[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 13 (Monday, April 3, 1995)]
[Pages 498-507]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Florida State Legislature in Tallahassee

March 30, 1995

    Thank you very much. [Applause] I may stay all day, but not here 
behind the podium. [Laughter]
    Mr. Speaker, thank you. And, Mr. President, thank you. Mr. Speaker 
Pro Tem, Governor Chiles, Lieutenant Governor McKay, distinguished State 
officials and members of the Cabinet, members of the Supreme Court, 
members of the Florida Legislature, ladies and gentlemen: I am very 
pleased to be here. I've had a wonderful, brief stay in Tallahassee 
already--ran around Lake Ella this morning and the local park and met a 
lot of your fellow citizens and enjoyed that very much.
    I have enjoyed nothing so much in a long time as listening to 
Elizbet Martinez play the

[[Page 499]]

National Anthem. I was watching on the Speaker's closed-circuit 
television. It was very moving. I was moved by the letters I received 
from friends and supporters of hers when she was playing the National 
Anthem in Guantanamo, and I just told her that, under the program which 
the Attorney General has supervised so ably, all the children from 
Guantanamo should be resettled in the very near future. And we thank 
you, young lady, for what you have done.
    Elizbet gave me a beautiful little angel, and I told her I was going 
to put it on my table in the Oval Office and I wanted her to come see 
it. I think she ought to play that in the White House. And I hope she 
will.
    I'm delighted to be here, along with Attorney General Reno and EPA 
Administrator Carol Browner, here in the Florida Legislature on the 
150th anniversary of your statehood. This is the first State legislature 
I've had the privilege of addressing since I have actually been in 
office. And as a former Governor and as a Governor who had the privilege 
of being Governor during the 150th anniversary of our State's statehood, 
I am especially happy to be here today.
    When I ran for President, I was determined to make a new partnership 
with the States and to be a good partner. We have worked hard on those 
things with Florida. And goodness knows we've had lots of opportunities, 
some of them positive and some of them just the problems that life 
brings. We've worked hard to turn FEMA around and to help you with the 
last of the hurricane relief, which occurred, of course, before I was 
elected, but a lot of the work remained to be done when I took office. 
And we worked hard in the aftermath of the recent flooding. And I was 
pleased when I arrived at the Tallahassee Airport last night: Three 
different people told me they thought FEMA had done a good job handling 
the floods, which made me feel very good about that.
    Attorney General Reno and the INS have worked hard to improve 
immigration laws, and the Customs Service has worked hard at the Port of 
Miami to clear the ships faster and step up our antidrug efforts at the 
same time. We've gone for more public-private partnerships, like the 
National Magnetic Lab here in Florida, and Carol Browner has worked very 
hard with many of you here in this room and people throughout the State 
on a responsible plan to save the Everglades.
    The Summit of the Americas was hosted in Florida, and it was a 
triumph, and we are still feeling the vibrations of it throughout the 
hemisphere. And I thank all of you who had something to do with that.
    Many of you worked hard with us to help to save the space station 
project. And I think now we have firmly anchored it as a part of 
America's future. And it's very important, and I can tell you that--I 
see Bill Nelson nodding his head--he's ready to go. [Laughter] I cannot 
tell you what an important part of our foreign policy it has become. 
It's given us a way of cooperating with the Russians in ways that cut 
through political differences and other problems and involve all of our 
other partners in the space station.
    And of course, yesterday I had the privilege of announcing that the 
Department of Defense had selected Florida as the new headquarters for 
our Southern Command when it moves out of Panama to the State of 
Florida. [Applause] Thank you. [Applause] Thank you.
    One thing I tried hard on that I wasn't so successful on to be a 
good partner with you was to get baseball started up again in time for a 
full spring training. But I can say that, as you know, there's a case in 
the courts now, and if the judge does uphold the injunction and the 
players do manifest their willingness to return to work as they have 
said they will, then I certainly hope there will not be a lockout. I 
hope we can have baseball this year, and I think all of you hope that as 
well.
