[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 31 (Monday, August 4, 1997)]
[Pages 1136-1138]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Lake Tahoe Community in Incline Village

July 26, 1997

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Nakada, for making us so welcome 
today. I must tell you that we have had a wonderful, wonderful day. I 
only wish that the rest of my family could be here. They'll be very 
jealous when I give them a report on what I saw and what I did today.
    The Vice President and I are grateful to all the Members of Congress 
who joined us, including, of course, Senator Bryan and Senator Reid and 
Senator Boxer who are here with us. And a special thanks to Senator Reid 
for coming up with the idea and getting us committed to this months ago. 
It's been a very good thing, I think, this whole summit.
    I want to thank Governor Miller for his leadership on this issue. 
He's my former colleague. I'm going to be back in Nevada just the day 
after tomorrow at the Governor's conference, which you are hosting, and 
you should be very proud of the record that he's built and the things 
that he's done here. I certainly am.
    I want to thank all of you for showing up. This is sort of the icing 
on the cake. I didn't realize you would be here until a few minutes ago. 
And I thank all the lacrosse players for letting us land on your field. 
I want to thank the AmeriCorps volunteers for being here, for what you 
do.
    I want to be very brief, but I want you to be serious just for a 
minute and think about the fact that we are only 3 years away from a new 
century and a new millennium, that we are very fortunate in the present 
condition of our economy and in many other

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ways, but that we have to have a strategy for going into the future and 
going into the future together.
    I told the people at that summit today that there were three things 
that I took away from this experience. One is that the United States has 
a responsibility to help people who are trying so hard to help 
themselves to save Lake Tahoe, and we will spend over $50 million in the 
next 2 years to do our part. The second point is that we can grow the 
economy and preserve the environment, and they are two sides of the same 
coin, not inevitably in conflict, and people here have proved that. But 
the third, and in some ways maybe the most important of all, is that by 
getting together across lines that divided people--whether they're 
business people versus environmentalists, Republicans against Democrats, 
you know whatever the dividing lines are--and saying, ``We've got to 
save this lake and we've got to do this together and we've got to find a 
way to do it together and to agree on how we're going to

do it,'' you have shown the way to how we have to make a lot of our 
decisions as we move into this new century.

    I very much believe that our best days are ahead of us. I've worked 
hard with the Vice President and our friends and allies to create a 
country in which there is opportunity for everybody responsible enough 
to work for it; a country in which we're coming together as a community, 
not being divided by our diversity; and a nation that's still leading 
the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity.
    And I'm proud of the fact that we now have the strongest economy in 
a generation and the strongest economy in the world; that we've had 
years of declining--[applause]--that we've had years of steadily 
declining crime rates; that the deficit is now 80 percent lower than it 
was the day I took office; that we've had the biggest drop in welfare 
rolls in the history of the Republic. I'm proud of all those things.
    The Secretary of the Interior told me a few months ago that we have 
protected or set aside more acres in public trust than at any time in 
the history of the United States, except under the Presidencies of 
Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. I'm proud of that. But you and I know 
that we have a lot of challenges ahead, and we cannot--we cannot--allow 
ourselves to be imprisoned by the thought patterns or the way of doing 
things of the past. We cannot believe that our old conflicts have to be 
carried into a new century. We cannot believe that our old false choices 
have to be carried into a new century. We can't be forced to choose 
between the economy and the environment. That's a dumb choice. We have 
to find a way working together across the lines that divide us to 
achieve both prosperity and preservation of our most sacred gift from 
God.
    We are becoming by far the most diverse democracy in the history of 
humanity. We cannot be forced to choose between not only respecting but 
celebrating our diversity and still saying, we are one America, after 
all, bound together by shared values and a common future for our 
children. We can't be forced into that division. If you wonder what 
happens when you do that, you have only to look at Bosnia, the Middle 
East, Northern Ireland, and countless other places around the world. We 
don't want to make that choice.
    So I can now go all across America and point to what I have seen in 
Lake Tahoe and how people at the local level came together across lines 
that divided them for years to do something that was good and noble and, 
by the way, in their self-interest, to create a better and a brighter 
future for our children. And that's how we ought to do other things in 
America. That's why I appreciate the citizen service of these young 
AmeriCorps volunteers. And that's why I am determined to stay on this 
path. That's why the people working for the Vice President and me are 
back on this beautiful Saturday laboring away with Members of the 
Congress, trying to reach an accord that will both balance the budget 
and give Americans a tax cut we can afford and invest more in education 
and the health care of our children than we've done since 1965. Because 
I believe if we're willing to really think in new ways and reach out to 
people across the lines that divided us, the best days of this country 
are still ahead. I want you to believe that. I want you to work for 
that. I want you to do your part to save Lake Tahoe. It's not enough to 
stop the degradation; we have to

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reverse some of it. And we can do that if we all work together. And I 
want you to commit yourselves to take the model that is working for 
Tahoe into other areas of your lives, because I want to be able to go 
around this country and say, don't tell me that we can't get along and 
work together and do better; I have seen it in Lake Tahoe.
    Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:55 p.m. at the Village Green Soccer 
Field. In his remarks, he referred to Jim Nakada, board of trustees 
chairman, Incline Village General Improvement District.