THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
                     (New Orleans, Louisiana)

______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                      September 9, 1994


                     REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
             IN SPEECH TO NATIONAL BAPTIST CONVENTION

                Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
                      New Orleans, Louisiana



11:10 A.M. CDT


             THE PRESIDENT:  If I could sing like that, I would
have never gotten into politics.  (Laughter and applause.)
Reverend Jemison; your President-Elect, Dr. Lyons -- (applause)
-- to Dr. Richardson -- (applause), Reverend James, Dr. Mary
Ross.

             To all the distinguished Louisianans here present,
including Reverend Governor Edwards; I thought he did very well
today.  (Applause.)  Senator Breaux and Congressman Jefferson and
Mayor Morial and all your state officials and legislators.
Reverend Jackson.  (Applause.)  To all the members of my staff
and Cabinet who are here.

             Where are the people here with the administration?
They're all here somewhere.  (Applause.)

             I want to say many things, but first we have a duty,
I think, as Americans to take a moment of silence now for the 131
people who were killed in that awful air crash in Pittsburgh.
Hillary and I send our deepest sympathies and our prayers to the
friends and the loved ones of the crash victims.  And I know that
all of you and all Americans also send your prayers to the
grieving.

             Our Secretary of Transportation, Secretary Pena is
there in Pittsburgh.  I have talked with the Mayor and the
Governor this morning and with Senator Wofford.  All Americans
should know that we will do whatever we can to assure their
safety in travel.  But let us today, in the painful recognition
of our fallibility as human beings, mourn with a moment of
silence those who lost their lives.  Amen.

             Well, Dr. Jemison, I thank you for that warm
introduction.  I have known you as a friend for a long time.
When we were standing outside, about to come up, he was reviewing
his more than 50 years in the leadership of this great church.
That's a long time, worthy of honor, and I give it.  (Applause.)

             Two years ago I had a great moment with all of you
in Atlanta when I was running for President.  (Applause.)  And
last year, I was invited to appear and I couldn't; I had to give
my regrets.  I sort of felt like the boy who skipped Sunday
school.  (Laughter.)  I promised Dr. Jemison I'd be here this
year no matter what, so I showed up, and I hope you have forgiven
me because I feel at home.  (Applause.)

             Two years ago I came to you, and you responded. I
asked you to work with me to give us at least a chance to change
the direction our country was headed in.  We had too much debt
and too few jobs.  We seemed to be going in the wrong direction
where ordinary Americans were ignored, and people with money and
organized power were heeded, but somehow the thing was not
working.
             As the Vice President used to say, what ought to be
up was down, and what ought to be down was up.  And that was a
problem.  I wanted a chance to try to move this country forward
again and to try to pull our country together again.

             Today, having served now for not quite two years, I
guess what I want to say to you is I think we're doing a pretty
good job of moving forward, but not nearly a good enough job of
coming together.  (Applause.)

             I have here in the front some of my friends and
former employers from the State of Arkansas -- would you all
stand up?  (Applause.)  Thank you and bless you for being here.

             I lived in a little state to the north of here for a
while, you know.  And I learned that it was not healthy to say
one thing to one group and one to another.  You had to say the
same thing to everybody and mean it every day.

             I never will forget when I was running for
president, one of the most memorable days I had was speaking on
one day of the weekend in Macomb County, Michigan, the
prototypical, what they used to call "Reagan Democrat county,"
where there was a lot of what they used to call "white flight."
And then the next day I went to a black church in Detroit where
half the people were from Arkansas.  And I gave the same speech I
had given the day before, and people thought that was strange.
And I said, is it so strange that we should say the same thing to
all Americans and try to come together?

             I want to talk to you today about that.  I still
believe what I believed two years ago -- that the government has
a role to play in the future of this country and the future of
our families and our hopes and our dreams, not as savior, but not
on the sidelines -- just as a partner in progress.  I still
believe that, together, we can meet every challenge, that we can
fulfill the hopes of our children.  I still believe there are a
lot of things we have to do that go way beyond the reach of
government into the depths of the human spirit.

