[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 6 (Monday, February 10, 1997)]
[Pages 152-155]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast

February 6, 1997

    Thank you very much, Congressman Barrett. I want to thank you for 
making it possible for me to follow Dr. Carson. [Laughter] And that 
business about worrying about whether the Secret Service would take you 
away if you talked too long--if that were true I wouldn't be here today. 
I'd be long gone. [Laughter] That biochemical description of--I got a 
real problem; I can't remember my home phone number anymore. [Laughter]
    Senator Akaka, Mr. Speaker, Congressman Gephardt; to all the Members 
of Congress and the Governors who are here and our leaders and visitors 
from other lands and ministers and citizens from the United States. I've 
had a wonderful day today. I would like not to pour cold water on the 
day, but just as you go through the day I would like to ask all of you 
to remember the heartbreaking loss that our friends in Israel have 
sustained in the last couple of days with 73 of their finest young 
soldiers dying in that horrible accident in the air.
    I would like to also say that, like all of you, I was very elevated 
by this experience, as I always am. I thought Dr. Carson was wonderful. 
I thought the Scriptures were well chosen. I appreciate Doug Coe and all 
the people who work on the prayer breakfast so much. I would like to 
just say a couple of things very briefly.
    In my Inaugural Address and again in my State of the Union, I quoted 
Isaiah 58:12,

[[Page 153]]

which Reverend Robert Schuller sent to me a few days before I started my 
second term, to remind us that we should all be repairers of the breach. 
And it's a very moving thing. And basically the political press here 
read it in the proper way; they said Clinton wants the Republicans and 
Democrats to make nice to each other and do constructive things.
    But then I got to thinking about who is it that's in the breach. Who 
has fallen between the cracks? What is--if we repaired the breach, who 
would we be lifting out of the hole? And very briefly, I'd like to just 
mention three things and to ask you not only to pray for these three 
groups of people but also to do something about it. I don't know about 
you, but whenever I hear somebody like Dr. Carson speak, I can clap 
better than anybody in the audience. Then the next day, when I get up 
and try to live by what he said I was supposed to do, it turned out to 
be harder than it was to clap. So I would like to ask you to think about 
who is in the breach, if we're supposed to be repairers of the breach.
    The first group of people that are in the breach are the poor in 
America, and they're different than they used to be. When I was a boy, 
most poor people were old. In 1995, we learned last year, we had the 
lowest rate of poverty among older Americans in the history of the 
country. We have succeeded in taking them out of poverty, virtually all 
of them. We should be proud of that and grateful.
    Today almost all the poor are young, very young people without much 
education, a lot of mothers like Dr. Carson's mother, struggling, doing 
the best they can to raise their kids. We just passed this welfare 
reform bill which I signed and voted for because I believed it. And we 
did it because we believed that the welfare system had gone from being a 
system that helped the poor to help themselves to move off welfare, to a 
system that trapped people because the family unit has changed. And 
there are so many single parents out there having children, and there 
isn't the stigma on it there used to be. And a lot of people now seem to 
be stuck on that system from generation to generation. So we changed 
it--we didn't change it; we tore it down. We threw it away. We said, 
``There's no longer a national guarantee that you can always get a check 
from the Government just because you're poor and you've got little 
babies in your home. Now the kids can have health care and we'll give 
them food, but you don't get an income check every month. And you've got 
to go to work if you're able to.''
    So the people that are in the breach are the people that we say have 
to go to work, who want to go to work, who can't go to work. And you 
have to help us repair the breach. Two and a quarter million people 
moved off the welfare rolls in the last 4 years. A million of them, more 
or less, were adults who went to work; the others were their children--a 
million out of 11 million new jobs created.
    In the next 4 years, there's about, more or less, 10 million more 
people left on welfare, about 3.5 million adults, maybe 4, most of them 
able-bodied. And all of them are supposed to lose their benefits if 
they're able-bodied after 2 years unless they go to work. Where are they 
going to get the jobs? You're going to have to give them, private 
employers, churches, community nonprofits.
    I see the Governor of Michigan, the Governor of North Dakota here; 
they can actually take the welfare check and give it to you now as an 
employment or a training subsidy or to help you deal with transportation 
or child care or whatever. But you better hire them. And if you don't, 
this whole thing will be a fraud, and we will not have repaired the 
breach. And all that we dreamed of doing, which is to create more Dr. 
Carsons out of those children of welfare recipients, will go down the 
drain because we come to places like this and clap for people like him 
and then we get up tomorrow morning and we don't repair the breach and 
do what we're supposed to do. And I need you to help.
    The second people who have fallen between the cracks are people 
around the world who are in trouble that we could help without troubling 
ourselves very much. I'm proud of what our country has done in Bosnia 
and the Balkans--you should be, too--in the Middle East, in Haiti, to 
help our neighbors in Mexico. Impulses--the American people are 
generous. I want to thank the Speaker for supporting me when only 15 
percent of the American people thought we were right when we tried to 
help our friends in Mexico.