    Let me say to you that the experience that I had as a Governor in 
the seventies, the eighties, and the nineties--I served for 12 years in 
all three decades--directly affected the decision I made to seek the 
Presidency and to do the things I have tried to do. I ran for President 
largely because I thought our country at the dawn of this new century 
was facing a whole set of challenges which did not fall easily into the 
political patterns into which Washington seemed to be frozen, the 
constant partisan battles, the constant attempt to divide every issue 
between whether it was liberal or conservative or left or right

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instead of determining whether it would move our country forward.
    Most of the Southern States, and Florida most especially, did pretty 
well in the 1980's by following a different sort of southern strategy: 
focusing on educating all of our children and more and more of our 
adults, focusing on getting more jobs and economic opportunity into our 
States, focusing on getting people together across racial and other 
lines, and focusing on real partnerships between the public and private 
sector. That's what works in real life. It seemed to be a very small 
part of the political life of our Nation's Capital. And I ran because I 
wanted to change that. I wanted to try to break out of all the false 
choices that cloud the rhetoric we hear for years and years and years 
out of Washington, to try to move this country forward.
    I really believe the great question facing our country on the eve of 
a new century, which will be characterized by breathtaking change 
brought on by the information revolution, the globalization of the 
economy in all of its manifestations, the end of cold war and, 
therefore, the end of the need for people to sort of hunker down behind 
their barriers into two world camps, the great question is whether we 
can seize the opportunities this new time presents us without being 
undone by the problems that we confront; whether we can literally 
preserve the American idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, 
you can live up to your God-given abilities; that you can provide for 
your children and know they'll have a limitless future; that you can 
rely on your country being the strongest force in the world for peace 
and freedom and democracy in ways that help you at home. That is the 
great question.
    And the answer to the question, indeed, the many answers to the 
question, in my judgment, do not fall easily within the sharp 
ideological partisan battles that have dominated our Nation's Capital 
for too long. Governors and legislators tend to be more practical 
people. Not that we don't have passion, not that we don't have 
principles, not that we don't have convictions but we know what works in 
the end is people working together, not finding ways to drive us apart.
    And so I ask you today to spend a few minutes with me thinking about 
where we are, what we're going to do, what you expect your National 
Government to do, and how you expect it to relate to you as a citizen, 
as well as a member of the State government of Florida.
    I believe that the role of the National Government in 1995 should be 
not to be a savior, not to be a Government-knows-best, a one-size-fits-
all Government. Nobody believes that anymore. But I also don't believe 
in the new rage that Government is the source of all of our problems, 
and if we didn't have it, we wouldn't have any problems. That is 
contradicted by the experience of every country in the world today and 
every country the world has known since the beginning of the industrial 
revolution.
    I believe the role of Government is to do the following things: 
Number one, to create opportunity with a minimum of bureaucracy; number 
two, to empower people to make the most of their own lives, not to solve 
their problems for them but to give them the tools to take care of 
themselves; number three, to enhance our security not just abroad but at 
home on our streets and in our schools, in our families, as well; and 
number four, to wage a relentless assault to change the Government that 
was appropriate for the industrial age but is too bureaucratic, too big, 
and too cumbersome for the information age and the 21st century.
    Now we've worked hard on that for 2 years. We had an economic 
strategy to create opportunity, reduce the deficit, and we did, by $600 
billion. Indeed, the Government budget today, for the first time in 30 
years, is actually in surplus in its operating costs, that is, except 
for interest on the debt, we have a surplus today, except for interest 
on the debt.
    Now, of course, the bad news is that 28 percent of personal income 
tax receipts are required to pay the interest on the debt accumulated 
between 1981 and 1993. So that doesn't mean we can stop working on it. 
We have to do more, but we have done a very great deal, indeed.
