Bill Clinton: “Let me say that--what I want to do today is mostly hear from all these folks that are here with us, but I would like to…”

“Let me say that--what I want to do today is mostly hear from all these folks that are here with us, but I would like to just--and both your elected officials and the citizens that are here. One of the things that we have really worked hard on since I've been President is trying to help make sure the Federal Government did its part whenever there's a natural disaster. When I appointed James Lee Witt to head FEMA, he had headed the Emergency Management Agency of our home State of Arkansas for several years before that. And we had been inundated with floods; we had the highest per capita rate of tornadoes in America; we have picked up after every known disaster. And we really tried to work hard with people. We know that the State and local community groups and people like the Salvation Army and all the folks that have worked here are terrific. We just want to do everything we legally can as quickly as we can to be helpful. And that's what I want to hear about today: Where are you now? How are you going to rebuild? What can we do? Today we can announce that we will be able to provide over $26 million to the communities to help rebuild the community facilities, $10 million in emergency relief funds for Federal highway damage, and $2 million to meet other emergency needs. But there will be more that has to be done, a lot more. We believe that--Mr. Panetta, my Chief and Staff, and I were coming out here, and we were just trying to assess what we know is the damage in Washington and Oregon and over in Idaho. We think we'll have to do a lot more, and we're prepared to do it. And I basically want to spend the rest of this time that we have here listening to the citizens and the elected officials that are here, so that when we leave here we've got a very good idea of where we are and what we need to do. [Mr. Anderson introduced a Woodland resident who had worked for 4 days on a jackhammer without going home. He then invited roundtable participants to comment.]”