[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 26 (Monday, July 3, 1995)]
[Pages 1144-1146]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Students at Portland State University in Portland

June 27, 1995

    Thank you very much. First, President Ramaley, thank you for having 
us here at this wonderful campus. You know, I used to be a college 
teacher. My wife and I started out our married life teaching at the 
University of Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. And I was looking at all 
of you under these beautiful trees, thinking there are a lot of days 
when I might like to be back here working for you here. This is a very 
wonderful place, and I thank you for having us here.
    Thank you, Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, for being here with us 
today and for your leadership, your vision, and your conscience. I can 
tell you all you are very, very fortunate to be represented by one of 
the most truly extraordinary individuals in the United States House of 
Representatives in Elizabeth Furse.
    I want to thank Governor Kitzhaber, and I want to thank Mayor Katz, 
who I believe is over there--thank you, Vera, you've been great. And 
Portland has been wonderful to us. I've never had a bad day in Portland, 
Oregon, and I certainly didn't today. This is wonderful.
    And you know, the Vice President really is funny, isn't he? 
[Laughter] You should have seen him back here when Elizabeth was 
introducing him and saying how intelligent he was and how energetic he 
was and how funny he was. And I whispered in his ear right before he 
came up, I said, ``Next thing she's going to say is how pretty you 
are.'' [Laughter] But she restrained herself, and he was able to compose 
himself and give that wonderful speech. Let me say that our Nation has 
been very lucky because there's no doubt that in the entire history of 
the Republic, Al Gore is the most effective, influential person ever to 
be Vice President of the United States.
    Let me tell you just for a minute what we were really doing here 
today at this regional economic conference. We were worried about what 
Oregon and what the Pacific Northwest will be like for all you young 
people here in the audience. We were worried about how we can guarantee 
a future, how we can move into the next century with the American dream 
alive and well and with the leadership and values of our country secure, 
in a world that is full of possibility and full of uncertainty.
    You know, most of us who are my age and older, we've lived most of 
our lives and our course is pretty well set. And we have been very, very 
blessed to grow up in a country and to have the opportunities that 
America has offered for all the decades since the end of the Second 
World War.
    Now, at the end of the cold war, the dawn of the global economy, the 
information age, moving into a new century, into a new millennium, we 
look out at a world that is changing so rapidly, that is full of untold 
possibilities but also some pretty troubling developments; a world that 
has left a lot of people feeling robust and secure and hopeful and eager 
for the future and a world that has left a lot of people feeling at a 
minimum kind of confused and uncertain and concerned about their future.
    If you go back and ask yourself, what is the responsibility of the 
President and what is the responsibility of the citizenry of the United 
States, you can do no better than to go back to the documents of our 
Founders, who believed that we are all created equal and endowed by our 
Creator with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
That means that at any point in history, but particularly at those 
points of great change, our responsibility is to do what is necessary to 
help us make the most of our lives. All of us, without regard to race or 
region or income or background or religion, have the right to make the 
most of our own lives. That is the challenge that is facing us here 
today.
    And I believe that that challenge requires us, number one, to create 
more economic