             Today I say to you again, I think we're making a lot
of progress, and I feel good about that.  But I don't think we're
doing as well as we should in coming together.   (Applause.)  And
I don't feel good about that, and I want to examine that and what
I could do better and what you can do better.

             I noticed a columnist wrote the other day in the
newspaper, he said, there's lots of things going right in this
country.  The economy is booming, we've got over 4 million new
jobs, the stock market is up, the deficit is down, things look
good in the future.  Our country was just rated the most
productive country in the entire world for the first time in
nearly 10 years; we've got over 4 million new jobs -- as I said,
the unemployment rate is down.  A lot of things are going well.
(Applause.)

             We see around the world real progress -- peace in
the Middle East, in the Holy Land -- something that should
gladden the heart of every Christian.  We see peace prospects and
moving forward in Northern Ireland -- something many of us
thought we would never see.  We see the majesty of peace and
democracy and freedom unfolding in South Africa.  And I want to
thank Reverend Jackson for his leadership of our election team
over there in South Africa, doing that process.  (Applause.)

             And so the writer said -- he was writing about
me -- he said, if things are going so well, why are people still
mad at the President?  Well, what he might have said is, you
remember that old saying, "If I'm so rich, why I am not happy?"
(Laughter.)

             Well, there are a lot of reasons for that.  But let
me offer one.  I just got back from vacation and when I was on
vacation I went to church and I heard a minister I'd never seen
before from a little town in New Jersey, called Red Bank.
(Applause.)  You know where Red Bank, New Jersey is?  (Applause.)

             The first thing he did was give us dispensation for
being on vacation, which I felt good about.  He said, life is not
all work, it is also play and rest and worship.  But he went on
to say it's not only important to do all those things, but to get
them right.  And if you don't have faith, you won't have the
rhythm right.  You will find yourselves working at play and
playing at worship and you'll have it all messed up.  (Applause.)

             Well, that's kind of what's going on in our country
today.  We still haven't quite got the rhythm right.  So that
even though we are facing a lot of our most profound problems,
and even though we are clearly making progress in areas too long
ignored, which many of you have mentioned here, we have to say:
what is the real deal here?  Why aren't we happier about it?

             There are many reasons, but let me offer three.  One
is, whenever periods of profound change occur in the lives of
individuals or nations, they are unsettling.  Isn't that right?
Can't you think of times in your own life when you were making a
change, and every day you woke up and it was like there was this
scale inside your body, and on one side of the scale was hope and
on the other side of the scale was fear, and it seemed like every
day, the scales would be in a little bit different balance until
you finally got through this change you were going through.

             We can all identify with that.  That's what's going
on in this country today.  It's happened before.  At the end of
the First World War, we won this great battle and we didn't know
what to do with ourselves, and so we just came home and folded up
our tents.  We thought we could withdraw from the world.  And
what happened?  That's when the Ku Klux Klan first started rising
up. At the end of the First World War, when we lost our
concentration and we lost our way and we didn't know who the
enemy was anymore.  It's also when we had the first Red Scare,
when everybody began to be accused of being a communist if they
had unconventional opinions.

             Then, at the end of the Second World War, the same
sort of thing happened, except we knew better then to withdraw
from the world.  Harry Truman said, no, no, we're going to
rebuild the country here at home for the soldiers and their
families, and we're going to rebuild our enemies, Germany and
Japan; and our allies in Europe.

             And we know who the enemy is, it's the Soviet Union
and communism, so we're going to have a great wall against
communism, and we're going to fight this Cold War.

