[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 11 (Monday, March 18, 1996)]
[Pages 462-467]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Community in Hackensack, New Jersey

March 11, 1996

    Thank you very much. President Mertz, thank you for making us feel 
so welcome at Fairleigh Dickinson. And Mayor Zisa, thank you for making 
us feel so welcome in your hometown; we're glad to be here, sir.
    I want to thank all the New Jersey public officials who are here. I 
thank Senator Lautenberg, especially for his work on the environment. I 
thank Congressman Torricelli and Congressman Menendez and Congressman 
Payne. I thank my former colleagues, Governor Florio and Governor 
Brendan Byrne. And I want to thank Carol Browner for the

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fine job she has done here and in every State in the country, at the 
EPA. And most of all I want to thank the Vice President for being a 
constant inspiration to me on the subject of America's environment.
    I thank the two families who are here who were introduced by Senator 
Lautenberg, the Dukers and the Flatows; and I thank them for their 
incalculable sacrifice and their continued devotion to the integrity and 
the freedom of Israel and the cause of peace in the Middle East. God 
bless you and thank you both very much.
    I know that as President Mertz said, my friend, Leah Rabin, was here 
just a week ago to accept an award on behalf of herself and her late 
husband from this distinguished university. Yitzhak Rabin was a good 
friend of mine and he always took issue with those who characterized the 
creation of Israel and its continuance as some sort of a miracle. He 
didn't think there was anything miraculous about it. He thought it was 
the direct result of thousands and thousands of people being able to 
devote a lifetime of hard work and effort and courage and ultimate 
sacrifice to a common cause. Tomorrow I will go to Egypt to try to 
advance that cause and beat back the terrorism that threatens it today.
    But I want to talk to you today about the common cause we must make 
in our efforts to preserve and enhance our environment for ourselves and 
for our children. It will not be a miracle that preserves America's 
environment and the global environment; it will be the result of 
thousands and thousands of people, ultimately millions of people, 
devoting themselves to a common cause.
    When I became President, I had a pretty straightforward vision. I 
wanted our country to come together, to create the opportunity that 
would permit every American who was willing to work for it a shot at the 
American dream. I want to go into the next century with our country 
still the strongest force for peace and freedom and security and 
prosperity in the world. I want this country to come together around its 
basic values of responsibility and opportunity, of work and family and 
of community. I was then weary, and I remain even more impatient, with 
those who seek to divide the American people for short-term political 
gain.
    In the State of the Union Address I gave all of you and our fellow 
Americans a report on where we are, where we have been, and where I 
think we have to go, and on the seven challenges I believe we have to 
address in order for those objectives to be reached as we begin a new 
century and a new millennium. We have to have stronger families and 
better childhoods for all our children. We have to open educational 
opportunity to every person so that every child and every adult has 
access to learning throughout life. We have to provide economic security 
for families who are willing to work for it, including those who have 
worked hard without raises, those who live in places that have not felt 
the impact of the recovery, and those who are being downsized today but 
still have much to contribute to their families, their communities, and 
the future of our country.
    We have to take our streets back from crime and drugs and gangs. We 
cannot walk away from our obligations to lead the world in the fight for 
peace and freedom. And we must continue to work to reinvent our 
Government so that it works better and inspires more trust. But, 
finally, we must also recognize that if we want this country to be the 
greatest country in the world in the next century, we have to provide 
for a clean and healthy environment.
    This is not a luxury; it is not an option. It is about self-
preservation, about the preservation of our children's future. It indeed 
is at the core of the spiritual beliefs of nearly every American, for 
Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, all could embrace the words of 
the psalmist, ``The Earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof.''
    It is incredible to me now that the environment has for the first 
time in a generation become a source of political division. I just came 
from Wallington, and you know there are some people here from there. You 
heard from them earlier. There in the middle of a residential 
neighborhood the Vice President and I looked up a hill toward Jefferson 
Elementary School and then across a field that is a toxic waste site, 
the land that is being cleaned up under the Superfund law.
    Not so very long ago there was a factory there that had been 
abandoned. It was an unsafe building, there were barrels full of un- 

