[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 35 (Monday, September 2, 1996)]
[Pages 1567-1571]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in Kalamazoo, Michigan

August 28, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Thank you so much.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. Thank you, thank you, thank you all for being here 
and for your wonderful reception. Thank you all way over here in the 
corner for being here in big numbers. And back here. I think we should 
begin by thanking the Western Michigan University Band. They've been 
wonderful to us today, and we thank you. Thank you very much.
    I want to thank Mayor Barbara Larson and the city and county 
officials who welcomed us here. I brought a lot of distinguished 
Michiganders with me: Congressman Bart Stupak and his wife, Laurie, from 
the Upper Peninsula; former Governor Blanchard, also our former 
Ambassador to Canada; Frank Garrison, the President of the AFL-CIO in 
Michigan; your Attorney General, Frank Kelley, and many others.
    I know that before I came here there was another program. I thank 
Beverly Moore for emceeing it. I thank Linda Comer for what she said and 
for being a teacher. I thank Tim Eder of the National Wildlife 
Federation, Michigan Chapter. That's a very important group and a very 
important part of our commitment to the environment in the future.
    Your congressional candidate, Clarence Annen. I'd also like to 
recognize a Paralympian who is here from your community, a medal winner 
in the national goal ball team, Sherry Gordon. Congratulations, Sherry. 
Where are you? There she is. Bless you. Congratulations.
    I know that I'm in Comstock Township, right? So I'd like to thank 
the supervisor, Joe VanBruggen for welcoming us here. And I'd like to 
thank Kristi Carabula, the county Democratic chair who helped to get a 
lot of you here. I thank her.
    I'd like to thank the community members who are here behind me. 
First, I want to recognize Representative Ed LaForge. Thank you, Ed, for 
being here with us. I see you've got some signs here.
    I want to thank these young people who are here with me today: the 
Comstock Boy Scout and Cub Scout Troop and Pack 221; Brownie Troop 624; 
the Comstock YWCA; community citizen leaders; prime-time program 
representatives; the Kalamazoo Recycle Rangers--I like that; that sounds 
good--Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center; Vicksburg High School 
Adventure Club and FFA; and the Kazoo School. Thank you all for being 
here.
    I want to thank my good friend, Senator Carl Levin, for being here 
today and supporting the environment in general, and for being America's 
number one fighter for the Great Lakes and uniform quality standards for 
the Great Lakes water.
    By the way, I'm sure you all know we've still got some work to do on 
that, so we can use 6 more years of Carl Levin to finish our work on the 
Great Lakes.
    I want to thank Katie McGinty, the Chair of our Environmental 
Council in the White House. She's done a wonderful job on this and many 
others things. And most of all, I

[[Page 1568]]