    We have expanded trade in ways that have clearly benefited Florida: 
NAFTA, GATT, the Summit of the Americas, reaching out

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to the Asian-Pacific region. We have increased our investment in 
infrastructure and technology. And we have done right well. We have 
sought to empower people from everything from expanding Head Start to 
providing more help to States to help them with people who don't go to 
college but do need some training after high school and apprenticeship 
programs, to providing more affordable college loans to millions and 
millions of students in every State in this country.
    We have sought to enhance our security by doing a better job of 
protecting our borders, by fighting against the proliferation of weapons 
of mass destruction, by reaching agreements with the Russians and other 
states of the former Soviet Union to dismantle nuclear weapons. And for 
the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, there are no nuclear 
missiles pointed at the children of the United States today. That is a 
good thing.
    But we have also sought to enhance our security through the crime 
bill's attempt to put 100,000 more police on our streets through the 
Safe and Drug Free Schools Act, through the Family and Medical Leave 
Act, through giving tax relief to low-income working families so no one 
who works full-time with children in the home will still live in 
poverty. Those things relate to our security, as well.
    And finally, we have sought to change the Government, to make it 
smaller, less bureaucratic, less of a problem, and more of a partner in 
the American adventure. The Government is now over 100,000 people 
smaller than it was when I became President. We are on our way to 
reducing it by 270,000 over 6 years. If no new actions are taken, that 
will give us the smallest Federal Establishment since John Kennedy was 
President.
    We are cutting programs. We have already eliminated or reduced 300 
programs. And in my new budget, I've asked Congress to eliminate or 
consolidate 400 more. We are deregulating important segments of our 
economy and trying to reduce the burden of regulation. I'll say more 
about that in a moment. And we are committed to giving more 
responsibility to the States--in very important ways that we've also 
been a good partner with Florida, that I didn't mention earlier--the 
waiver you got from restricted Federal rules to pursue health care 
reform, which has enabled small businesses in Florida that could not 
afford health insurance before finally to voluntarily insure their own 
employees.
    And I'll say a little about this in a moment, but Florida was also 
one of now 25 States to receive a waiver from the cumbersome Federal 
rules governing the welfare system to try to help you move people from 
welfare to work. We've given more of these waivers in 2 years than the 
previous administrations, combined, in 12. I believe in shifting power 
back to the States to make their decisions to build the future of the 
people of the States, where you can do a better job.
    Now, the preliminary results are hopeful. In the last 2 years, we've 
had sustained economic growth, over 6 million new jobs, a big drop in 
the unemployment rate, about a 3-percent drop in the unemployment rate 
here in Florida; the job growth rate here in the private sector about 4 
times what it was in the previous 4 years. We are moving forward as a 
country. We have the lowest combined rates of unemployment inflation in 
25 years. That is the good news. But there are still many challenges, 
challenges that you confront every day, challenges in economics, 
challenges in the fabric of our social life, challenges in the way 
Government works.
    We know, still, that in spite of this big recovery, most wage-
earners are working harder for the same or lower wages than they were 
making 10 or 15 years ago. We know that within the great American middle 
class the great challenge of our time is that we have more inequality, 
people splitting apart by income, mostly related to their own 
educational levels, something that we never faced before.
    From the end of World War II until the end of the 1970's, this 
country rose together. Almost every income group rose about 100 percent, 
just about double their income. The bottom 20 percent actually increased 
their income from the end of World War II until 1978 by about 140 
percent. We were going up, and we were going together.
    Now, since 1979, we have the bottom 60 percent of our country 
actually losing ground economically in real terms. The next 20 percent 
having a modest 5 percent gain, and only

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those of us in the upper 20 percent of the income brackets actually 
doing quite well. This is something you see in a lot of other countries, 
but it presents a special threat to the American idea that anybody--
anybody who will work hard and play by the rules can live up to the 
fullest of their ability. And it is a challenge we must face together. 
It is a new challenge. It has no simple partisan ideological solution.
    We know, still, we have too many social problems. We are divided 
with too much crime and violence and drug abuse, too many of our 
children born out of wedlock, still too many things that are taking 
apart the fabric of our society. And we know that for all the changes 
we've made in Government, we sure have a long way to go there.