             But, still, there was uncertainty.  There was a new
Red Scare, which came to its height under Senator McCarthy.  And
Harry Truman had a hard time getting people to change.  You know,
he was at 80 percent approval in the polls after he dropped the
bomb which ended the war, but by the time he sent the second
health reform legislation to Congress -- that's how long we've
been trying to fix the health care system -- by the time Harry
Truman did it the second time, he was down to 36 percent in the
polls.  Now, everybody talks about him like he ought to be on
Mount Rushmore.  (Laughter.)  But I was for a family who
supported him when he was living, and I know what happened.

             Change is difficult.  And when you're going through
a period of change, we are vulnerable to getting out of our
rhythm.  The second problem is, we live in a time which almost
seems to glorify the negative, the cynical, don't we?
(Applause.)  It's the old story -- there's a lot more people
prone to see the glass of water is half empty than half full than
there used to be, and to tell all the rest of us we're just fools
if we see it half full; it's really half empty.

             And then, frankly, let's face it:  We still have
some problems that are real deep in this country, that all the
progress we're making does not necessarily touch.  We have 4.1
million new jobs, the work force is expanding more rapidly than
it did 10 years ago, the last time we had any kind of economic
recovery, but lots of folks still out of work.  A lot of folks
live in places where they don't believe new jobs are coming.  A
lot of people are working harder; they have their job, but the
don't think they'll ever get a raise.

             Five million -- five million people live in working
families who had health insurance five years ago, who do not have
it today.  (Applause.)  So we have some real problems.  Governor
Edwards alluded to the most heart-breaking of all -- those that
involve the children of this country, their sins and their
abuses, and their loss of their childhood and their innocence,
and our loss of their future.  The 11-year-old boy in Chicago,
Robert Sandifer, who sprayed gunfire at a group of kids and
killed a 14-year-old girl and then killed himself; his
grandmother saying, I could not reach you.

             And then in New Jersey, the 13-year-old who stole a
gun to end a petty argument and the life of his 11-year-old
friend.  In Detroit, Rosa Parks was attacked by a crack addict
for $53.  In my hometown, an 82-year-old woman, attacked by two
teenagers, brutalized and sexually molested -- 82 years old.
These aren't Baptist problems or Catholic problems or Jewish
problems.  Contrary to what some people say, they're not black or
white problems.  No, the 11-year-old in Chicago was black, but
the teenager in New Jersey who killed, and the victim were both
white.

             Rosa Parks is a hero to African Americans and a hero
to people who have been oppressed throughout the world, but the
82-year-old woman in my hometown was a white lady, and so were
the people who attacked her.

             These problems and the problems behind them that
brought the children to the miserable point in life where they
did what they did.  These are the things that are gnawing at our
spirit that we have to address so we can get the rhythm right, we
can go on and face the challenges of this time, all the changes.
And we can make change our friend if we know that we are
grounded.  That is what your faith is about.  But it is also now
what our citizenship must be more about.

             I note that there are many voices from all sectors
preaching to us today about the decline in our values.  In a way
I welcome them all.  And whether they are traditionally our
allies or our adversaries, we should listen for the truth of
their words; and if they are true, we should heed them.
(Applause.)

             On the other hand, I would issue two cautionary
notes:  We should not let the voices of despair make our
insecurities even deeper.  That is wrong.  (Applause.)  That is
wrong.  There have always been problems in every society and
there will be until the end of time.  That is the lesson of the
Scripture.  So for all the people who try to use the difficulties
of the moment to dampen the energies of Americans, to defeat our
spirits -- I say, that is wrong.  The Scripture says, let us not
grow weary in well-doing, for in -- we shall reap if we do not
lose heart.  (Applause.)

             The darkness of every storm provides a new chance
for renewal -- every storm.  And so does this one.  So to all
those who preach that we need to return to the values of our
faith, I say, we do.  But the real issue is, what are we going to
do about it?  Not what are we going to say about it, but what are
we going to do about it?  The saying is important, for we, in
words, come to visualize the future.  And we need the vision so
that we do not perish.  But we must act on the vision.  And
that's where all the problems come.