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safe chemicals. They were all taken away as evidence of the success of 
the law. The problem is the cleanup is not finished. There is still the 
fence topped with barbed wire that severs the nine-acre site from the 
rest of the community. And land within that fence remains contaminated 
with PCB's, which are known to cause cancer. Families can't walk there, 
children can't play there. This is a hole in that community, when it 
could be the source of a new, revitalized neighborhood.
    The mayor said he wanted new housing for the people, he said perhaps 
senior citizens could live there. All that remains to be done is to 
finish the job of purging the soil of that site of the poisoned 
chemicals. I can't think of why we ought to tolerate this in Wallington, 
or anywhere else in the country. But listen to this: 10 million children 
under the age of 12 live within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump--10 
million. In New Jersey alone there are 100 toxic hot spots that need to 
be cleaned up; 800,000 children live a mere bicycle ride away from these 
places. Well, this is America, my friends, and that's not good enough 
for me. It ought not to be good enough for you.
    No child should have to live near a toxic waste dump. No child 
should have to drink water contaminated with chemicals. No child should 
have to eat food poisoned with pesticides. And I am determined that 
every child will have the safe and healthy future that every child 
should have as a God-given and a legal right in the United States of 
America.
    Make no mistake about it, just as others have said before me, this 
has for a long time not been a political issue in the traditional sense. 
America is indeed a much cleaner and healthier place after a generation 
of bipartisan commitment to cleaning up the environment. Since our laws 
were put into place 25 years ago, toxic emissions from factories have 
been cut in half. Lead levels in children's blood have dropped 70 
percent. Once, because it was so polluted, a river of ours caught on 
fire but no more, and Lake Erie, which was once declared dead, is now 
teeming with fish.
    So should we say, well, since we've done all this, we can just treat 
this as an ordinary issue now and start fighting about it again? There 
is more to do. A third of us still breathe air that endangers our 
health. Our national parks are the envy of the world. But as the First 
Lady and our daughter and I found last summer when we visited two of 
those parks, they're still in need of repair and continued maintenance 
if they're going to remain the Nation's treasure. And in too many 
communities, the water is still not safe to drink.
    We've worked hard on a broadbased environmental agenda. The Vice 
President has been of great inspiration to me in that. When I was a 
Governor, the preservation of the environment involved things that I 
understood from my own experience. I was lucky enough to grow up in a 
national park surrounded by three lakes. I was never, I don't suppose in 
my whole childhood, more than 10 minutes away from the mountains and the 
woods and the creeks that became all too easy for me to take for 
granted. And when Hillary and I had our daughter, we loved to go to the 
State parks in our home State and to expose her to the world of natural 
beauty that I took as a given as a child.
    Thanks to the Vice President, I've learned how all of this relates 
to things that are going on all over the world and how the phenomenon of 
global warming can radicalize our own weather patterns here in America 
and disrupt the future of America if we do not deal with the environment 
in a comprehensive way from the grassroots communities all the way up to 
the international issues. And that is what we are committed to doing.
    In our agenda included expanding the community right-to-know law, 
which requires industries to tell our citizens what substances are being 
released into their air and their water. We're cutting toxic air 
pollution from chemical plants by 90 percent. Because of tougher clean 
air laws, 50 million Americans in 55 cities are now breathing easier. 
Stricter meat safety tests have dramatically reduced the chances of a 
child eating a hamburger with the lethal E. coli bacteria. Working with 
some of our countries best corporate citizens, we kicked dozens of 
dangerous chemicals out of the marketplace and quickly replaced them 
with safer substitutes.
    And just as important as what we have done is how we're doing it. 
The laws and regulations that brought our environment