    I know that Governor Chiles sent all of you a copy of the book, 
``The Death of Common Sense.'' What you may not know is that he sent me 
one, too. [Laughter] In fact, he put it in my hot hand, and I read it 
within 48 hours. And we called Philip Howard, and we got him to come to 
Washington, and we asked him to work with us as he has worked with you.
    So when we talk about cutting Government, I guess I'm singing to the 
choir and looking at the lead singer over here on my left. But I'd like 
to give you a report about what we are doing and what we propose to do. 
And I need your help and your involvement, without regard to your party, 
from your perspective at the State level about what the next steps are 
going to be. And so does the Congress.
    Let me just tell you some of the things we've done already. We 
announced the other day that we're going to cut reports we require from 
the American people in half, unless there's some compelling public 
interest reason not to, so that people who have to file reports four 
times a year will go to twice a year; twice a year, once a year and so 
on.
    We took the small business loan form from being an inch thick to a 
page long. Last year, we gave twice as many loans at lower cost to 
taxpayers than the year before I took office. We gave in Florida 1,200 
loans, worth over $250 million, and under the leadership of our Vice 
President and the new head of SBA, we are now going to cut the SBA 
budget by 32 percent and increase the number of loans by 12,000 next 
year. That's what we ought to be doing for this Government, more 
performance, lower cost.
    Under the able leadership of your former staffer, Carol Browner, the 
Environmental Protection Agency is working through complicated problems 
from Florida to California that were mired in the courts for years. But 
she is doing it and, at the same time, cutting paperwork from the EPA by 
25 percent. That will save 20 million hours of work for the American 
people every single year.
    The Environmental Protection Agency is also opening compliance 
centers and telling people, if you wonder whether you're in or out of 
compliance, come to our center, and if you're out of compliance and you 
show up voluntarily, we will waive the fine for 6 months while you get 
in compliance. No more punishment for people who are trying to do the 
right thing.
    We have changes in the Food and Drug Administration, where we've 
heard a lot of complaints about things taking too long. We've reduced 
the time lag and the cost for permitting drugs that have absolutely no 
possible danger to health or to the environment, for moving antibiotics 
on line, for moving medical devices on line that plainly present no 
problem. It will put another half a billion dollars a year into the 
American economy, just speeding up the 140 medical devices and getting 
rid of 600 pages of regulation. And I'll bet you right now $100 that a 
year from now, there will not be a single American who will come up to 
the President and say, ``What did you do with those 600 pages of 
regulation. I miss them so much. I can't stand it.'' [Laughter] We are 
moving in the right direction.
    We have changed our approach to small businesses. If a small 
business violates a Federal rule for the first time now, every regulator 
is going to be given the authority to waive the fine altogether. And if 
any business violates a rule but does not do so flagrantly, instead of 
taking a fine away from the business, the business will be given the 
option of taking the fine and keeping it and spending it on correcting 
whatever the problem was instead of giving the money to the Gov- 

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ernment. This is the kind of common-sense direction I think we ought to 
follow.
    We've changed rules for procurement in the Defense Department. It's 
going to save you billions of dollars a year as taxpayers. There's going 
to be no more $500 hammers and $50 ashtrays, and there won't be $50 on 
every transaction. The rules and regulations on procurement added $50 to 
the cost of everything the Defense Department bought that cost under 
$2,500.
    We had Defense Department rules that required people in our military 
to buy computers at twice the cost with half the capacity that you could 
buy them off the shelf in a store in Tallahassee. All that's been 
scrapped. We're moving in the right direction.
    The new Congress and I have worked together on three things that I 
campaigned for President on that I think probably has wide support among 
members of both parties here that I'm very encouraged about. They passed 
a law that I was proud to sign that applies to Congress all the laws 
they impose on the private sector. High time. They passed a law that I 
signed last week that reduces the ability of Congress to impose upon 
States and local governments unfunded mandates to require you to raise 
taxes and change your priorities.
