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<DOC> [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents] [frwais.access.gpo.gov] [Page i-iii] Monday, February 7, 2000 Volume 36--Number 5 Pages 181-231 Contents [[Page i]] Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents [[Page ii]] Addresses and Remarks Ballou Senior High School--209 Commerce in firearms report--225 Illinois, community in Quincy--181 Legislative agenda--202 Memorial service for Bob Squire--227 National Conference of State Legislatures dinner--214 National Prayer Breakfast--220 Radio address--184 Reception for Jane Harman--223 Switzerland, World Economic Forum--185 Vieques Island, videotape address to the people of Puerto Rico on efforts to resolve the impasse--204 Communications to Congress France-U.S. treaty on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, message transmitting--200 Greece-U.S. treaty on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, message transmitting--208 Latvia-U.S. fisheries agreement, message transmitting--202 NATO Strategic Concept, message certifying no new commitments--201 Romania-U.S. treaty on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, message transmitting--223 Communications to Congress--Continued U.S. Air Force operating location near Groom Lake, NV, message--201 U.S. Arctic Research Plan, message transmitting revision--208 World Intellectual Property Organization treaties, letter transmitting report--202 Communications to Federal Agencies Independent States of the Former Soviet Union, memorandum on assistance--209 International Financial Institutions and Other International Organizations and Programs, memorandum on funding--201 Resolution Regarding Use of Range Facilities on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, memorandums--197, 198 Interviews With the News Media Exchanges with reporters Cabinet Room--202 South Grounds--225 Letters and Messages Lunar New Year, message--206 Proclamations American Heart Month--207 National African American History Month--199 (Continued on the inside of the back cover.) Editor's Note: The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is also available on the Internet on the GPO Access service at http:// www.gpo.gov/nara/nara003.html. WEEKLY COMPILATION OF ------------------------------ PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS Published every Monday by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408, the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents contains statements, messages, and other Presidential materials released by the White House during the preceding week. The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is published pursuant to the authority contained in the Federal Register Act (49 Stat. 500, as amended; 44 U.S.C. Ch. 15), under regulations prescribed by the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register, approved by the President (37 FR 23607; 1 CFR Part 10). Distribution is made only by the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents will be furnished by mail to domestic subscribers for $80.00 per year ($137.00 for mailing first class) and to foreign subscribers for $93.75 per year, payable to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. The charge for a single copy is $3.00 ($3.75 for foreign mailing). There are no restrictions on the republication of material appearing in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. [[Page iii]] Contents--Continued Resignations and Retirements Senior Adviser to the President for Policy and Strategy, statement-- 184 Statements by the President See also Resignations and Retirements Alaska Airlines flight 261, crash--206 Export controls on high-performance computers and semiconductors-- 206 National debt, paying down--196 Puerto Rico, action to resolve the impasse over Armed Forces training on Vieques Island--197 Statements by the President--Continued Representative Bruce F. Vento, retirement--214 Senate confirmation of Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board--222 Supplementary Materials Acts approved by the President--231 Checklist of White House press releases--231 Digest of other White House announcements--229 Nominations submitted to the Senate--230 [[Page 181]] <DOC> [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents] [frwais.access.gpo.gov] [Page 181-183] Monday, February 7, 2000 Volume 36--Number 5 Pages 181-231 Week Ending Friday, February 4, 2000 Remarks to the Community in Quincy, Illinois January 28, 2000 Thank you very much. I think I should begin by thanking you all for waiting in this cold weather all morning. Your welcome to me has been so warm, I don't care what it's doing outside; inside, it still feels like Florida to me here. I thank you very much. I want to begin by thanking your mayor, who flew in here with me today; and your fine Congressman, Lane Evans; our two United States Senators, Senator Durbin and Senator Fitzgerald; Congressman Shimkus; Congressman Hulshof; thank you all for being here. Let's give them a big hand here today. [Applause] Didn't Kayt do a good job? [Applause] All I can tell you is that when I was her age, I could not have given a speech anywhere near that good; so she's well on her way. I want to thank all the people that gave us our music: the Quincy High School Band, the Quincy Park Band, the Quincy Notre Dame Marching Band. Thank you all very much. I want to thank all the people who are here today who represent State and local government and the people of this community, the police officers, business leaders, day care providers, AmeriCorps members, and other public servants, the students, the teachers, all represented up on this stage today. And, of course, ``Mr. Quincy'' there. Thank you very much, sir, for being here. Ladies and gentlemen, last night when I gave the State of the Union Address, I was fulfilling a requirement of the United States Constitution that requires the President to report every year on the state of the Union. Then, I wanted to come out today to the heartland of America to say what that was all about. Maybe we ought