percentage of our
    population than any country in the world, because we, you and I, have
    permitted the crime problem to get out of hand. And only we can turn it
    around. And we must do it.
        The Congress has been working--when I came here 2 years ago on my
    bus trip, after listening to the American people talk about their
    problems and their hopes, I said we

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    ought to pass the Brady bill and require background checks before we
    sold guns to people with criminal records. Well, after 7 years of
    gridlock, the Brady bill is now the Brady law.
        I also said that we ought to cut the Federal bureaucracy and make it
    smaller and use the savings to put more police officers on our streets,
    to ban assault weapons, to have tougher punishment for repeat offenders,
    but to provide boot camps and drug education and midnight basketball and
    summer jobs and things for young people to say yes to, so that we could
    save them, as many as we could possibly save, from a life of crime and
    violence and disappointment. And now those ideas and commitments are in
    a crime bill Congress is debating. They've been working on it since I
    became President.
        But the time is now to act. People don't have to live in fear. Young
    people shouldn't have to feel pulled into a life of crime. Gangs
    shouldn't be better armed than police. Don't let anybody fool you, the
    crime bill that's about to pass the Congress is the most important
    effort ever made by the United States Government to help people in their
    communities fight crime. It means more police on the streets and taking
    guns and kids off the streets. It means more jail cells for people
    behind bars and more jobs for kids to avoid getting behind bars. It will
    ban assault weapons like the AK-47 that killed Joseph Gray. It will give
    serious repeat offenders what they have earned: three strikes and no
    eligibility for parole, you're out. It will address the terrible,
    terrible problem of youth violence. It will be illegal for teenagers to
    possess handguns. It will be possible for every community in this
    country to set up drug courts to turn around cases of drug offenders by
    giving them a chance to do something besides go to jail if they'll take
    treatment and work in a community. It will provide more help for safe
    schools, more security, more law enforcement. It will help to reinforce
    the efforts we're making in public housing projects all around this
    country to end the cycle preying on our children. This bill will give
    our young people something to say yes to: midnight basketball, after-
    school programs, summer job programs, and it will mean more police
    officers on the street.
        You know, the violent crime rate is 7 times higher now in 1994 than
    it was 30 years ago. But 30 years ago, we had 500,000 police officers,
    and today we only have 550,000. Our bill will put another 100,000 on the
    street to walk the streets, to ride the bikes, to know the neighbors, to
    make contact with the children, to prevent crime as well as to catch
    criminals.
        This bill is paid for not by a tax increase but by a disciplined
    determination to reduce the size of the Federal work force by 250,000
    over a 5-year period. At the end of this 5-year period, we'll have the
    smallest Federal Government we've had since John Kennedy was the
    President of the United States. We'll have 3 years of deficit reduction
    for the first time since Harry Truman of Missouri was President of the
    United States. We will cut and totally eliminate over 100 Government
    programs, cut hundreds of others. But we'll spend more on education, on
    training, on new technology, and new jobs for the 21st century. And yes,
    we will spend much, much more for the fight against crime and the fight
    for our children's future.
        This crime bill has been stalled in Congress for 5 years. But the
    House has passed a crime bill; the Senate has passed a crime bill. There
    are some differences between them, and they're trying to work it out.
    What I want to say to you, my friends, is if you believe in the Summer
    of Safety, if you believe in the actions that Chief Harmon and Mayor
    Bosley are taking here, tell the Congress that you support the efforts
    we are all making to pass this bill.
        We don't need to wait anymore; 5 years is too long. Too many
    children are dead; too many futures are gone; too many neighborhoods
    have been divided. Now we know what to do. Let's get out here and help
    the volunteers by having the National Government do its part to be
    partners in the fight against crime.
        Let me just make one final point. In order to be in the Summer of
    Service, in order to wear these T-shirts, in order to put a police
    uniform on every day, you have to believe that you can make a
    difference. In order to work with these children in these T-shirts here,
    you have to believe that you can make a difference. One of the biggest
    problems

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    that we've got in this country today is that we are constantly being
    told that we can't make a difference, that everybody that's trying is a
    sucker, that everybody in power is trying to take advantage of you, that
    nothing good can ever happen. It emanates over and over and over again
    from every news outlet we have.
        If you talk about hope, you're derided as being naive. If you're
    really good at badmouthing people, you can get a radio talk show.
    [Laughter] Now, I want to tell you something: It may be fun to listen
    to, but it's tough to live by. It's tough to live by. Tim is going to
    make more difference than all of the bad things that'll ever be said on
    the radio talk shows in his life.
        These people in these uniforms deserve to have somebody believe in
    them and stick up for them and stand by them. And these children deserve
    to have adults who believe in their future and are prepared to fight for
    it. I'm telling you, we can do this.
        The biggest honor I have had, I think, as your President, is the
    honor of going to represent the entire American people at the 50th
    anniversary of D-Day and the end of World War II by the most important
    military action in the 20th century. When I looked at the graves, the
    thousands of graves of all those people who died for our security when
    they were so young to save the world and save freedom, I thought to
    myself, there wasn't a single cynic among them. You couldn't be cynical
    and make that kind of sacrifice. And all those who lived, who came home,
    who were fortunate enough to survive, they weren't cynical that day,
    either, that they put their lives on the line for our freedom. If you
    look around these streets and you think about the kids that have died,
    the people that have been on drugs, the old folks that have been
    terrorized, that is not what those people died for. We did not get to be
    the oldest and most successful democracy in human history by being
    cynics and by badmouthing. We got here by being believers and by doing.
    That is what we celebrate today.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:33 p.m. in Fox Park. In his remarks, he
    referred to St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley; Missouri Lt. Gov. Roger
    Wilson; St. Louis Police Chief Clarence Harmon; and Summer of Safety
    worker Tim Hager. A tape was not available for verification of the
    content of these remarks.