Bill Clinton: “Louisiana March 18, 1996 Thank you. I'll tell you what, it's been a cold winter in Washington. It's good to be down here…”

“Louisiana March 18, 1996 Thank you. I'll tell you what, it's been a cold winter in Washington. It's good to be down here in more ways than one. I want to thank Irwin Joseph for his fine introduction and for his years of distinguished leadership. I thank Ron Brinson for welcoming me back to the Port of New Orleans. And I thank all of you who work here who make this a success. I'm delighted to be here with so many of your officials and former officials. I want to thank my good friend Senator John Breaux, who always brings his sense of humor to every endeavor, something we need more of in Washington, DC, I might add. I want to thank Senator Bennett Johnston and to tell you that I will miss him a great deal. He's always helpful to me if I help Louisiana first. [Laughter] I was sitting here thinking as I was coming today, well, Bennett's going to retire, and he'll lose interest in all this stuff. And Mayor Morial was up here speaking and talking about how the crime rate had come down in New Orleans with the help of the community policing efforts which were at the core of the crime bill we passed in 1994, and I'm very proud of that. So I said--[applause]--thank you. So I said to Senator Johnston, I said, ``I think it's just great that things are going better in New Orleans. The crime rate is coming down. The juvenile crime rate is coming down.…”