to change the Constitution, Senators and Congressmen, to require the President to come to Quincy the day after the State of the Union Address every year. You know, I never will forget the night I actually did talk to the mayor and Senator Paul Simon, who was not pretending to be me, and you were going through that horrible flood, and I monitored your progress, and this community became a symbol of hope and what people can do when they pull together. I loved hearing the mayor today again recount the rich heritage of your city, the Lincoln-Douglas debate, the Underground Railroad, the sanctuary offered so long ago to those fleeing religious persecution. I loved driving here from the airport today and remembering the bus tour that Vice President Gore and Hillary and Tipper and I took in 1992 through so much of this part of America, and I saw so many of the same pictures all along the way: young children out with their signs; people saying, ``My birthday's August the 19th, too''; some people like my dog; some people like my cat; some people like them and don't like the President very much. The whole day was wonderful. It was a wonderful thing. And I think that what you show here today and every day is that when we join hands and join hearts, we can climb any mountain and turn back any tide. That is what our Nation has proved these last 7 years. And as I look out here on all of you, I see fresh evidence of what I said last night, folks: The state of our Union today is the strongest it has ever been, thanks to you. If you saw the speech last night, you know that I quoted President Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite predecessors. He's the last sitting President to come to Quincy. I don't know what the others were thinking about. [Laughter] But Roosevelt had a great quote at the dawn of the last century, which was a time that has a lot of parallels to our present-day experience. He reminded us that ``a growing nation with a future must always take the long look ahead.'' And what that [[Page 182]] means is, you know, when you folks were worried about the flood taking your town away, everybody concentrated and went to work. And then when you had all the problems and you needed the ferry and the mayor said the river was 6 miles wide, everybody concentrated and went to work. Sometimes people get in trouble not when times are tough, but when times seem to be so good people think they don't have to do anything, they don't have to worry, they don't have to work together. And what I want to tell you is, never in my lifetime have we had the combination of economic prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis or external threat, and I know from my experience that we should be using this time wisely to deal with the long-term challenges and seize the long-term opportunities that the children of Kayt's generation will have to deal with in the new century; and that's what I want the American people to support. I want you to support us in saying we made a mistake to quadruple the debt of the country. Now we're paying off the debt; let's stay at the job until America is debt-free for the first time since 1835. The number of people over 65 is going to double in 30 years. I hope to be one of them. The baby boomers must not--we must not--impose the burden of our enormous numbers in retirement on our children. That means we need to take the interest savings from paying down the debt, put it in the Social Security Trust Fund, take it out to 2050, then the baby boomers' retirement will not impose a burden on our children and our children's ability to raise our grandchildren. We need to make sure every child in this country starts school ready to learn and graduates ready to succeed and has access to a college education. Now, I just want to mention one of your schools, because I hear people all the time saying, ``Aw, the President acts like we can turn schools around; that's not true.'' Well, it is true. I believe all children can learn. I believe all schools can work. Washington Elementary School, here in Quincy, a few years ago was in trouble; today, it's one of the best-performing schools in your school district because you've got a good principal, community involvement; you've got money from our program to reduce class size with more teachers, to expand after-school programs, and now you've got a successful situation. I'm telling you, I only wish Washington, DC, worked as well as Washington Elementary School. And I want to thank the principal, Terry Mickle, for being with us today. Let's give her a hand. [Applause] So, what I've asked the Congress to do is to invest more in Head Start, invest more in these after-school and summer school programs, invest more in helping more schools turn themselves around, and to give the American people, for the first time, a tax deduction for the cost of college tuition, to open the doors of college. The other thing that I hope we can do is to give more families the tools to succeed at home and work--to lengthen the life of Medicare for 25 years; to give people on Medicare the right to a voluntary prescription drug program--too many of our senior citizens need this medicine and cannot afford it; it's the difference in what kind of life they can have. And I hope you will support our efforts to achieve that. There's just one other issue I want to mention today, because it affects a lot of people in this neighborhood. A few years ago, before I ran for President, I had the honor of coming to southern Illinois, to Senator Simon's hometown of Makanda, because I was head of something called the Lower Mississippi River Delta Development Commission. And I found that the counties in southern Illinois had unemployment rates as high as they did in the Mississippi Delta and the South, where I came from. One of the things that really bothers me about this astonishing economic recovery of ours is that not everybody has participated in it. And I think all Americans will support us in saying that this is the Other Popular 2000 Presidential Documents Documents:
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