want to thank Mary Brown and her grandson Dan Cook.
    Now, to give you some idea in what happens to you when you're young 
as opposed to when you're old, I asked Dan Cook how old he was and he 
said, ``I'm 10.'' And I looked at him and I said, ``Now, Dan are you 
10?'' He said, ``Well, I'm almost 10.'' [Laughter] Well, I'm almost 49, 
too--[laughter]--in the reverse direction.
    There aren't many young people his age who could have spoken so well 
and so forcefully. Didn't he do a good job? Thank you very, very much, 
Dan. And thank you, Mary Brown, for your lifetime of commitment to the 
quality of the environment in your State and your area.
    Folks, you know, I've been on this train the last couple of days 
going through the heartland of America from West Virginia to Kentucky to 
Ohio to Michigan. Leaving you, I'm going on now to Michigan City, 
Indiana, and then I will fly to Chicago. I've been on this train for two 
reasons. First, I wanted to see people like you in the heartland of 
America, the people that really make this country go, the people I've 
been working for and fighting for for 4 years. But I also wanted to make 
the point that our train and our country are both on the right track to 
the 21st century.
    For 4 years, I have pursued a very straightforward strategy based on 
a vision of what our country ought to be like. When all these children 
who are in this audience spend most of their life in a new century, the 
world will be so different from the world people my age grew up in, 
different in how we work and live and relate to each other, very 
different in how we relate to the rest of the world, vastly, vastly 
increased opportunities, and significant new challenges. And I want us 
to go into that next century with every child in this country having the 
opportunity to live up to his or her God-given potential and live out 
their dreams. And I believe you want that, too.
    In order to do that, our country has to create more opportunity and 
receive more responsibility from all of our citizens. That's the basic 
bargain of America. Our country has to remain the world's strongest 
force for peace and freedom and prosperity. And I appreciate what Mary 
said about our role in the world. It's important for America to lead the 
world. It's important for Americans that we do. And most of all, our 
country has to come together as one community.
    All over the world--this morning as I do every morning, I started my 
work day with a review of the situation in the rest of the world. And I 
thought to myself, how much time have I spent as President dealing with 
problems created because other people could not get along and because 
they insisted on looking down on people that lived on the same piece of 
land they did because they had a different race, a different ethnic 
group, a different religion, they were of a different tribe.
    It happens in Africa and Rwanda and Burundi. It has consumed the 
Middle East for decades. It has consumed Northern Ireland for longer 
than that. It has rooted and caused butchery and slaughter in Bosnia we 
have worked so hard to end.
    Why do people do this? What is special about America? We say, this 
is not a country about race. This is not a country about religion. This 
is a country where, if you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of 
Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you are willing to show up 
tomorrow and be a good citizen it doesn't matter whatever else is 
special or unique or different about you; we're stronger for your 
difference; we're going forward together. And we have to have that 
commitment.
    Now, we manifest that commitment in many different ways. I was so 
moved at our convention in Chicago when Christopher Reeve talked about 
his tragic accident and his determination to overcome it. And he 
reminded us that we not only have to continue to invest in research to 
try to find answers to the problems that beset us, we also need to deal 
humanely and decently with people who have difficulties.
    Christopher Reeve came to see me in the White House, and he said, 
``Mr. President, I am so glad you fought to stop Congress from 
destroying the Medicaid program and ending its guarantee to the elderly 
in nursing homes, to poor children, and to people who have disabilities, 
because not everybody who gets a disability is a wealthy person. And 
even

[[Page 1569]]

wealthy people can be driven into poverty. And if it weren't for 
Medicaid, middle class families wouldn't be able to maintain their 
lifestyles.'' That's a part of our community.
    I have to tell you, when Tipper Gore was talking last night, I was 
proud of the fact that my friend and the Vice President's wife has 
spoken up for 20 years to try to protect our children from unhealthful, 
indeed, affirmatively harmful cultural influences that will make it more 
difficult for them to be successful people. That's a part of our 
community, trying to make it more possible for parents to transmit their 
own values, not somebody else's commercially driven values, to the 
children of our country. I was proud of that.
    And I was proud when my wife spoke last night at the convention and 
pointed out that we have been very fortunate in our lives. We've always 
had jobs where we could take time off when Chelsea needed us, but other 
working families need that same time off.
    We've always had the best sort of health insurance. And I was there 
when Chelsea was born in the delivery room and when we took her room, 
but Hillary had the need to stay in the hospital a little extra time. 
And it's wrong for women and their newborn babies to be thrown out of 
the hospital after a day if they're not ready to go home. They ought to 
be able to stay longer. That's a part of our community.
    We've had a good week in Washington right before we left for this 
convention. A lot of things were done that will create more opportunity, 
give us a chance to have more responsibility, and bring us together in a 
community. The minimum wage went up for 10 million people. Ninety 
percent of the small businesses in this country got a tax cut. We made 
it possible for people in small businesses to save for their retirement 
and for employees in small businesses to keep their retirement when they 
move from job to job. That's all important.
    We gave people a tax credit of $5,000 and more if there is a 
disability involved if they will adopt children. There are hundreds of 
thousands of children out there in this country that need good homes. We 
did that. That was good.
    We made 25 million Americans safer in their health care because we 
said ``You can't be denied health insurance anymore just because 
somebody in your family has been sick or because you changed jobs.'' 
That was a good thing for America.
    We also passed the Safe Drinking Water Act and the pesticide 
protection act to help improve the public health and the environment. 
And that was a great thing for America.
    That's what I've come here to talk to you about today. We cannot go 
forward together as a country, a country where it works for all of us, 
unless we have a shared commitment to protect the environment. And 
unless we want to protect everybody's environment, in the end, no matter 
how wealthy and powerful we are, the quality of our lives will be 
undermined.

