[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 32 (Monday, August 12, 1996)]
[Pages 1432-1436]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Community in the Port of Long Beach, California

August 8, 1996

    The President. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, 
Kevin. Boy, he did a good job, didn't he? Just like he's been doing it 
all his life. If he could get a leave, I'd just take him with me. We'd 
make an act of it. We'd go on the road. [Laughter] Thank you for your 
work and for your example.
    Thank you, mayor. It's great to be here with you again. It's great 
to be back in Long Beach. Thank you, Leland Wong, for what you said and 
for your work. Thank you, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis. Thank you, Kathleen 
Connell, our State comptroller. Thank you, Long Beach Harbor Commission 
President George Murchison. And I'm glad to be here with Rick Zbur, who 
wants to go to Congress. Thank you very much. We're glad to see you, 
sir.
    I'd like to thank the members of the Long Beach Harbor Commission 
and the Long Beach council and the Los Angeles council who are here. 
I've been given some names, I'm going to say them. If I miss somebody 
it's all my fault. [Laughter] But I think Nate Holden and Richard 
Alarcon are here from Los Angeles. And Carmen Perez who is on the Long 
Beach Harbor Commission; Long Beach Councilman Del Roosevelt, and Long 
Beach council member Jennie Orapreza are

[[Page 1433]]

here. Thank you very much. Long Beach City Attorney James Hahn. And 
someone told me--Los Angeles--I'm sorry. [Laughter] I don't want to put 
my glasses on, I'm too vain. I can't read--[laughter]. I've also been 
told that a friend of mine, a former Congresswoman from New York, 
Shirley Chisholm, is here in the audience. Shirley, are you here 
somewhere? Somebody told me--I know she's here somewhere. Thank you for 
being here.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to be back here today, glad to be 
back to celebrate the successes of this port, the success of California 
in coming back, and to say this is only the beginning. The best is yet 
to come.
    We are proud of the leadership of Mayor Riordan and Mayor O'Neill 
and others in the resurgence of these ports. They are the largest in our 
Nation, as has already been said. But they are your gateway to the 
future.
    I am especially proud of the work that Long Beach has done in 
dealing with the consequences of the base closing. I thank the Navy for 
their service here and their contributions here for so very many years. 
I know what a blow the base closing decision was. I know how you can 
take that kind of blow; I've been knocked flat on my back a time or two 
in my life. And I was, frankly, inspired by the determination, the 
energy, the vigor, and the vision of the plan that the people of Long 
Beach put together to bring this community back. It's going to work, and 
we're going to help you, and you're going to make it.
    At the time I took office I was very concerned that our country was 
not going to be prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. I was 
concerned that we had the slowest job growth since the Depression. I was 
concerned that communities in California and throughout the country that 
had been hurt by base closings and other economic adversity were not 
being helped to develop strategies to recover and rebound in the move 
into the future. I was concerned that our deficit was at an all-time 
high and growing. I was concerned that so many great American industries 
that I knew could compete and win in the global economy seemed to be 
falling behind.
    I've got a simple vision. You know, when we had the previous 
speakers I was sitting here thinking about every one of them and what 
they were saying and what it meant. And then in the end, Kevin sort of 
put it all on the line when he said he was doing his work so that his 
son and future generations would do better.
    I have a very simple vision for our country----
    Audience member. What about a tax cut?
    The President. ----as we enter the 21st century. One is----
    Audience member. Tax cut?
    The President. You know, we believe in the first amendment here. 
I'll be glad to answer your questions but they came here to hear me, 
so--[applause]. Thank you. But I will tell you, I'll give you an answer 
if you'll stop screaming and listen. Number one, after I got elected, it 
turned out the deficit was a lot bigger than we were told, and I thought 
getting the deficit down, getting interest rates down, and getting this 
economy back on its feet was the most important thing.
    Number two----
    Audience member. [Inaudible].
    The President. Now, wait a minute, stop screaming. I'm not through 
yet. [Laughter] I want you all to listen to this because you'll have a 
chance to tell this again, and I want you to do it before it's over. 
[Laughter] Number two, in this country today the average family of four 
with an income of under $30,000 will have a tax bill $1,000 lower than 
it was when I took office. That's not the whole middle class, but that's 
a big chunk of it, and they're better off because of our plan.
    Number three, 90 percent--nine-zero--90 percent of the people who 
own small businesses in this country have lower taxes because of the '93 
economic plan.
    Number four, if my version of the balanced budget had passed instead 
of their version, which had excessive cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, 
education, and the environment, over half--up to 60 to 70 percent of the 
American people would have had a tax reduction, and one we could afford, 
that would have still allowed us to balance the budget without hurting 
the future of Ameri- 