    And both Houses of Congress have passed different versions now of 
the line-item veto, which I strongly support, and I believe we will 
reconcile them and come out with something that works, and I assure you 
I will do my dead level best to use that line-item veto in a way that 
restrains unnecessary Government spending.
    Now, here's where you come in, because we need to move to the next 
area where we're still having a big debate, because I think there is a 
right way and a wrong way to cut Government spending, a right way and a 
wrong way to relax regulation. And I want you to be a part of this 
process.
    For example, we wanted to cut spending in the Agriculture 
Department. We closed 1,200 offices we didn't need. We think that's a 
better approach than reducing the school lunch program. We realized we 
had to cut some spending in the housing area. We got rid of the regional 
offices of HUD, and we consolidated a lot of old bureaucratic programs. 
We think that's a better approach than ending efforts to help homeless 
veterans, many of whom are still deeply troubled because of the 
experiences that they've had to come to grips with in their lives. We 
had the EPA cut regulation by 25 percent. We think that's a better 
approach than this ``takings bill'' before Congress, which 20 States in 
referendums have rejected because it undermines the ability of 
governments even to do basic zoning and could bankrupt the budget of any 
government that tried to implement it. So there are ways to do this that 
I think are right and wrong.
    And let me just say one thing about the block grant proposal. When I 
was a Governor, I loved block grants, and I still think they're a pretty 
good idea in many areas. I haven't changed just because I've become 
President. I like the community development block grant, and I used it 
effectively. But I want to remind you it's worth about half, or maybe 
less than half of what it was when it was given in the early eighties in 
the Reagan administration.
    The Congress gives block grants primarily to save money. And now 
we're talking about block grants in areas that could be really painful 
to the high-growth States. So I ask you, think about what's attractive 
about it, but look at the details. Don't get caught in the rhetoric; 
look at the reality. It is not fair for the Federal Government to adopt 
a block-grant system which flat-funds big things that are very important 
to the quality of life, indeed, the ability to live a decent life for 
millions of our people. That may be just wonderful for States with no 
growth or declining population. They might even make money out of the 
deal. But for the growth States of the country, it can be a trap. So 
watch it, read it, look at the fine print, and stick up for your 
interests. [Applause.] Thank you.
    Now, I'd like to give you three examples of where I think we have 
done the right thing to reduce spending and help you and help your 
people. And again, let me say that we need to move beyond the labels of 
the past. We need to put the people of this country first, and we need 
to keep our eye on the future. And I'd like to give you three examples 
with three groups of people from Florida

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who are up there--and I'll recognize them each in turn--that, to me, 
symbolize the right way to cut Government, to make college loans more 
affordable, to end welfare as we know it, and to make our streets safer.
    One of the most important things that our administration has 
accomplished is to make college loans more affordable for millions of 
Americans by eliminating the middle man in the old college loan system, 
lowering the cost, and offering better repayment terms. Believe it or 
not, we've actually reduced the deficit, made loans more affordable to 
young people all across the country, and cut the hassle to the colleges 
and universities involved.
    We've also been very strict in enforcement. No opportunity without 
responsibility. It was costing you in 1991 $2.8 billion a year as 
taxpayers in delinquent loans, people who borrowed the money and 
wouldn't pay it back. We have cut that rate from $2.8 billion a year 
down to $1 billion a year by cracking down on people who won't pay their 
loans. People who borrow the money ought to pay it back.
    But let me say again, we have found a way to lower the cost of the 
college loan program to the taxpayers, give out more loans at lower cost 
to the students, and cut the hassle to the colleges and universities in 
between.
    I want to introduce some of the people that are up there. Michelle 
Bellamy, of Orlando, is a senior criminal justice major at Florida A&M 
here in Tallahassee. And Rebecca and Craig Cummins, husband and wife, 
are 4th-year medical students at the University of Florida. I'd like to 
ask them to stand up there. Now, yesterday, I held a regional economic 
conference in Atlanta, and Rebecca and Craig came and testified. Rebecca 
said that when they got out of medical school they'd have combined debts 
of $140,000, that under the old student loan program it would have taken 
half of their income to pay their loan obligations when they went into 
residency at very low pay. Under the new student loan program, they can 
have their choice of ways to repay the loan. And one of their choices is 
to pay the loan off over a longer period of time as a percentage of 
their income.
