[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 39 (Monday, September 30, 1996)]
[Pages 1874-1876]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Signing the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and 
Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 1997

September 26, 1996

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Tipper; thank you, ladies and 
gentlemen. To the Members of Congress who are here, all the advocates of 
the various profoundly important issues in this bill, thank you for 
being here.
    This is truly a landmark day in our efforts to strengthen our 
families, our community, and our future. We have worked very hard here 
for 4 years to create in America a sense that there should be 
opportunity for everybody, responsibility from every citizen, and a 
strong sense of community. We should work together to help each other 
make the most of our own lives.
    Today, with this legislation, we are truly upholding the basic 
American value of community. We're helping parents to care for their 
children, honoring those who have served our country in the military, 
encouraging our young people to serve in their communities, and living 
up to the duties we owe to one another. By ensuring 48-hour hospital 
stays for mothers and newborns, battling discrimination against mental 
illness, caring for children of veterans who suffer from a terrible 
disease, we affirm that we will do everything we can to strengthen our 
families and build a stronger future.
    We also build a stronger future and a stronger community through 
service. I want to especially thank the Congress for reinforcing our 
national service initiative, AmeriCorps, in this bill. It helps young 
people earn their way through college, makes our streets safer, cleans 
our environment, and soon, with even greater focus, our AmeriCorps 
volunteers will be working with parents and teachers to make sure all of 
our young children can read.
    We build a stronger community when we keep our environment clean and 
safe. This legislation gives the Environmental Protection Agency the 
resources to protect our air and water, to carry forward our brownfields 
urban toxic waste initiative, to build on our record pace of toxic waste 
cleanups, to see to it that our children live near parks, not poison. We 
will continue to seek additional resources for these and a few other 
areas in our ongoing budget negotiations.
    We also build a stronger America when we invest and create jobs 
anywhere in our country. This bill will expand the community development 
banks that help to start businesses in poor neighborhoods. They have 
worked all over the world; they have worked in America; they can work to 
bring free enterprise opportunity to people who have been denied it for 
too long.
    The bill allows the Department of Housing and Urban Development to 
accelerate the demolition of the Nation's worst public housing projects 
as well and to replace them with more livable housing. It gives HUD the 
tools to evict gang members and drug dealers so that public housing is 
available only to those who are law-abiding citizens of our country. And 
I want to thank Secretary Cisneros for his historic efforts in all these 
areas as well as in battling the homelessness problem in our country. 
Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
    This bill reinforces our American community by enabling the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency to do its job for people in tough times. It 
helps us to chart new horizons by enabling NASA to continue the work of 
space exploration. It helps our families to grow stronger as well by 
requiring better access to health care.
    We are making progress on that front, as we all know. Last month I 
was pleased to sign here the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill which guarantees 
that Americans do not lose their coverage if someone in their family has 
been sick or if they change jobs. This bill goes further. As has been 
said, it does end drive-through deliveries. Parents may rush to the 
hospital, but they shouldn't be rushed out of it unless it's the 
medically right thing to do for the parent and the child.
    This law is common sense and now it will be the law of the land. I 
want to thank Congress for passing this important legislation. I thank, 
especially, Senator Bradley and Senator Frist; I thank Congressman 
Dingell and the other Members of the House who were involved in this 
important effort.

[[Page 1875]]

    The second thing this bill does is to require insurance companies to 
set the same annual and lifetime coverage limits for mental illness that 
now apply to physical illness. No more double standards; it's time that 
law and insurance practices caught up with science.
    I think that the last statement Tipper Gore made in many ways is the 
most important. I am convinced that the more we deal with this issue, 
the more we will come to see all kinds of medical problems as part of a 
seamless web, not easily divisible into mental and physical categories. 
The more we learn, the more we will know that.
    Today, we try to bring our institutional response to those 
challenges up to what we now know and what we also know is morally 
right. I want to thank Tipper Gore for her passionate, persistent, 
unrelenting advocacy of this position to the President and others. When 
I walked up here--you know, there's always a marked contrast when you 
see someone happy and you see someone sad. I know no one in whom the 
contrast is more marked. I would do anything to see Tipper Gore as happy 
as she was today. [Laughter] She has fought for all of you who believe 
in this position.
    I would also like to say a very personal word of thanks for the 
quiet and courageous dignity with which Senator Domenici and Senator 
Wellstone have brought to bear their own life's experience on this great 
endeavor. They have made a profound impact on me and on their colleagues 
and on our country at some considerable effort to themselves, and I 
thank them very much for it. Thank you.
    Finally, I am very, very proud that this legislation will protect 
the families of Vietnam veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange, for 
too many of these brave soldiers have suffered illness as a result of 
their service, and now we know that, for many of them, the health 
effects were also passed along to their children. That is more than 
anyone can ask in terms of service to nation.
    This legislation says that the children of those veterans exposed to 
Agent Orange who have the birth defect known as spina bifida will 
receive health care and rehabilitation under our disability system. The 
children of our soldiers should not have to suffer for the sacrifice of 
their parents. I want to thank all the Senators who are here who worked 
so hard on this. I want to thank Representative Lane Evans of Illinois 
and Senators Daschle and Rockefeller, who were also active in that 
endeavor.
    This is a very good thing we do today, but it is long overdue. And I 
thank the representatives of all the veterans' groups who are here today 
as well for their service and their persistence in this matter. This 
legislation proves that we can make progress when we all put politics 
aside and join across party lines to get the job done for our country.
    Before I sign the bill into law, I want to give you some more good 
news that proves if we all work for opportunity, responsibility, and a 
stronger American community, we'll be a better country.
    Just before I came out here this morning, the annual census study of 
incomes for 1995 was released. The news is remarkably good, and I'd like 
to share it with you. In one year, median household income was up $898 
after inflation. That's the biggest increase in a decade. Over the last 
2 years, the typical American family has seen its income rise $1,600 
over inflation. After two decades of increasing inequality, these gains 
were finally shared by people at every income level for the second year 
in a row. We have had the largest decline in the inequality of incomes 
in America in 27 years.
    There are also 1.6 million fewer people in poverty. That is also the 
biggest drop in 27 years. Poverty among elderly Americans has fallen to 
its lowest level in history. Poverty among African-Americans has fallen 
to its lowest level in history. With 10\1/2\ million new jobs, the 
lowest unemployment in 7\1/2\ years, a 60 percent reduction in the 
deficit, the lowest combined rates of unemployment, inflation, and 
mortgage rates in nearly three decades, it is clear that we are moving 
on the right track.
    Today it is clear that more and more of our people are sharing in 
that prosperity. We are growing and growing together, and I am convinced 
that for us to keep the American dream alive into the 21st century for 
all Americans, we must grow and grow together. That, too, is good news 
for our American community.

[[Page 1876]]

    And so, ladies and gentlemen, let me say again, I thank all of you 
who are responsible for this legislation. I thank all the hard-working 
Americans, the business leaders, the labor leaders, the working people 
of this country. I thank our economic team and others who have worked to 
construct an economic direction for America that will permit us to grow 
together. This is a good day for our country.
    If we keep our economy strong, if we educate our young people, if we 
protect our environment, and if we fulfill our responsibilities to one 
another, then we will build that bridge to the 21st century I've been 
talking about, and our best days are still ahead. No one who heard what 
was said today and saw these families and looked at these Members of 
Congress standing together and working together for America's benefit 
could be anything but optimistic about that future.
    It is now my honor to sign this legislation. And I'd like to ask the 
Members and the families who are here to join us up here on the platform 
so we can sign the bill.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:25 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. H.R. 3666, approved September 26, was assigned Public Law No. 
104-204.