Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much, Carolyn Long Banks, and thank you all for that very warm welcome. I wish you the best in your new…”

“Thank you very much, Carolyn Long Banks, and thank you all for that very warm welcome. I wish you the best in your new job, Carolyn, as league president. I want to say to all of you, I wish I could be there in Minneapolis with my many friends in the National League of Cities. I'd like to say a special word of hello to two of your members of the board of directors whom I have known for a very long time, from my home State, Sharon Priest, the city director of Little Rock, and Martin Gipson, alderman in North Little Rock. I'd also like to say a special word of thanks to your outgoing president, Sharpe James, who's been a good friend of mine. And because of his leadership and the leadership of other league members, we now have the toughest and smartest crime bill in our history. I thank you for that, Sharpe, and I thank all of you. I have long admired the work of the National League of Cities. As a Governor, I worked with many of you on many tough issues. And as President, I'm committed to doing all I can to face those issues with you in a genuine spirit of partnership. To do that, I believe, as many of you do, that while Government cannot be society's savior, neither can it sit on the sidelines. Our job, yours and mine, is to create opportunity, to remove barriers to that opportunity, to give our people the tools they need to make the most of their lives. When it comes to our cities, we've developed a public-private partnership designed to provide opportunity where it's most needed. We've encouraged businesses to take root and grow in neglected communities. With the Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act, we're steering billions of dollars in private investment to the places people need it the most. And very soon, we'll announce the winners of our empowerment zones and enterprise communities. We're helping Americans to rebuild the American dream for themselves. The most important thing we can do, what we've been working to do since the beginning of our administration, is to create high- quality, high-wage jobs, jobs that enable our people to build good lives for themselves. In recent days, we've had a string of indicators that show just how strong this recovery has been. This morning we have the latest job figures that show strong success in building good jobs for Americans. Unemployment is down to 5.6 percent, the lowest it's been in 4\1/2\ years. Since I became President, our economy has produced 5.2 million new jobs. So far this year, there have been more new jobs created in high-wage industries than in the previous 5 years combined. Manufacturing jobs are up for 11 consecutive months for the first time in more than a decade. And more construction jobs have been created this year alone than in the previous 9 years combined. Our strategy of opening up foreign markets to our goods and services has certainly contributed to this success. In just a year, NAFTA has created an estimated 100,000 new jobs. And yesterday, with strong bipartisan support, we took an historic step and passed the GATT world trade agreement, which will create hundreds of thousands of good jobs here in America. Despite these successes, you and I both know there are too many hard-working Americans who are still deeply anxious about their economic futures and their families. I understand that. For 20 years, stagnant wages and a declining rate of job security have taken a terrible toll. As our workers face these terrible changes and these exciting challenges of the global economy, they are rightly worried about how they and their children will adjust. We know that male workers without a college education have actually seen a decline in their earnings over the last 10 years. And we know that most working families are actually working more; they have less leisure time. We also know that this is the only advanced country in the world where working people are actually losing ground in terms of their health coverage. A million Americans in working families lost health insurance last year alone. That's why, even as we open up trade and create jobs, we've got to work hard to help Americans adjust to these changes so that they can win in the global economy. The most important thing we can do is to help our people to learn the skills they need to compete and win in the years to come. That's the idea behind the education and training programs we've worked so hard for in the 103d Congress: a big expansion of Head Start; the Goals 2000 program with its high national standards; the elementary and secondary education reform act, with its grassroots reforms; more computers for our schools; things like charter schools, more public school choice, better education for poor children; character education in our schools. That's what's behind our determination to give more affordable loans for millions and millions of middle class students to go to college. It's behind the national service act, AmeriCorps, which allows tens of thousands of our young people to earn money for their college education by serving their communities at the grassroots level. And it's what's behind our apprenticeship programs for people who don't go to college but do want to have good jobs and good skills. The strength of all these programs is that they're rooted in the idea that individual citizens and communities can decide how best to build their own futures. Now for