[[Page 1434]]

ca. So that's my answer to your question. Now I'd like to go on to the 
speech.
    I'm kind of glad you asked, and I hope you'll find some more of your 
troops to seed some more of our rallies. [Laughter] And then we'll get 
more truth out to the American people. It would be a better election as 
a result. Thank you very much.
    Now, where are we? [Laughter] Let me go back to where I started. 
That's politics. Let's talk about the future. What's it going to look 
like when our children are our age? What's it going to look like when 
our grandchildren are our age? That's the real question. I believe that 
we ought to go into the next century with three simple things on our 
mind, three things. And you ought to ask yourself whether you agree. You 
may not agree with all three of them.
    One is, every person in this country, who is willing to work for it, 
without regard to their race, their gender, their station in life, ought 
to have a chance, not a guarantee but a chance to live out their dreams.
    Two, we ought to be committed to the proposition that America will 
not be destroyed by the racial, religious, ethnic, and tribal tensions 
that are tearing the rest of the world up, that we're going to be 
stronger as a result of it. We're going to be stronger as a result of 
it.
    Number three, we ought to be committed, even though it costs money 
and it is sometimes difficult, to the proposition that America will 
remain the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity 
because a lot of the threats to our security----
    Audience member. [Inaudible].
    The President. ----terrorism, drugs, organized crime, are things 
that cross national lines.
    Don't pay any attention to those folks. [Laughter] We got a limit of 
one question for a rally here--interruption. [Laughter] The rest of you 
ought to be--if you want to talk to me, come around here later and stop 
screaming.
    Now, that's what we ought to be committed to. And I believe that if 
we are committed to it, we'll be better off. Now, let me ask you to 
think about this: When we started----
    Audience member. You're lying to the American people.
    The President. No, I'm not lying to the American people. Do we have 
10 million more jobs than we did under the previous President, or not? 
Yes. Do we have 4.5 million more homeowners and 10 million people that 
refinanced their home mortgages at lower rates? Do we have 1.3 million 
fewer people on welfare and a million and a half fewer people on food 
stamps? Yes. Has the crime rate gone down 4 years in a row?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. Did we stop the attempts to gut funding for education 
and the environment and to destroy the Medicare and Medicaid program? 
Yes.
    Now, those are true things. So we're in better shape than we were 4 
years ago. But what I want to say to you is, we've got a long way to go. 
We have to build on what we have done. And trade is one way we're going 
to do it.
    One of the biggest arguments we had in this country--and, frankly, 
it included people in both parties and people that belonged to neither 
party--was whether or not America could benefit from a world in which 
borders were more open and trade was more free. There were some who said 
that because we were a wealthy country and so many countries that were 
interested in trade were poorer than we were and worked for wages we 
couldn't live on, that we could never win if we had open borders and 
worked for freer trade. There were others who said that all we had to do 
was open our borders, and we didn't have to worry about anything else.
    We took a different view. Our view was, if we didn't try to trade 
more, we would get all the burdens of the future and none of the 
benefits, because you can't keep low-cost goods out of America that 
American consumers want to buy. But what we needed was both fair and 
free trade, rules that were fair, rules that gave our people, our 
workers a fair chance to prove they were the most productive in the 
world. And then we needed to get off our duffs and go out in the world 
and try to sell our products. That's what Ron Brown did, and that's what 
his lasting legacy will be: proving that Americans could compete and win 
with anybody in the world.
    Now, we proved that we were very competitive. The mayor mentioned 
that I was

[[Page 1435]]