[At this point, an audience member required medical attention.]

    The President. Do you need a doctor over there? Are you okay? Over 
here? Where's my medical team? We got to have somebody.
    Now, you think about that. It doesn't matter--I don't care if you 
have got a billion dollars, if you live in America, in the end, the 
quality of your life will be undermined unless we save the environment 
for everybody. We all have an interest in clean air and safe water and 
safe food and in preserving our national treasures.
    I can tell you this, compared to 4 years ago, there are tens of 
millions of people in America breathing cleaner air. We've cleaned up 
more toxic waste sites in 3 years than the previous administrations did 
in 12.
    We have revamped the meat and poultry inspection standards of this 
country for the first time in literally decades. We are moving in the 
right direction. We saved our national parks from an ill-advised 
congressional attempt to sell off some of them and underfund them. And 
that was a good thing.
    We saved Yellowstone, our Nation's first and great national treasure 
as a park, from the ravages of mining. And we are determined to do the 
same thing and save the Everglades in Florida. That's important to all 
of us.
    We have kicked dozens and dozens of dangerous chemicals out of the 
marketplace and quickly replaced them with safer substitutes. We have 
increased community's right to

[[Page 1570]]

know about what is in their community and what kinds of chemicals they 
are exposed to.
    All these things are important and they matter. And we're better off 
because of them. We've also changed the way we do a lot of our 
environmental work. We've streamlined rules and regulations, challenged 
businesses and communities to come together and stop fighting. We've 
emphasized results, not punishments and regulations. We are proving that 
you don't have to choose between a healthy environment and a healthy 
economy.
    In Michigan, we have worked very closely with the auto workers in 
the Big Three to develop a clean car that will get 3 times the mileage 
of the average car today for the 21st century in a way that will put 
money in the pockets of American consumers, increase the quality of our 
environment, and maintain the dominance of our auto industry in the 
world for decades to come. If we can succeed in the clean car, it will 
be a major step forward for the cleanness of our environment and for the 
security of the work right here in Michigan.
    But we have more to do. You all know we have more to do. You heard 
Mary's story of the work that is represented by this beautiful water 
behind us. And you know that a lot of these battles are won block by 
block, day by day. Carl Levin has been working on the Great Lakes for a 
very long time block by block, day by day, not just lake by lake, 
section by section. This is hard work. And we have more to do.
    I want an America in the year 2000 where no child should have to 
live near a toxic waste dump, where no parent should have to worry about 
the safety of a child's glass of water, and no neighborhood should be 
put in harm's way by pollution from a nearby factory.
    Today, I am calling for a new national commitment to help protect 
all communities from toxics by the year 2000. First, I am determined 
that finally we clean up the toxic waste sites that scar our landscape 
and threaten our neighborhoods.
    When I came into office, I vowed to strengthen and improve the 
Superfund's cleanups. In the last 3 years--in the last 3 years, not 
counting this year--we have cleaned up 197 toxic waste sites, more than 
in the previous 12 years. We're doing 3 times more a year than were done 
before.
    And we have done it while reducing the costs of these cleanups. The 
Kalamazoo River here is going to be cleaned up by polluters under your 
State's Superfund law. And some of the cleanup has not begun. But we 
have to keep working on this. We cannot slow down. We need to speed up 
the pace. These Superfund sites have been out there too long. And the 
longer they're there, the more danger there is that damage will be done. 
We must speed up the pace.
    I am here in Michigan because 10 million American children under the 
age of 12 live within four miles of a toxic waste dump. And an 
exceptional percentage of the children who live there are children from 
the State of Michigan. Michigan has more at stake in this initiative 
than any other State, but every State's children are affected by our 
success. We must press ahead.
    Today we must commit our Nation's willpower and resources to meet a 
clear goal. In the next 4 years we will clean up another 500 toxic waste 
sites, nearly double the pace of the Superfund cleanups. And by the year 
2000 we will clean up two-thirds, the two-thirds worst toxic waste dumps 
in the country. We will get them out of the neighborhoods where the 
children live. We will do it.