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back from the brink worked well for their time. But what worked 
yesterday may not work today or tomorrow. We believe in higher 
environmental standards, but we also believe in more partnership between 
environmentalists and people working in the private sector. We believe 
in more flexibility and more focus on results instead of rulemaking. We 
know that going through Washington may not be the only road to a safer 
and cleaner world.
    And so under Carol Browner's leadership we're cutting paperwork at 
the EPA by 25 percent. We're working with the auto companies to develop 
a clean car, a partnership that could triple automobile mileage in the 
next few years and dramatically reduce toxic emissions into the air.
    We're asking businesses and communities to work together. The EPA's 
new Project XL encourages responsible companies to find inexpensive, 
efficient ways to exceed pollution standards. And if they can, they can 
get rid of the rule book. We're interested in the results, not the 
rules.
    Our commonsense initiative for small business emphasizes results, 
not punishment. If a small business makes a mistake and is committed to 
fixing that mistake, we will waive the fine if they repair the problem--
excuse me, my wife and daughter and I have been passing around the last 
cold of winter, you'll have to indulge me. This new way of doing 
business overturns the conventional wisdom that we have to somehow 
choose between the health of our environment and the health of our 
economy.
    Look at the last 3 years. We have stepped up efforts to protect the 
environment in the last 3 years. We've also stepped up efforts to 
advance the economy. We have a cleaner environment and 8.4 million new 
jobs. You do not have to choose between the two.
    It used to be said that if you had a commitment to a clean 
environment it would be especially burdensome for small businesses. 
Well, we not only have the lowest combined rates of employment and 
inflation in 27 years, we have set records in each of the last 3 years 
for new small business formation. It is a myth. You do not have to 
choose between the environment and the economy. Indeed, I submit to you 
that good environmental policy will grow the economy, especially the 
kind of good high-wage jobs we need more of in America.
    Now, if this legacy of environmental protection has been good for 
all Americans and it's been bipartisan for 25 years and it clearly is 
not hurting our ability to generate jobs in a world where the other 
wealthy economies of the world are struggling, struggling to create 
jobs, why would we abandon 25 years of bipartisan commitment when there 
are new challenges that have to be met and when, in fact, a lot of 
people who worry about their ability to have these good high-wage jobs 
in yesterday's economic organizations should be looking to tomorrow's 
environmental opportunities as a way to create those jobs? Why would we 
do that?
    Because in the last year a small army of very powerful lobbyists 
literally have descended on Capitol Hill as if they owned the place. 
They have mounted a full-scale attack on our environmental laws and on 
our public health protections. Some in this Congress actually allowed 
these lobbyists to sit down at the table in the committee rooms and 
rewrite these important environmental laws, from gutting enforcement of 
clean air and clean water, to weakening community right-to-know, to 
selling off our great and precious store of public lands to the highest 
bidder, to tying up our enforcement agencies in litigation. This 
Congress has mounted the most aggressive anti-environmental campaign in 
our history. And I am proud that we have stood against that.
    Now, because the Congress knew that the American people would never 
put up with an outright repeal of these laws, they also took another, 
more subtle, approach. They tried to take the environmental cop off the 
beat by simply cutting resources for health and safety protection. And 
I'm proud we stood against that, too.
    We have fought off a lot this year, but you know and I know the 
fight is far from over. This budget impasse has been used by Congress, 
and this crazy way of running the Government by continuing resolution 
instead of a budget, to slowly and quietly keep the EPA from doing its 
job. The EPA is now operating at about a 15 percent cut from its last 
year's budget.