    This means that young people will never be discouraged from 
borrowing money to go to college because they know they'll never be 
bankrupted by paying it back, even though we're going to be tougher on 
requiring it to be paid back.
    Their loan administrator said that she thought she had died and gone 
to heaven when she got into this program--literally, that's what she 
said--because there was no hassle. They didn't have to wait weeks and 
weeks and weeks to get the money. There was less paperwork. And I will 
say again, because we took out the middle man, it lowers costs to the 
taxpayer.
    There are 502,000 Florida students and former students who now can 
take advantage of this direct college loan program. They and others are 
using this program today. There are some other students up there with 
them, and I'd like to ask them to stand. All the students that are up 
there, would you all stand together and be recognized.
    So here's decision number one for you. I made a proposal to reduce 
the cost of education in the Federal budget, and there's another 
proposal in the Congress to reduce the cost of education in the budget. 
You decide which one you think is best. Right now we can make only 40 
percent of our schools eligible to participate in this program. My 
proposal is, over the next 5 years let 100 percent of America's schools 
decide if they want to participate in the program. It will cut the 
deficit by $12 billion over 6 years and get a lot more people into 
college loans, get a lot more people into college, and people will be 
able to pay them back.
    The other proposal is to cap the program right where it is, which 
will add $6 billion to the deficit over the next 5 years--by taking that 
money and giving it to the middle men who are making the loans now and 
making a much bigger bureaucratic hassle--and to save that money, that 
$6 billion, by making the loans that young people get now more 
expensive, by charging them interest on the loans while they're already 
in college and adding $2 billion a year to the cost of the loans.
    Now, I think common sense says that my way of saving money, which 
gets you more students at lower cost and better repayment terms, is 
better than the alternative proposal, which gives more money to the 
banks in the

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middle, runs the deficit up, gives you fewer students, and gives them 
more headaches at the colleges administering the program, and far more 
heartache to the students in repaying it. I think it's a clear choice.
    But you need to be heard on it. It's not a partisan issue. It's a 
special interest against a public interest issue. It's an old Washington 
way of doing things against a new way of doing things issue. This is a 
big deal, and it's a clear choice. Both parties propose to reduce the 
deficit from education costs, but the choices are different.
    Let me give you another example. Everybody in America wants to 
reform the welfare system. And good for them--because we know that some 
people on welfare, a significant percentage, are there because they're 
young, they have young children, they have no education, they don't have 
a particularly bright future if all they do is get a check from the 
Government to stay in the fix they're in, that the system for too many 
people does not promote responsible parenting, good work, or 
independence.
    Most people also know that the system we have today is worse than it 
would be because we don't enforce our child support enforcement the way 
we ought to and that it's complicated for you because more than a third 
of the child support cases in America today cross State lines, so your 
ability to do it is limited.
    Now, last year I worked with Members of the Congress in both parties 
and sent a sweeping welfare reform proposal to the Congress. It was not 
passed. They didn't get to it, and I wish they had. This year we're 
going to get a welfare reform bill, and it's a good thing. It will give 
the States far more flexibility, no matter which system is passed.
    One of the things that I think is that since we've now given 25 
States, including Florida, waivers from all these Federal rules, I think 
every State in America ought to do anything that any State's already got 
the right to do. Why should you have to keep coming back to the Federal 
Government asking for permission to try innovative ways to change your 
welfare system? I don't think you should.
    But I think what you've done here shows what works. And again, it's 
a choice we have to make. And this one is a little harder for you than 
the last one. But I want you to make a choice, and I want you to be 
heard.
