[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 3 (Monday, January 23, 1995)]
[Pages 69-72]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks at California State University at Northridge, California
January 17, 1995
Thank you. What a great day. Thank you very much. Thank you so much,
Mayor Riordan. Thank you for your outstanding leadership, for being such
a good working partner, for putting the interest of all the people of
this community first. Thank you, Dr. Wilson, for your leadership and for
hosting this wonderful event on this beautiful campus with its beautiful
buildings, all standing, thank goodness. I'm glad to see you all here. I
thank Congressman Berman and Congressman McKeon, Lieutenant Governor
Davis, Supervisor Yaroslavsky, and of course, the people who are here
with me today. I'd like to introduce them all: the Secretary of
Transportation, Federico Pena; the Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development, Henry Cisneros; and the Director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, James Lee Witt. They have done a great job for you.
Ladies and gentlemen, even as we recall the devastation here today,
we know that nature has struck again here at home in California with the
floods and with the extraordinary fury in the earthquake in Japan. I
know all of you join with me in extending our profound condolences to
the families of those in the Osaka-Kobe area of Japan who have suffered
such a tremendous loss in the last day.
We have spoken with the Japanese Government and, with their
agreement, based on our experiences here, I have ordered a high-level
team that includes representatives of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency and the Department of Transportation to leave for Japan shortly
to see if anything we learned here can be helpful to them there.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John
Shalikashvili, is in Japan now and he has already stated that our
military forces there are also available to help them in any appropriate
way. You know what they're going through.
So I'd like to ask before I begin my remarks, if we could just have
a moment of silence for the victims of the flood here in California and
the victims of the earthquake in Japan.
[At this point, the audience observed a moment of silence.]
Thank you.
I am so glad to be here at Cal State Northridge. You are now the
symbol of the ability of the people of this State to keep coming back
after adversity upon adversity, as well as the symbol of California and
America's future, because of the educational opportunities open to all
kinds of people from all walks of life and all different backgrounds
here at this fine institution.
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The most damaging earthquake ever recorded on our continent
destroyed a great deal here when it hit a year ago. But as the mayor
said, even though it shook you, it didn't break you. It didn't break
your faith in the future. How else can you explain the fact that here
there is a baseball team known as the Earthquake Kids? I want to ask
them to be recognized here in a minute, but I do want to note, as the
spring slowly approaches, that they did something the pros couldn't:
They kept baseball going. And they won the national championship in the
Little League World Series. Let's give them a hand. Would the team stand
please? [Applause]
You know, you might think that Californians have had too many
opportunities to show heart. [Laughter] The wonderful sainted Mother
Teresa once said that she knew God wouldn't give her any more than she
could bear; she just wished God didn't have such confidence in her
sometimes. [Laughter] That's the way I feel about you from time to time.
I told the mayor last night that I hope that there would be no simmering
volcano uncovered around here--[laughter]--anytime in the future. Fires,
earthquakes, and devastating floods are quite enough.
But in these disasters where lives are lost and others are shattered
I know it's not easy to keep going and to keep your heart. A year ago I
said that we would not leave you to pick up the pieces alone, that we
would stay on until the job was done. We have kept that pledge today,
and today I renew that pledge into the future.
Since the flooding began a few days ago, I have been working closely
with Governor Wilson and Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein and your
other officials to help fight the flooding. The disaster I declared
across California and the work of FEMA and other agencies are already
helping to move on the road to recovery.
This afternoon, I'll have a chance to go to northern California to
view some of the damaged areas there. But I say again to the victims of
this disaster: You are not alone. We will work with you to help you
reclaim your lives, as the earthquake victims have been reclaiming
theirs.
Who would have thought a year ago that the highways and bridges
could be rebuilt and reinforced in just a fraction of the time the
experts have predicted and the time the law allowed until we changed the
way things worked. The Santa Monica Freeway was reopened on April 11th,
the Golden State Freeway on May 17th, the Simi Valley Freeway partly
opened in February and fully opened in September. I could go on and on.
Who would have thought this campus would reconvene classes in 1 month?
The main section of the library behind me was reopened in 64 days, a job
that would normally have taken a year, a great tribute to your president
and to all of the leaders of this fine institution.
I just verified with James Lee Witt what strikes me as an astounding
statistic: There were 5,600 school buildings damaged a year ago, and
today all but 40 are open, doing business, educating our children, and
giving them something to look forward to.
This happened because we put aside politics and worked on being
partners, partners as citizens, as businesses, as government, partners
in the person of people like Ramona Sanches Vega, a volunteer who sought
out families living in their cars because their homes were too damaged.
She helped them to get housing. People like your own college president,
who did make the impossible, possible on this campus. People like so
many of you in this audience who did countless things for your friends
and for total strangers that will never be recorded anywhere except in
the minds and hearts of those whom you touched.
For Government's part, 27 Federal departments and agencies worked
with State and local officials in unprecedented ways to produce, as
Mayor Riordan said, the most efficient and effective disaster operation
in American history. So far, over $11.5 billion in aid has come to
California to help to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake. But in
addition to that, the whole system was literally reinvented, with new
technologies, ways found to cut business-as-usual and the bureaucracy
that too often goes with Government assistance. Decisions were based on
need, not paperwork and rules. More than 270,000 homeowners received
Federal grants to help repair their homes. More than
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half a million people were given grants or low-interest loans for
disaster housing.
I know there are those today who say that Government is inherently
bad, always gets in the way, and never amounts to anything. Well, I say,
look at the difference it made in dealing with the disaster. It can work
if we put people first and think about how to make it work.