[[Page 154]]

Thank goodness they proved us right, Mr. Speaker, otherwise we might be 
out in the south 40 somewhere today.
    But still our country has this idea that somehow it demeans us to 
pay our dues to the United Nations or to participate in the World Bank 
or--there's lots of things more important than that--or just to give 
Secretary Albright, who's here, the basic tools of diplomacy. This is an 
interdependent world. We can get a long way with having the finest 
defense in the world, but we also have to help people become what they 
can be.
    So I ask you to think about that. We're not talking about spending a 
lot of money here. It's only one percent of our budget. But we can't 
walk away from our obligations to the rest of the world. We can be a 
model for the rest of the world, but we also know that we have to model 
the behavior we advocate, which is to give a helping hand when we can.
    The third people who are in the breach and are in a deep hole and 
need to be lifted up are the politicians. And we need your help. We need 
your help. And some members of the press, they're in that breach with 
us, too, and they need your help. [Laughter]
    This is funny, but I'm serious now. And tomorrow, I want you to 
wake--I want you to laugh today and wake up and be serious tomorrow. 
This town is gripped with people who are self-righteous, sanctimonious, 
and hypocritical; all of us are that way sometimes. I plead guilty, from 
time to time. We also tend to get--we spend an enormous amount of time 
here in Washington trying to get even. And it doesn't matter who started 
it.
    I remember when I came here one time, I got so mad at our friends in 
the Congress and the Republican Party because they were real mean to me 
over something. I went back to the White House, and I asked somebody who 
had been there a while in Washington, and I said, ``Now, why in the 
world did they do that?'' They said, ``It's payback time.'' I said, 
``What do you mean?'' They said, ``Well, they think the Democrats in 
Congress did this to Republican Presidents.'' I said, ``I didn't even 
live here then; why are they paying me back?'' They said, ``Oh, you 
don't understand. You've just got to pay back.''
    So then, pretty soon I was behaving that way. I'd wake up in the 
morning, and my heart was getting a little harder. ``Now, who can I get 
even with?'' You think--this happens to you, doesn't it? Who can I get 
even with? And sometimes you can't get even with the person that really 
did it to you, so you just go find somebody else, because you've got to 
get even with somebody. Pretty soon, everybody's involved in this great 
act.
    You know how cynical the press is about the politicians, you know. 
They think we're all whatever they think. What you should know is that 
the politicians have now become just as cynical about the press, because 
cynicism breeds cynicism.
    We're in a world of hurt. We need help. We are in the breach. We are 
in the hole here. This country has the most astonishing opportunity we 
have ever had. We happen to be faced with this time of great change and 
challenge. We're going into this enormous new world. And instead of 
going into it hobbled with economic distress or foreign pressures, we 
are free of any threat to our existence and our economy is booming. And 
it's like somebody said, here's this brave new world, and I'm going to 
let you prepare for it and walk into it in the best shape you've ever 
been in. And instead of doing that, half of us want to sit down, and the 
other half of us want to get in a fight with each other. We are in the 
breach. And we need you to help us get out of it.
    The United States is better than that. We owe more than that to our 
people, to our future, and to the world. We owe more than that to our 
heritage, to everybody from George Washington on that made us what we 
are today. And cynicism and all this negative stuff is just sort of a 
cheap excuse for not doing your best with your life. And it's not a very 
pleasant way to live, frankly--not even any fun.
    I try to tell everybody around the White House all the time, I have 
concluded a few things in my life, and one of them is that you don't 
ever get even. The harder you try, the more frustrated you're going to 
be, because nobody ever gets even. And when you do, you're not really 
happy. You don't feel fulfilled.

[[Page 155]]

    So I ask you to pray for us. I went to church last Sunday where 
Hillary and I always go, at the Foundry Methodist Church, and the pastor 
gave a sermon on Romans 12:16-21 and a few other verses. But I'm going 
to quote the relevant chapters. ``Do not be wise in your own 
estimation.'' It's hard to find anybody here that can fit that. ``Never 
pay back evil for evil to anyone.'' ``If possible, so far, as it depends 
upon you, be at peace with all men.'' ``Never take your own vengeance.'' 
``If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a 
drink.'' ``Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.''
    Pray for the people in public office that we can rid ourselves of 
this toxic atmosphere of cynicism and embrace with joy and gratitude 
this phenomenal opportunity and responsibility before us. Do not forget 
people in the rest of the world who depend upon the United States for 
more than exhortation, and most of all, remember that in every Scripture 
of every faith, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 
admonitions not to forget those among us who are poor. They are no 
longer entitled to a handout, but they surely deserve, and we are 
ordered to give them, a hand up.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9:28 a.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel. 
In his remarks, he referred to Representative Bill Barrett, chairman, 
1997 National Prayer Breakfast; Dr. Ben Carson, director of pediatric 
neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital; and Doug Coe, who helped 
organize the event.