    In January of 1994, Florida received one of our first waivers to 
implement a family transition program, to accelerate the pace of moving 
people from welfare to work in Alachua County and Escambia County. The 
program reflects what we're trying to do, and I thought it was a good 
proposal. And apparently, it's working. It requires people to move from 
work to independence within 2 years, and it creates additional 
opportunities for people to do that by investing in education and 
training and child care.
    And I might say, every time you interview a bunch of people on 
welfare, they'll always tell you, ``If we had health care for our kids 
and child care and some way to go to work, we'll go to work.'' And the 
Florida program does that.
    Now, what we want to do in the Congress is to pass a bill that will 
promote work, responsible parenting, and tough child support. The bill 
that passed the House of Representatives--I want to compliment it--does 
promote tough child support. We know today if we were collecting all the 
child support that is owed and could be paid, we could move 800,000 
families off welfare today--if we were just collecting child support. 
And I compliment the House on passing that bill.
    But the rest of the program, in my opinion, is deficient. I think 
it's weak on work and tough on kids. I don't think it does as much as--
it certainly doesn't do as much as the Florida project does to move 
people from welfare to work. The attractiveness of it is it gives you a 
block grant. It says, ``You do what you want, and what do you care what 
they do in Utah or Idaho or Maine.'' The problem is the block grant also 
has some strings attached and requires, for example, States to deny 
benefits to teenagers who have babies and to their babies until they 
reach the age of their majority--the mothers--and gives people the 
option to deny it altogether.
    Now, it just seems to me that the better course is to give the 
States a great deal of flexibility, but to say, number one, if you have 
a growing caseload we shouldn't block-grant you. You can't help it if 
Florida is growing faster than some other States. And number two, we 
shouldn't punish children for the

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mistakes of their parents. And number three, what we really want is for 
people to go to work and be good parents, and we ought to have certain 
baseline requirements to do that.
    Now, that's what I believe. And I'll tell you why I believe that. 
There are reasons up there, again, in the audience. Irene Marry is 
ending welfare as we know it. She is the mother of six from Escambia 
County. She participated in your program. Since joining the family 
transition program a year ago, she received her GED, she enrolled in 
training for a high-wage job as a heating and air-condition technician. 
She will earn a paycheck, not a welfare check. And I met some other 
ladies who are with her who are doing the same thing. This is your 
program. I think this is what America ought to do. I'd like to ask them 
to stand up. Please stand up, all three of you.
    Last example: the choice you have to make. No State in the country 
knows any more about crime and violence than Florida. We know that there 
are many reasons for crime. There are many causes of crime, and there 
are many proposed solutions to crime. After 6 years of partisan 
gridlock, last year we broke gridlock and passed the crime bill.
    The crime bill had three major components: A lot of money for 
prisons for States that had tough sentencing provisions--you had to have 
certain tough sentencing provisions to get the Federal money to help 
build the prisons--a substantial but smaller amount of money for 
prevention programs--there were certain categories specified, but 
essentially States and local communities got to decide what worked best 
in prevention--and a substantial amount of money to help local 
communities and county jurisdictions and, to some extent, States, hire 
law enforcement officials.
    There was a total flexibility on the part of the States, virtually, 
in the prevention money, nearly none in the prison money, and some in 
the police money, but basically the money had to be used to hire police 
on the street and not behind desks.
    Now, this bill was put together in complete cooperation with the law 
enforcement community. There were 11 major law enforcement groups that 
worked on this, along with the State attorneys general--General 
Butterworth knows, he was very active in this--the Prosecutors 
Association, all the law enforcement folks around the country. They told 
us, among other things, ``You've got to have some prevention money in 
here. We can't jail our way out of this problem.'' People in law 
enforcement said that.
    And it was interesting. I mean, a lot of these folks were 
Republicans, and some were Democrats. But they said, ``This is not a 
partisan deal. We live on the streets. Our badges are on every day. We 
cannot jail our way out of this. We have got to have some prevention 
money, as well.''
    The argument for the police was plain: Violent crime has tripled in 
the last 30 years in America. The number of police on the street has 
increased by only 10 percent. This is not high math. So we proposed to, 
in effect, increase by another 20 percent the number of police officers 
on the street.