But this institution is another example of how Government can work.
We can't wait for disaster to strike to deal with our long-term
challenges. Every day millions upon millions of Americans fight other
kinds of struggles, to get and keep new jobs, to provide health care for
their families, to deal with the struggles of modern life, and to
strengthen the ties of community when there are so many pressures that
divide us one from another. And anytime an American loses one of those
fights, it's a disaster for our future as well.
Everyone knows that we live in an era of enormous change, a time of
great uprooting of things both good and bad. As we change from what has
popularly been called the industrial age to the information age, from
the cold war of global division to a globe united in economic
cooperation and one which must unite to deal with the common threats to
all of us in terrorism and ecological destruction--in this era of
change, our biggest challenge is to simply keep alive the American dream
for all of our people, to make sure that we go into the next century
just 5 years away still the strongest country in the world, the most
profound force for peace and freedom, and still with the American dream
alive for all people, regardless of their race, their region, their
religion, their background, the capacities they came into this world
with.
My simple belief is that in this time, we know that the Government
cannot really solve problems for people, but I think we know that the
Government cannot walk away, either. The role of Government in this age
is to be a partner, to help give people the tools they need to solve
their own problems, to fulfill their own dreams, to make their own
future. And I am determined to see that the rest of your Government
works as well as the disaster team did in the California earthquake.
That is a good standard for all of us to meet.
I believe, my fellow Americans, that we need to do three things: We
need a new economic strategy that I have fought for, for 2 years,
appropriate to the new world we're all going to live and compete in. We
need a new form of Government that is smaller, less bureaucratic, more
creative, more oriented toward flexibility in solving people's problems,
but one that is an effective partner, not a disabled or a mean
participant on the sidelines, just telling people what to do instead of
helping people to do it.
And third and most important, I think we need what I call, and have
for 3 years now, called my contract with America a new covenant, one
that says here are certain opportunities and here are your
responsibilities. How are we going to rebuild the American community to
look like this crowd does unless we all have opportunity and we all
assume responsibility? If all you do is assert rights and there are no
responsibilities, pretty soon nothing good happens. If all people do is
go around being responsible and they're never rewarded for it, pretty
soon they get tired of it. We need both, more opportunity and more
responsibility in this country. And that's how we're going to rebuild
America and keep the American dream alive.
We have made a good beginning. We have 5.6 million more jobs. We
have a lower Federal deficit. We've taken $11,000 in debt off of every
family in America, and that means a brighter future. We have the
smallest Federal Government we've had in over 30 years, but we're doing
things more effectively. We're also offering opportunities to people
that demand that they assume more responsibility, from expanding Head
Start to making college loans more affordable for more people.
But we all know that there is a lot more to be done. More than half
the adult work force in America is working harder today for lower wages
than they were making 10 years ago. Another 1 million Americans in
working families lost their health insurance last year. Millions of
American workers wonder if their retirement is secure, and we're working
hard on that.
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We see a lot of upheaval. There are still a lot of people who don't
feel safe on their streets, in their neighborhoods, in their schools.
Even though the crime rate is coming down where people have done what
has been done here in Los Angeles--to put more police on the street and
to work on projects like the Community Build project that we supported
that the mayor and I visited yesterday, where ex-gang members are
teaching other kids to lead the gangs to turn away from violence, to go
to education and work and away from things that are destructive. We have
a long way to go.
That's why I so strongly hope that we can, together, without regard
to party, make a commitment that, in this year, we will go back when the
Congress is in full session and working and adopt what I call the middle
class bill of rights. Let's just don't have indiscriminate tax cuts,
let's control the deficit and focus tax relief on the people who need it
most, on strengthening families and making education more available to
all American people. That will get us into the next century.
I think we should lower taxes in families with young children. I
think we should make all Americans able to save money in an IRA and then
withdraw it, tax-free, to pay for their own education or health care, or
to help them care for their parents. I think we should give people who
need more training because they're unemployed the right not just to sign
up for a Government program but to get a check which says, this check
can be spent at the educational institution of your choice to raise your
income. That's what I think we should do.
But more important than anything else, in the next century in the
information age, having an education will have more to do with income
and options and choices than ever before. And so I believe that we
should finally--and we should have done it long ago--we ought to make
all educational expenses after high school tax deductible. That's
important.
We made interest paid on home mortgages tax deductible decades ago.
Why? Because owning a home was important to the idea of the American
dream. In the 21st century we may not get to homeownership if we don't
have an education. Let's make that tax deductible. That's important to
our future.
And I might say, that is the essence of what we ought to be about,
because you cannot take advantage of that opportunity without being
responsible. People can offer you an education, but you have to get it.
That is what we ought to be doing, giving opportunity in return for
responsibility.
The new covenant comes down to this: We deserve opportunity, but we
have to earn success. And that is what the people of California have
shown over and over and over again.
Let me close with this. The great writer, Wallace Stegner, called
this part of America, ``hope's native home.'' It was built by people he
called, and I quote, ``The stickers, not just those who pillage and run
but those who settle and love the life they have made and the place they
have made it in.''
Today, we salute all of you, the stickers, the settlers, the
rebuilders of this great State. Let us take what you have done here and
use it as a model for our entire beloved country into the 21st century.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Note: The President spoke at 10 a.m. at the Northridge Oviatt Library.
In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles, CA;
Blenda Wilson, president, California State University at Northridge; Lt.
Gov. Gray Davis and Gov. Pete Wilson of California; and Zev Yarslavsky,
a Los Angeles County supervisor. A tape was not available for
verification of the content of these remarks.