Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Tuesday, 15 Sep 1992 22:03:27 CDT
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: National Guard Speech

 Remarks by Governor Bill Clinton
 National Guard Association Convention
 Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah
 September 15, 1992

      Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you very much, General
 Ryan, distinguished officers here at the podium, and Congressman
 Aspin, Congressman McCurdy, Representative Owens and Senator Moss.

      I'm glad to see all of you here, and very honored that you asked
 me to be here.  I appreciate your permitting my adjutant general to
 introduce me.  That was another illustration of Clinton's second law
 of politics, which is,  whenever possible, be introduced by someone
 you've appointed to high office.  They will always exaggerate your
 virtues.

      From the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord to the heroic
 Guardsmen and women who were critical to our victory in the Persian
 Gulf War, you have done your part to keep this nation's ancient
 commitment to preserve the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to
 our posterity.

      This morning I want to talk to you, the citizen- soldiers of
 America, as soldiers and as citizens.  One of my proudest duties as
 governor is to be commander in chief of our National Guard.  They
 have always been a source of great pride and honor to all the people
 of our state, whether fighting in the Gulf War, training in Europe or
 Central America, or saving the people of our state from misery and
 death.

      In war and in peace, whether serving in Desert Storm or helping
 your fellow citizens get their lives back together, you uphold the
 mottoes of the National Guard.  You are neighbors helping neighbors.
 You were Americans at their best.  You were always ready, always
 there.

      I never know to what extent my own speech produces these bizarre
 results.  My father-in-law actually had a heart attack during my
 inaugural address in 1983, and when he woke up in the hospital, I
 told him it wasn't that good a speech.  At any rate, I'm glad to be
 back in touch.

      Our state mobilized 3,000 people, and sent 2,200 personnel
 overseas in support of the effort to remove Saddam Hussein.
 How's this?  Congressman McCurdy said this is just another reason why
 we shouldn't cut the Guard budget too much.  At any rate, our state
 was proud to provide the third- largest number of Guard personnel of
 any state in the country to the Middle East during the Gulf War.  We
 were proud of all of them, but especially proud of the 142nd field
 artillery brigade which performed superbly in combat, serving with
 both American and British troops in the liberation of Kuwait.

      When they came home, some of our men and women faced additional
 hardships in reduced pay or job losses.  I worked hard to protect
 them as well as we could.  In our state, we passed a law which made
 up the difference for state employees between their state salary and
 their Guard pay while they were gone.  We encouraged our private
 employers to do the same; provided grace periods on taxes for
 Arkansans who served in Desert Storm; and established family
 assistance centers and support groups to ease the considerable
 hardships of those whose loved ones were called to serve.

      I never will forget seeing unit after unit off.  And I saw one
 group of three in the same family, two brothers and a sister, the
 children of a man who had made a career in the National Guard.  I saw
 one single mother with four children on her way to the Persian Gulf,
 with her oldest child taking care of the other three.  They were
 remarkable stories.

      And when those people came home, we gave them a welcome-home
 celebration with 100,000 people in the streets of Little Rock, a city
 that has a population of 178,000.  It was the biggest celebration in
 my lifetime.

      The National Guard in my state in this country has been just as
 important in peace as in war.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew,
 in the best tradition of neighbors helping neighbors, Guard units
 from neighboring states worked with their counterparts in Florida and
 Louisiana to come to the aid of people who had lost everything.

      Our National Guard opened armories as collection points for food
 and supplies, and sent two convoys to Louisiana to help those who had
 been hit hard there.

      In times of emergency in our own state, I've called on the Guard
 to help with missions from helping communities recover from ice
 storms and floods and deathly sweeping tornadoes, to destroying
 buildings used by drug dealers, to putting down a riot by refugees at
 Ft. Chafee in 1980.

      And I know that is typical of the good work which has been done
 by the Guard in every state in this country, and often in situations
 that require the highest order of skill and sensitivity, such as was
 required of the California National Guard when they helped to restore
 order after the disturbances in Los Angeles.

      You are the nation's oldest military service, and well aware
 that now, in the aftermath of the Cold War, crucial decisions are
 being made and a great debate is underway about how to meet our
 national security needs in this new era.

      Now that the Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is no more,
 leaders from the administration and from Congress and from both
 political parties agree that we must scale back our armed forces.
 The question is, how we should do it, and what kind of force
 structure we need to maintain the world's strongest defense.  For
 while we no longer face a hostile superpower, we do face challenges
 in a changing and still dangerous and perhaps even more chaotic
 world.

      The challenges we face are less predictable, but no less real.
 We still must have the best equipped and best trained military to
 meet today's threats.  We have to shift the focus of our military to
 meet the real threats that we face today and those we think we are
 likely to face tomorrow: aggressive tyrants like Saddam Hussein; new
 regional conflicts; ethnic and racial strife that could spread beyond
 the borders of particular nations; terrorism and the threat of
 proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.  A
 major threat we will have to face for several years to come.