    Why? Because one of the little known success stories in America in 
the last several years is that in community after community after 
community that has adopted an aggressive--an aggressive community 
policing system, the crime rate has gone down, not just because more 
criminals are being caught but because more crime is being prevented. 
There is evidence here. This is not some theory. There is evidence, city 
after city after city with crime rates declining where they have been 
able to implement aggressive community policing programs.
    In Florida--and the Attorney General--I want to compliment the 
Attorney General on this. She set up--it used to be that law enforcement 
groups hated dealing with the Federal Government because they had to 
hire a consultant to figure out how to get through the web of the 
Justice Department. Janet Reno instituted for smaller communities a one-
page, eight-question form to get a police officer, one page, eight 
questions.
    And since October--you know, the people who are attacking this 
approach say, ``Communities don't really want this. They can't afford to 
match it. They don't like it.'' All I know is, since October, over half 
of the communities in America have asked for police grants from the 
Justice Department, on their one-page, eight-question form. And

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since October, we have already awarded over 16,000 new police officers 
to over half of the police departments in America. Almost 1,000 new 
officers in Florida. The Escambia Sheriff's Office is putting 20 new 
officers on the street, and 14 of them are with us today. I'd like to 
ask them to stand because that's what you got for your money.
    Again, you have a choice to make. There they are. My proposal is--
and let me say what the--the crime bill was paid for by a trust fund, no 
tax increases, no money from anything else. The 272,000 people we're 
going to take out of the Federal bureaucracy, all of those savings go 
into a trust fund to pay for this crime bill. That's how it's paid for.
    Now, the House bill says that, ``No, no, we don't like this. We want 
to spend more money on prisons but only if you comply with our 
sentencing requirements.'' No State flexibility there. ``We know how you 
should sentence people, and if you do it our way, you can have this 
money. And we want to spend less money on police and prevention, but--
here's the deal--we'll put it in a block grant for you and you can do 
what you want to with it. You won't get as much, but you can do what you 
want to.''
    It's very seductive and very attractive. You have to ask yourselves 
from your perspective: Should there be less on prevention? Should there 
be less on police? Should we really walk away from this commitment to 
100,000 police officers when violent crime has tripled, only a 10-
percent increase in police, and every law enforcement group in America 
tells us we ought to do it?
    I think the answer is clear. You may disagree, but you should know--
again, on the block grants, you're a growth State and your opportunities 
are exploding. But your problems will grow, too. So I ask you to think 
about it and to make your voice heard. And for goodness sakes, do your 
best to talk about it in terms of what puts your people first, what gets 
us into the future. No partisan political rhetoric. Let's look at what 
is right for the country. And what is right for our State.
    I think this is a very exciting time to be alive and to be in public 
service. This debate we are having about the role of Government is a 
good thing to have. But in the end, our mission has got to be to keep 
the American dream alive. The idea that this is a special country, where 
little girls who can play the violin can come and breathe the air of 
freedom and fight for it for all of those who are like her who don't 
enjoy it.
    This is a special country. And there is never going to be a time--I 
thought about this when the minister was praying at the beginning of the 
session here--the Scriptures tell us there will never be a time when 
human existence is free of difficulties. They are endemic to our nature 
and to the condition of things on this Earth.
    So we have vast new opportunities and profound new challenges. And 
the real question is, how are we going to meet them. With all my heart, 
I believe that the best days of this country lie ahead of us if we make 
the right decisions. In a new time, the right decisions cannot be made 
with old rhetoric that divides us when we need to be united.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 10:45 a.m. in the House Chamber at the 
State Capitol. In his remarks, he referred to James A. Scott, president, 
Peter R. Wallace, speaker, Jack Ascherk, speaker pro-tem, Florida 
Legislature; violinist Elizbet Lorenzo Martinez; Bill Nelson, Florida 
treasurer and insurance commissioner; and Bob Butterworth, Florida 
attorney general.