[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 18 (Monday, May 10, 1999)]
[Pages 826-828]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Departure for Houston, Texas, and an Exchange With Reporters

May 7, 1999

    The President. Good morning. Tomorrow I will be visiting some of the 
communities that were so terribly damaged by the tornadoes this week. 
Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Oklahoma, Kansas, and 
Texas, with the people of Tennessee who also endured terrible storms and 
destruction.
    Before I leave, I'd like to make comments on a couple of other 
matters. First, on the new economic report issued today: We received 
more good news for our working families. Unemployment is 4.3 percent, 
with 234,000 new jobs added last month alone. African-American 
unemployment is at its lowest level on record. And real wages, after 
declining 4.3 percent in the 12 years before I took office, have now 
risen over 6 percent in the last 6 years. The American economy continues 
to see a remarkable combination of strong growth, job creation, and low 
inflation. Our economic strategy continues to be the right strategy for 
prosperity, and it is the one we should follow as we work to strengthen 
Social Security and Medicare for the 21st century.
    It's worth remembering that the move from economic stagnation to 
sustained prosperity is not the only turnaround our Nation has seen in 
the last 6 years. We also see the crime rate falling, the welfare rolls 
falling, the teen pregnancy rate falling, drunk driving going down, a 
host of other social ills now easing, even though for so long they 
seemed destined only to worsen.
    The American people, in homes and communities all across this 
country, are working hard at the grassroots level to turn around

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every one of these social problems, and others are doing their part. 
That is the kind of national commitment we need to protect our children 
from violence. I believe, more than anything else, we need a grassroots 
effort which involves every single American, from the White House down 
to the smallest community, a national campaign that draws out everyone's 
commitment, all our resources, and depends upon everyone taking 
responsibility.
    On Monday, as you know, we'll have a White House meeting here, a 
strategy session to seek out the best ideas for this effort, from people 
who can really make a difference, parents and young people, teachers and 
religious leaders, law enforcement, gun manufacturers, representatives 
of the entertainment industry, and those of us here in Government. 
Together, we will talk about how we can shield children from gratuitous 
violence, keep parents involved in their children's lives, reach out to 
troubled young people early enough, and do more to keep guns out of 
their reach.
    We will not ask who takes the blame but how we can all take 
responsibility, and I will challenge everyone there and everyone in 
America to do their part. We know this kind of sustained, organized 
effort can work. Let me just give you one example. Four years ago, I 
asked for a national campaign to reduce teen pregnancy. Today, under the 
leadership of Governor Tom Kean, former Governor of New Jersey and now 
the president of Drew University, that campaign is finding what works, 
spreading it to other communities, working with the media to send the 
right message to our children.
    Two years ago, I called for a national effort by businesses to hire 
people off welfare, to make sure the welfare reform effort would work. 
Today, under the leadership of Eli Segal, the Welfare to Work 
partnership has grown to 10,000 companies that have helped us move more 
than 400,000 people from the welfare rolls to the job rolls.
    Time and again, we have seen when citizens, businesses, communities, 
nonprofits, and government take responsibility to work together, we can 
overcome any challenge. We are turning the tide on all kinds of social 
problems. Now we must turn our intense efforts to this issue of 
violence. We have remarkable Americans who have been working on it for 
sometime now, with real success in community after community; you will 
hear from them on Monday. But obviously, in the aftermath of what 
happened in Colorado and the school shootings of the last 2 years, we 
have to do more. I'm very much looking forward to this meeting and to 
getting to work with Americans all over our country to give our children 
the safe childhoods they deserve.
    Thank you very much.

Military Pay Raise

    Q. Mr. President, will you accept a military pay raise as part of 
the emergency supplemental, the Kosovo emergency--supplemental bill?
    The President. Well, as you know, we're supporting a military pay 
raise, and I don't think there's any difference in when the Congress and 
I think it should take effect. So there may be some--I have to get 
briefed on this--you know, I've been gone to Europe, but my 
understanding is, the only difference in the two bills is at what point 
they fund it and whether they take it out from under the ceilings of 
next year's budget, not when the military actually gets it.
    So I think we're all--my view is, at least when I left to go to 
Europe, we were all for the same pay raise going into effect at the same 
time. And I understand why Congress wants to advance fund it, and I'd 
like to see the bill loaded up with as little extraneous spending as 
possible. But we are going to give a military pay raise. We're all 
committed to it, and we just have to work out what the best way to do it 
is.

Kosovo Peacekeeping Force

    Q. Mr. President, do you insist that the American Commander of NATO 
be in charge of whatever forces wind up as peacekeepers in Kosovo?
    The President. Well, I think the best thing for me to say now is 
what--I think it will work best if we have a system like we had in 
Bosnia where there was U.N. approval; NATO was the core of the force; 
but there was Russian participation; there was

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Ukrainian participation; there was participation from a lot of other 
countries, and the command issues were worked out by and large in three 
different segments of the country, where primary responsibility was 
taken in one section by the United States working with Russia, in 
another by Britain, and another by France. There may be some other way 
to do it in Kosovo; I don't want to prejudge all the details.
    The important thing--I don't want neither to add nor subtract from 
the basic conditions that we have said we believe are necessary to make 
this work. That is, the refugees go home to safety and autonomy, Serb 
forces out, and an international security force in, with NATO at the 
core. Anything I say today, while we're working hard to try to push this 
and to try to gain more converts and get more people involved in this, 
would be, I think, a mistake, except to say I think that what we did in 
Bosnia was functional.
    But I think it's important for the United States and for our Allies 
neither to add nor subtract from the basic conditions that we have said 
all along are absolutely essential to make this work.

Note: The President spoke at 10:38 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House.