      Our forces must be more mobile, more precise, and more flexible,
 and they must have the technologically advanced weapons they need to
 prevail and to prevail quickly.  That is why I support more emphasis
 on some weapons systems, including the V-22, and fast sealift and
 airlift.  I will never allow a hollow Army.

      It is true, as the president said this morning, that my
 five-year defense budget contains somewhat less money than his does.
 But listen to the difference.  $1.36 trillion in my budget, as
 opposed to $1.42 trillion in his over five years, a difference of
 only five percent.  And we provide in our budget for fewer troops in
 Europe, less spending on the Brilliant Pebbles portion of Star Wars,
 but more reliance on new weapons systems, and more reliance on the
 Guard and the reserve here at home.

      The budget I recommended, and I must tell you for the record was
 processed again last year, not last week, so it is not something I
 prepared for this occasion, the budget was arrived at in consultation
 with defense experts, including people who had served in the Reagan
 administration, and military advocates like Congressman Aspin, who's
 here with me today, the chairman of the House Armed Services
 Committee; Congressman Dave McCurdy who addressed you yesterday, my
 neighbor from Oklahoma; and Senator Sam Nunn, the chairman of the
 Senate Armed Services Committee.

      I know that we must ensure that we have the resources we need to
 strengthen the two attributes that made the American military the
 best in the world: the outstanding quality of our personnel; and the
 overwhelming superiority of our technology.

      I still believe we should strive not for a Democratic national
 security policy or a Republican national security policy, but for an
 American national security policy.

      I have done my best to develop that in this campaign. For
 example, in supporting the tough line that the president and the
 administration have taken against Saddam Hussein, making it clear
 that this election process should give him no comfort as he seeks to
 violate the United Nations resolutions; and in calling for stronger
 international action in Bosnia and Somalia, policies which now have
 been embraced by this administration.

      All these things are more effective precisely because they have
 strong bipartisan support.  I hope that we can reach a bipartisan
 consensus on the force structure we need for the future, and on the
 role of the National Guard and of the reserve.

      I think you should be full partners in all areas of our force:
 combat force; combat support forces; combat service support forces.

      You know, and I know, there will be further cuts.  The Guard
 will not be exempt, but I am committed to a balanced reduction that
 retains to traditional combat orientation of the National Guard.

      When the American people choose a president, they want someone
 they can trust to act in moments of crisis.  Every president in the
 last half century has had to confront the fateful decision to put
 some Americans in harm's way.

   I do not relish this prospect, but neither do I shrink from it.  If
 elected I will ensure that we have the resolve and the strength,
 constantly, to deter, sometimes to fight, and when we fight, always
 to win.

      I will fight to ensure that the troops we send into battle are
 the best in the world. But as we scale back our military in the
 aftermath of the Cold War, a strong role for the National Guard and
 the reserves, in my view, makes more sense, not less.  After all, the
 Guard can preserve combat readiness at a cost of 25-75 percent of
 that of the active forces.  The Guard makes sense as a force to deal
 with unforeseen contingencies. And the Guard can make invaluable
 contributions, as Senator Nunn has noted, in rebuilding America here
 at home; in providing engineering and medical assistance to
 distressed communities; and serving as role models and mentors to
 kids who need them; and doing the things which will build up our
 nation's strength and our security here at home, and still maintain
 the traditional combat orientation of the Guard.

      The Bush administration has proposed cuts and rescissions of
 dollars already approved by Congress, which reflect a lesser role
 than I believe the Guard and the reserve should play in our future
 force structure.  I want the National Guard, I will say again, to be
 a full partner in all areas of total force.

      I do not want to imply that that means there will be no cuts.
 Congressman McCurdy can tell you of a situation in Oklahoma where a
 Guard unit was promised by this administration that it would not be
 cut, and three weeks later it was devastated.

      I will level with you: there will be cuts, but I want a stronger
 role for the Guard and the reserve than is called for in the present
 Bush force plan.

      Desert Storm proved once again that the Guard and the reserves
 can get the job done and do it right, and we should not eliminate the
 historic combat role of the Guard.  Nor must we permit the Guard not
 to be able to have the resources it needs to fulfill its roles here
 at home.

      We have seen recently from Los Angeles to Miami to Hawaii that
 the Guard has been there to save the day and save lives.  And yet it
 appears that the base force plan now proposed would render some state
 Guard forces incapable of even meeting their state missions of
 natural disaster relief and dealing with urban unrest.

      The National Guard has always set the standard for public
 service for our people.  And as we reduce our defense forces, we must
 never forget that.  So I have tried today to tell you as clearly as I
 could, admittedly from the bias of a governor who has seen his
 Guardsmen and women there, time after time, day after day, year after
 year, what I believe the role ought to be in the future.

      In closing, I would like to take a few minutes to talk to you
 about your role as citizens.  For in just seven weeks, you will be
 called upon to perform another duty, to choose not just between two
 candidates for president, but between two different paths to the 21st
 century.