here at the McDonnell-Douglas plant not very long ago. We have a 
partnership now with McDonnell-Douglas and Pratt & Whitney to produce 80 
more C-17 airplanes. They're the best transport plane in the world, the 
best ever produced by anybody. That will create 18,000 more jobs.
    We've worked hard on this base closing problem all over California. 
I was just up in Monterey County where Fort Ord has become the 
California State University at Monterey Bay. I was in the Presidio the 
other day, where a military base went from being a closed base to a 
national preserve and an environmental treasure for the whole United 
States of America. These things are things that can be done.
    The mayor mentioned Sea Launch a minute ago. That's an international 
project that was just announced by Boeing which will tap into the 
growing market of launching commercial satellites into space. The home 
port will be right here, and that's hundreds of more new, good paying 
jobs for the people of this area.
    So what I want to say to all of you is in the end our attitude 
toward the rest of the world will be determined in part by what the 
political leaders say and what our policies are and the things we 
advocate when we're having these debates. It matters that we started 
meeting for the first time with the leaders of the other Asian-Pacific 
countries--and I do it every year now--and we're broadening our trade 
there and committing them, as well as ourselves, to lowering trade 
barriers. It matters that we've continued and intensified our trade 
relationship with China. It matters that we set up an export development 
office down here to help you export more of your products to the rest of 
the world. That all matters.
    But in the end it matters what you want to do. If you believe in it, 
then you will support what we're trying to do in the Alameda Corridor 
project. You'll make it a reality because you know it will generate more 
jobs by reaching out to the world than by walking away from it.
    You've been kind enough today to compliment two people who were very 
instrumental in this policy we pursued, the late Ron Brown and our 
former Trade Ambassador and newcomer, Secretary Mickey Kantor, who is 
from southern California. I'd also like to say that the Transportation 
Secretary, Federico Pena, has worked very hard to develop the financing 
and the plan for the Alameda Corridor project. Building that corridor 
will create 10,000 more good paying jobs for the people of this area and 
will generate an enormous amount of economic activity in the future.
    So I want to thank all them. But mostly, I want to thank you for 
looking outward. I want to thank Kevin for standing up here and saying 
with confidence that hardworking people in America can compete and win 
in the global economy. This will work.
    Listen to this: Between 1993 and 1995, California's exports 
increased--not the country's, California's exports--increased by $25 
billion. That's 200,000 more jobs in California just from exports. As 
many as 1 in 10 of your jobs are already related to international trade. 
Not only that, this is changing the nature of the jobs.
    When I took office, about 20 percent of our new jobs were in high-
wage industries. In 1995, more than 55 percent of the new jobs created 
in the United States paid above average wages, largely because they were 
in the industries and the activities of the future, and they were tied 
into global trade and our ability to be more productive and more 
competitive than anybody else in the things that we do well.
    You are going to benefit if you will continue to support this 
approach. This should be an American issue, not a Republican issue, not 
a Democratic issue. This should be something that we say as Americans 
we're committed to more trade both free and fair. And we are going to be 
aggressive in promoting our economic interests around the world. That 
will help us, but it will help others as well, because it will help 
other people to grow their economy and to be even better trading 
partners with us in the future.
    And we need you to take that position, not just the elected 
officials, you, people on the street, people doing the work, people 
whose children's lives are at stake. You must do these things. And if 
you do there is no stopping our country, and California is coming all 
the way back.

[[Page 1436]]

    Let me just make one other comment in closing. If all of you are 
like me--now, it was earlier out here, so you probably didn't have quite 
the pain that we went through on the east coast--but I lost a lot of 
sleep during the Olympics. [Laughter] Our family was up past midnight 
nearly every night, watching the very last event. And I got to thinking 
about that, about what we all love about the Olympics and about what was 
special about the American Olympic team. And I'd like to make----
    Audience member. [Inaudible].
    The President. Well, that's one thing, all right. [Laughter] I'd 
like to just make an observation about it to you.
    Why do you like the Olympics? I think one reason is--besides the 
fact that Americans are sports nuts and we all like athletics--I think 
we like the Olympics because they work the way we think the world ought 
to work. Everybody shows up, from the smallest island country, which has 
three or four athletes, to the largest delegation. They all accept the 
rules of the game. They're all treated with respect. Everybody has their 
chance. Everybody gives their best, and even the ones who don't win 
medals are better off for having tried. And when it's all over, people 
feel like they were part of something that was bigger than themselves. 
And that's really how we think the world ought to work.
    You think about it. You can't win a medal if you have somebody go 
break your opponent's legs the night before the contest. [Laughter] No 
one looks up to you if you stand up on a podium and bad-mouth your 
opponent and say how terrible they are, and they're liars, and they're 
no good and how sorry they are. Nobody thinks better of you when you do 
that, when you behave in that way. The only way you succeed is by 
reaching down deep inside for what is best inside you. And when you do 
that, it doesn't matter what's on the outside.
    Now, we think the world ought to work that way. And if you think 
about the American team--when Hillary and Chelsea and I had the profound 
honor of welcoming them to the White House yesterday or going to speak 
to them before the games began or just watching them compete, it 
occurred to me that if they took their USA jackets off and just wandered 
in the Olympic Village with the other athletes, they're the only crowd 
you wouldn't have any idea where they're from. [Laughter]
    You could see them, you could think, well, these athletes are from 
Africa, and these are from South America, and these are from Mexico, and 
these are from India, and these are from Pakistan, and these are from 
the Middle East, and these are from China, and these are from Japan, and 
these are from Scandinavia, and it turns out they're all from America. 
Because this country is not about race, it's about the Constitution, the 
Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and what we believe in. 
That's what it's about.
    And that's the last thing I want to tell you. I want you to think 
about this when you go home tonight. There were 197 different nations 
represented in the Olympics. Over 150 of those people are represented in 
this county, Los Angeles County.
    Now, that's the last thing I want to leave you with. If you want to 
create opportunity for everybody, if you want this country to lead the 
world, if you want to keep reaching out to the rest of the world, we 
have to prove to the rest of the world that you do not have to base a 
society on racial prejudice, ethnic prejudice, and looking down at other 
people. Let's lift people up and go forward together.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 6:35 p.m. at the Navy Mole at Long Beach 
Harbor. In his remarks, he referred to Kevin Schroeder, member, 
International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union; Mayor Beverly 
O'Neill of Long Beach; Leland Wong, president, Los Angeles Harbor 
Commission; and Rick Zbur, Democratic candidate for Congress in 
California's 38th Congressional District. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.