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opportunity, more jobs, and higher incomes; number two, to give people 
the tools they need to develop their God-given abilities; number three, 
to promote the security of the United States at home and abroad; number 
four, to preserve the natural heritage of the United States that has 
brought us to this point and that we want to pass on to our children, 
our grandchildren, and our grandchildren's grandchildren.
    And finally, in a world which is increasingly fast-changing and 
decentralized, it requires those of us in the National Government, to 
use the Vice President's term, to literally reinvent the way the 
Government works, to set a course, to pursue the right priorities, but 
to make sure that people at the grassroots level can make the 
fundamental decisions affecting their own lives and can look across the 
table at people who are different from themselves and work out those 
differences in a spirit of genuine friendship and good citizenship.
    These are the thing we have tried to do in the last 2\1/2\ years, 
and these are the things that will take America into the 21st century.
    I just want to close by asking you to think about one or two very 
important issues. We're in a big debate in Washington now, not only 
about how to balance the budget--that's the good news; most people agree 
that we should do it--but about the fundamental purposes of Government. 
There are those who say today that the Government is intrinsically 
destructive of our way of life and has no role other than national 
defense, tax cuts, and eliminating whatever you have to to balance the 
budget as quickly as possible.
    There are those of us who beg to differ, who believe that the 
Government is nothing more than the expression of the American people 
and that when it works best, its fundamental duty is the duty of 
partnership, to help people do things together that they cannot do on 
their own. That is a debate I hope you will side with us on.
    There are those who believe, for example, that it's a very nice 
thing if you can preserve the environment but not worth getting the 
Government involved. And then there are those of us who believe we have 
to find the best grassroots way we can to enable the American people to 
make a decent living for themselves and their children but to do it 
while preserving the heritage that God has given to Oregon, to the 
Pacific Northwest, and to our entire country, indeed, to our planet.
    There are those who believe that all of our problems are personal 
and cultural. That is, if we would just get together and get our act 
together and do what is right and stop messing up, that we wouldn't have 
any problems in this old world. And there are others who believe that 
our problems are basically economic and political and the Government has 
to step in and do something.
    Now, if you look at the Scouts, the VISTA, the MESA, all the groups 
that are here, what do all these groups do? What are all these young 
people doing? Why does national service work? Because we know at some 
level, unless people are raised with good values and unless they can 
take responsibility for themselves and do the right things and make the 
most of their own lives, there is nothing anyone else can do to give it 
to them. No one can give you a good life inside. No one can give you 
good values. No one can give you the discipline to do the right thing 
and--[applause]--you have to do that for yourself. So we all know that.
    Let me tell you, I'm sure that no one would dispute me when I say 
that all of us have been given things in life that maybe we didn't even 
deserve. We've all been given a hand up from time to time. No person 
here today more than me knows that you do not achieve anything 
completely alone. So it is not either/or. We still need a country that 
cares about those of us who need a helping hand to do the right thing, 
who need a helping hand to make the most of their own lives, who need a 
sense of partnership to get through the difficult times that our country 
faces.
    Now, over the next 3 or 4 months, you will see a lot of the things 
that we talked about here today debated in your Nation's Capital. And I 
want you to think about what I have said and what you have felt today. 
Should we balance the budget? Yes, we should. Why? Because there's a 
difference in borrowing money to invest in business or to finance your 
college education or to buy a home, and borrowing money just because

[[Page 1146]]

you want to go out to dinner at night. We've been borrowing money for 
both, and we've been so mixed up we couldn't tell the difference for too 
long. And as a result, we've been too dependent on other countries for 
funds. We have saved too little. We have invested too little. And we 
have had lower incomes because we have run ourselves into too much debt.
    But there is a right way and a wrong way to balance the budget, 
because the Government's deficit is not the only problem in this 
country. There is also an education deficit in this country. There's a 
safe streets deficit in this country. There's an adequate affordable 
health care deficit in this country. There's a welfare reform deficit in 
this country. There are other deficits.
    Our proposal to balance the budget says don't cut education because 
that's important to our future as well. If we want good jobs and higher 
incomes, we should increase our investment in education, from college 
loans to Head Start, while we balance the budget.
    Our proposal says, of course we can't continue to increase health 
care expenditures at 2 and 3 times the rate of inflation; we have to 
slow it down. But be careful because there are a lot of people, the 
elderly, the disabled, the poorest children in our country, who depend 
upon Medicare and Medicaid for their medical care, and we dare not put 
them in a position to have to either give up health care or pay 
something they can't afford to pay when they don't have enough money to 
live on in the first place.
    And so we say, yes, let's have big cuts in other things; let's 
balance the budget. But if you balance the budget in 10 years instead of 
7, if you cut the size of the tax cuts and target them to middle class 
people for education and raising children and not just give tax cuts to 
people like me, who don't really need it, if you do that, you can 
balance the budget and increase our investment in education, be kind to 
the people who need health care help, from the smallest children to the 
disabled to elderly folks who don't have enough to live on, and still 
bring the American economy back and go into the 21st century with good 
jobs, higher incomes, and an educated citizenry, including all the 
little children in this audience today.
    You know, we all have preconceptions, and sometimes preconceptions 
can be bad things. They can be stereotypes about people and places. I 
always had a preconception abut Oregon that I think has been confirmed 
by all my trips out here. I always felt that the people of Oregon had an 
astonishing ability to maintain their idealism and be practical, to be 
practical and idealistic at the same time. That's why we were pleased to 
give Oregon permission to get out from under all kinds of Federal rules 
and regulations, to change its welfare programs to move people to work, 
to change all kinds of other programs, because we knew this was a State 
where people had good values and common sense.
    And so, I ask all of you join us in the fight to preserve education 
and balance the budget. Join us in the fight to develop the economy and 
preserve the environment. Join us in the fight to encourage people to be 
better citizens and to behave better and to have better values but also 
to give people who deserve it a helping hand and a hand up. In other 
words, keep your idealism intact. Bring your common sense to the table. 
Give power back to communities so that the young people here can have 
the kind of future, can have the kind of American dream that my 
generation took for granted.
    The 21st century will be the most exciting time in all of human 
history, especially for the American people, if we can bring to the task 
today the compassion, the values, and the common sense that I believe is 
at the heart of what it means to be a citizen of this great State.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. in the Courtyard at Portland 
State University.