      I agree with the comment made by President Bush here today that
 we are facing a new and different global economic challenge.  But I
 disagree that it has come on us all of a sudden.  We have been in the
 midst of an emerging global economy for well over a dozen years now.
 And for a dozen years, we have been governed by a theory of economic
 response to that challenge, which has been euphemistically dubbed,
 trickle-down economics.

      The theory holds that government has a very limited
 responsibility to help the American people prepare to compete and win
 in a global economy; and that the most effective national government
 is that which keeps taxes lowest on those who have the most money,
 because they will in turn invest that money in job growth and
 development in our country, making us stronger in global competition.

      If you look at the last 12 years, we now have a chance to assess
 whether that theory has worked.  In 1980 we had the highest wages in
 the world.  Now we are 13th and dropping.  The census figures
 themselves demonstrate that over two-thirds of the American people,
 including most of the people enrolled in National Guard units in
 every state in the United States, are working longer work weeks for
 lower wages than they were making 10 years ago, when you make
 adjustments for inflation.

      They are paying more for health care, for housing, for
 education.  And if they're middle class people, they're paying more
 in taxes.  And yet, last year, we saw the biggest decline in family
 income in over 30 years.  In the last 30 years, we've had the slowest
 economic growth rate in 50 years.  We had the first decline in
 industrial production ever recorded in our country.  And more people
 work for government today than work in manufacturing.

      Other nations with which we compete, which are growing more
 rapidly, nations which realize that economic security is a part of
 national security, and that in that sense national security has to
 begin at home, have a totally different approach to the world's
 challenges.

      And we must learn from that, and craft a uniquely American
 approach.  I believe it is time to abandon trickle-down economics,
 not to go back to tax-and-spend and divide the pie, but to go forward
 with a theory that says we have to invest, and educate, and train and
 compete; that we do not have a person to waste; that we need a
 national economic strategy of partnership between government,
 business, labor and education, to dramatically increase the
 incentives for people in the private sector in new plant, and
 equipment, in research and development, in the commercial
 technologies that will give us the same lead in the economy that the
 defense technologies give us on the battlefield, and in training the
 best educated workforce in America.

      If a workforce that is trained well works in the Persian Gulf,
 believe me, it will work in the factories, on the farms, in the small
 businesses, on the main streets, in the heartland of the United
 States of America to bring this country's economy back.

      Over the last few months, as I have entered this race for
 president, I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of people
 who were active in the last two administrations; who were called
 Reagan Democrats.  Many of them have come home to support our
 campaign, not because I'm a Democrat, but because they believe in the
 defense policies I have outlined, and more importantly they know that
 national security begins with economic security.

      And today, in another state, a number of high tech corporate
 leaders are announcing their support for this campaign.  Many of them
 have been Republicans for years, and they are supporting me not
 because I am a Democrat, but because they know we need a new American
 economic policy that goes beyond the partisan divisions that have
 paralyzed this country for more than a decade now.

      And I ask all of you to think about that.  This nation has been
 around for more than 200 years because whenever we had to do so, the
 people of the country fought to keep it alive; fought to protect it
 from its enemies; but also had the courage to make the changes that
 were needed to make to keep America going.

      Today, wherever I go, I find people full of cynicism about
 whether government can be made to work for them again, except when
 something bad happens and they see something like the Guard. Then
 they know government works, and they're proud their tax dollars are
 going to you.

      But I ask you to think about this.  Think about the history of
 your country.  Can we really say that the crisis we face today is too
 great to be solved?  Think of the problems faced by George Washington
 and the founders, when most people in most states wanted to keep the
 states independent.  They wanted to print their own money.  They
 wanted to have their own military forces.  They didn't trust having a
 central government.

      George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the founders said,
 things could be better.  The other crowd said, things could be
 worse.  It was literally a miracle that we created a nation out of
 these disparate colonies, but we did. And that was a greater
 challenge than we faced today.

      Can anyone say the challenge we face today was greater than the
 challenge faced by Abraham Lincoln when he became president in 1861
 and this country was divided?  His wife lost three of her brothers
 fighting for the South.  The best military commander of his
 generation, Robert E. Lee, resigned from the Army and went home to
 fight for his state.  And the country was again beginning to come
 apart.  And Lincoln literally laid his life down to keep the country
 together.

      Can anyone say the challenges we face today are greater than
 those faced by Franklin Roosevelt, when from the chains of his
 wheelchair he lifted a whole nation up in the Great Depression, and
 then guided us through a great war?

      My fellow Americans, what is killing this country today is not
 the size of our challenge but the dimension of our disbelief.  And we
 need faith and conviction that we can confront these problems in an
 American way that goes beyond the kind of paralysis we've had at home
 for the last 10 years; that reflects the same sort of spirit and
 determination and commitment of resources that we saw in Desert
 Storm.

      If we do it, we will once again make America young again, and we
 will be faithful to the traditions of the founders, and we will do
 our job in this generation as Americans.

      That is what I ask you to ponder for the next seven weeks.  So
 that we can be strong abroad, we must again be strong at home.

      Thank you very much.


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