[At this point, an audience member required medical attention.]

    The President. We need another medical team over here. We need some 
water and my medical team over here, wherever they are. Here we go.
    Let me also say that our cities are full of what we call 
Brownfields, urban toxic waste sites. We have proved that they can be 
cleaned up and turned into homes for safe businesses that create jobs in 
areas that thought that they would never get any new jobs again. The 
most important thing that I am working on with the mayors of America 
today is cleaning up these Brownfields so we can create jobs in the 
city. Again I tell you, good environmental policy is good for the 
economy. It creates jobs. It creates a future for America, and we have 
to be prepared to do it.

[[Page 1571]]

    We must bring the full force of law to bear on polluters who are 
willfully jeopardizing the safety of our people. I am going to send to 
Congress an environmental crimes bill to make it a crime to attempt to 
pollute, that will give us the power to catch polluters before they 
poison the land. The bill will increase penalties for those who 
intentionally pump toxics into our neighborhoods where our children will 
be exposed. And it will enable us to hit polluters where it hurts. It 
will give prosecutors the power to freeze polluters' assets and require 
them to clean up their messes. That is perhaps the most important thing 
of all.
    We're also going to expand our community right-to-know law to make 
more information, practical information available to families easier and 
faster. Right-to-know will protect you here in communities like 
Kalamazoo because you can find out what's dangerous to your families. 
Once there is a right-to-know law, companies think twice about what they 
do. In the decades since we've passed the first one, businesses have 
reported reducing toxic emission by 43 percent. Right-to-know works. 
Don't be fooled about it. It makes a big difference.
    I have ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to give local 
environmental information to communities, including putting it on-line 
where it will be handy to computers, in one place by the year 2000. So 
that a parent could go to the local library or go to a school or just 
turn on a computer and immediately find out the chemicals in your 
community to which your children are exposed. That is a powerful early 
warning system. And it will help grassroots environmental activism clean 
the environment even more.
    Finally, let me say, we have to take further steps to stop toxics 
from getting into our drinking water. I signed an Executive order that 
directs every Federal agency that's appropriate to join in our effort to 
crack down on those who would poison the waters and make them pay to 
clean it up. I want to see to it that Congress fully funds the Safe 
Drinking Water Act we just signed into law last month.
    And in particular, I've made a commitment in my balanced budget plan 
to work with Carl Levin and others to continue to improve the quality of 
the Great Lakes. We've worked hard to carry out the Great Lakes water 
quality initiative, which Senator Levin did so much to bring about and 
we'll keep right on doing it.
    We are blessed with magnificent natural resources. Every time our 
family goes on vacation in a National Park, I thank God again for the 
good fortune of being an American and for all the blessings we've been 
given just by the grace of God. But I'll tell you, we've been given it; 
it's up to us to do the right things with it.
    We have learned some fundamental things. Not only do you not have to 
hurt the economy to protect the environment--what difference does it 
make if you have money if you don't have clean water, clean air, a good 
natural environment, safe food, and a good public health system?
    And finally, we now know that this is not a negative thing. We now 
know that one of the most effective ways to create good, high-wage jobs 
in the 21st century is to invest in research, in technology, and in 
protecting the environment. That is the direction we're going to take 
and that will keep us right on track for the 21st century.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:30 p.m. at Merrill Park. In his remarks, 
he referred to Beverly Moore, former mayor of Kalamazoo; Linda Comer, 
principal, Lincoln Magnet School; Michigan State representative, Ed 
LaForge; and former Michigan State representative, Mary Brown.