you, nothing in our agenda may be more important than our efforts to fight crime. The crime bill we passed is the crime bill many of you helped to write. It's a model for how we must continue to reinvent our Government to meet the needs of our people and to move power out of Washington back to the grassroots. We're moving quickly to put 100,000 more police on the street and to institute our prevention and our punishment programs. And we're paying for it by reducing the Federal work force by 272,000 positions to its smallest level since President Kennedy. Already, there are more than 70,000 fewer people working for the Federal Government than there were on the day I was inaugurated President. And every dollar we save is going back to you, going back to grassroots communities who know best how to fight crime in the streets. That's a good deal. It will work for America. We've made a good beginning on crime, a good beginning on the economy. But to do more, I hope we can continue the spirit of cooperation with the new Congress that we've seen on GATT this week. I hope we can find common ground on your concerns about unfunded Federal mandates which I have long opposed; the Glenn-Kempthorne legislation would restrict these mandates. And we're working closely with the lawmakers to make this bill a priority early, early in the next session of Congress. We should also continue to cooperate on health care reform. The American people still want it, and they still need it. We have to find a way to provide working families with that help. We can't continue to be the only advanced country in the world where more and more working people are losing their health insurance every year and where the cost of health care is going up at 3 times the rate of inflation. And for small businesses, health insurance premiums this year went up at almost 5 times the rate of inflation. When the health of the American people and working families suffer, the health of our economy suffers. All of you know that more and more of our Federal budget is going to health care. Medicare, Medicaid, they're the fastest increasing areas of the Federal budget. We've held everything else constant or reduced it. So we need to find ways that, step by step, we can in a bipartisan spirit make progress on this. We also have to find ways to cooperate on welfare reform. We have to build a strong bridge from dependency to work for millions of Americans. We have to attack problems that feed dependency, including the runaway problem of teen pregnancies. I've been working on this welfare reform issue for more than a decade now. I know that the people on welfare overwhelmingly want to get off. We have got a system that was designed for another age, as so many governmental systems are, and we need to change it dramatically to make it rooted in independence and responsibility, not to subsidize dependence. Every American wants this, and we're going to do it and do it together. On these and many, many other issues, I hope and believe we can cooperate with the new Congress. But cooperation for me cannot mean abandoning principle, abandoning the hard work we have already accomplished together in our fight to restore our economy, our fight against crime, our fight to give this country back to hard-working people who play by the rules. I will oppose any efforts to take us back on those issues. We've worked too hard to build an economic recovery and a job strategy and to reduce this deficit that 12 years of irresponsible explosive spending left us. And I will fight efforts that jeopardize the strategy to create jobs, fight efforts that will explode the deficit, fight efforts that will put new burdens on the backs of our children. The assault weapons ban that you helped to win stands between the citizens you and I must protect and the gangs and thugs that would terrorize them. I will do all in my power to keep the next Congress from doing anything that will jeopardize the safety of our people. And I truly hope the new Congress understands how important these things are to the American people and to their elected representatives at the grassroots level. We've made a good beginning to build together, and we have to get on with the job. It's no secret that the landscape in Washington shifted dramatically last month. But what must not shift is my commitment and your commitment to continue to work for what will actually help hard-working, middle class Americans restore the hope that they can keep the American dream alive and that will provide opportunities and insist on responsibilities for others to move into that great middle class. What must not change is our conviction that we work best when we work together as partners and when we all share responsibility. Diversity of government is the great genius of the American system. From the smallest of our communities to the biggest of our cities to the statehouses and to the Halls of Congress and the White House, no part of our effort can be isolated. That's why we must keep talking with one another and listening to one another and working together. If we work at all our levels, we can help take America in the direction it must move. We can help our people find the best path on to the bright new century that awaits us. We can give the American people a smaller Government, a more entrepreneurial Government, a more flexible Government that reflects their values and promotes their interests, if we do it together. Thank you very much. Thank you. [At this point, the moderator introduced the participants.]”