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    So what happens? They get what they want by indirection. The Agency 
is running behind on its inspections. There have been delays in putting 
in place safeguards to keep things like cryptosporidium out of our 
drinking water. Now, that's a big word, but you'll know what it is when 
I remind you that that's what killed all those people in Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin. We don't want it in our drinking water. We need to get it out 
and get it out now.
    And cleanup has stopped on more than 60 toxic waste sites around the 
country, including the one the Vice President and I just visited at 
Wallington. There are 14 in New Jersey, 17 in New York, and it is wrong. 
And if that weren't enough, the funding on the current continuing 
resolution runs out on Friday. And Congress again is threatening to shut 
down the Government for a third time unless I accept their drastic cuts 
in the environment and education, Medicare and Medicaid. Let me make 
something clear. It was wrong for them to shut down the Government the 
first time because I wouldn't accept the cuts. It was wrong the second 
time. And three wrongs on the environment do not make a right.
    Let me remind all of you, my fellow Americans, without regard to 
your party, we can balance the budget in 7 years and protect the health 
and safety of our people. We have identified $700 billion in savings 
common to both plans that will still permit us to protect the 
environment, invest in education, protect Medicare and Medicaid, grow 
the economy, and get rid of the deficit. That is what we ought to do.
    And in this budget I challenge Congress also to join me in adopting 
our brownfields initiative. The brownfields initiative encourages 
businesses and communities to turn old polluted sites into homes for 
safe and sustainable businesses. Now, this effort that we've had under 
way has already created jobs in 29 different communities. To include 
more of them, we have made it clear that brownfields purchasers will not 
be liable for the mess they inherited and neither will those who lend to 
them to finance the cleanup.
    Today I'm proposing the next step in revitalizing these communities, 
a brownfields tax initiative for those who clean up and redevelop 
contaminated abandoned properties. A $2 billion tax incentive targeted 
specifically to areas where the poverty rate is 20 percent or higher, to 
make it possible for brownfields investors to deduct their cleanup 
expenses immediately and cut the cost for this type of investment in 
half. That will bring jobs to the places that have missed out on this 
recovery.
    This proposal is expected to spur $10 billion in private investments 
nationwide, to return to productive use as many as 30,000 brownfields 
throughout the United States. It is fully paid for in my 7-year balanced 
budget. It is good for Americans, and I urge Congress to join me in 
making it happen.
    Now this brownfields effort is only part of the larger picture of 
environmental efforts we are making. Look what I saw today in 
Wallington. We have to repair the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program. 
Superfund has been an important tool in helping us to protect the 
environment. In the past 16 years, toxic waste has been removed from 
more than 3,000 sites. And in the last 3 years, I am proud of the fact 
that our administration has completed more cleanups than in the previous 
12 years. We need to keep doing this until the job is done.
    My fellow Americans, we have reached the limit, unfortunately, of 
what we can do alone. We have to have help with Congress to cure the 
remaining problems with the Superfund. Small businesses and communities 
trapped in the liability net, lenders afraid to finance cleanups--all 
these have to do with the way the law is written. And only Congress can 
change it. Only Congress can finish the job. They should do it the right 
way, by making sure, as Senator Lautenberg says, that polluters pay. 
Right now, Congress is moving forward with Superfund legislation that 
would let polluters off the hook and make the taxpayers pay. I don't 
think the taxpayers should pay when the polluters can pay. That is 
wrong.
    All of you have been very patient to listen to us today make our 
plea for a new bipartisan commitment to the protection of the 
environment. But all of you here know that our ability to make America 
strong in the 21st century and to keep our people living in the place of 
greatest possibility in the world is

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clearly, clearly based on our ability to continue to make progress in 
the environment.
    As President I take no particular pleasure in exercising the power 
of the veto. I like to get things done. I like to move things forward. I 
like to work with people who have different ideas in a positive way. But 
when it comes to protecting our air, our food, our water, I cannot 
sacrifice America's values and America's future, or America's health and 
safety. It is important to remember--let me say again, as so many have 
said--that this current state of affairs that we have endured for over a 
year now is a drastic aberration from the pattern of a previous 
generation.
    When Jim Florio was in Congress working with Senator Lautenberg and 
Congressman Torricelli and others on the Superfund legislation, people 
knew that these were things Republicans and Democrats did together 
because it was good for America. The natural blessings God gave this 
country were not given to Democrats or Republicans because of their 
political party. They were given to people who live on this particular 
piece of God's good Earth, and we had better go back to protecting them 
together.
    Robert Frost once wrote, ``The land was ours before we were the 
land. Our environment is fundamentally us. Its well-being is ours. And 
when we revitalize it we nourish our souls and restore our 
communities.'' I thank you for coming here today. I thank you for your 
good citizenship. I ask you in this coming year to exercise that 
citizenship to make sure that when we leave this Earth it is cleaner and 
fresher and purer than we found it. That is our fundamental obligation.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:45 p.m. in the Rothman Center Auditorium 
at Fairleigh Dickinson University. In his remarks, he referred to Frank 
Mertz, president, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Mayor John F. Zisa 
of Hackensack.