             You know the old story about the preacher who was
preaching his best on Sunday morning and thought he had finally
reached everybody in the service?  And he said, I want everybody
who wants to go to heaven to stand up right now, and everybody in
the whole church stood up except Sister Jones who had not missed
a day of church in 40 years.  And he was crestfallen.  It broke
all his concentration.  He stopped the sermon.

             He said, "Sister Jones, you have not missed a sermon
in 40 years.  Do you mean to tell me you do not want to go to
heaven when you die?"  And she popped right up and she said, "Oh,
I'm sorry, preacher, I thought you were trying to get up a load
to go right now."  (Laughter.)

             Now that's a big problem, isn't it?  We all want to
do it somewhere down the road, but if we have to do something
right now, well that's something we better think about.
(Laughter.)  So the challenge is, what are we going to do right
now?  Not later, but now.  Right now.  (Applause.)

             I say this to the people who always say the glass is
half empty, always being pessimistic, always being negative.
They have it easy.  That lets you out of any responsibility at
all.  You adopt a pessimistic, negative attitude.  You be
cynical.  It just relieves you of any responsibility for doing
because then doing doesn't matter.  Right?  (Applause.)

             All I can tell you is, there would be no free
American sitting in this place today if the pessimists and the
cynics and the negative people had ruled this country all along
the way.  (Applause.)

             Our obligation and our power flows out of two simple
lessons I was taught about our whole civilization many years ago
in college.  One is that the future can be better than the
present -- not perfect, but better.  And the second is that each
of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.  That
is the simple lesson -- (applause) -- that will get our rhythm
back, that will put us back in harmony, that will enable us to
enjoy our progress and still keep working on the deep and
profound things that are challenging us and dealing with the
unsettling impact of this changing time.

             My vision is that we will go into the 21st century
as a country more free, more prosperous, more united -- and more
open to making change our friend than we have ever been.

             Yes, we are beginning to see results.  Yes, the
economy is doing better.  Yes, we are seeing more fairness as
well as more progress.  We did raise taxes on the wealthiest one
and a half percent of Americans to bring the deficit down, but we
also gave tax cuts to 15 million working families just above the
poverty line to say, you got off welfare, you're working,  we're
going to reward you being a parent and a worker.  We did that.
We are making progress.  (Applause.)

             We got 180,000 more kids in Head Start.  We're going
to immunize a couple of million more children so that by 1996 all
the kids two years of age and less like this little kid here,
will have their shots.  We're doing more to provide job training
for people who lose their jobs, and we made 20 million Americans
eligible to refinance their college loans at lower interest rates
with a longer repayment terms.  These things are important.  They
matter.  (Applause.)

             Work -- the dignity of work is central to our
ability to build a future.  The second thing we have to do is not
just talk about how we need stronger families, but think about
what I can do and you can do to make them stronger.  (Applause.)

             We didn't cut taxes for those 15 million working
families for just political reasons.  We did it because people
have got to be able to succeed today as workers and as parents.
And if we want people to work and parents, we have to reward
work.  That's why the Family and Medical Leave Act was so
important.  How can you say you want people to be good family
members and then fire them if they have to take a little time off
to have a baby or take care of sick parent?  (Applause.)

             There's a bill in the Congress I really believe in,
sponsored by Senator Metzenbaum, to make adoptions easier and to
make it possible for people to adopt children across racial lines
if nobody else is there wanting to adopt the children.
(Applause.)  Don't leave kids in the limbo of foster care for
years and years and years.  Give them a chance to do it.

             The third thing we have to do is to make our
communities stronger.  We have to act as if we believe what we
talk about all the time, that we're all in this together.  The
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is here today.  Henry
Cisneros has done more to come up with a program to end
homelessness than anybody in the last 10 years.  We've been
talking about it.  He's trying to do something about it.  It
makes us stronger as a community.

             The welfare reform bill is about community --
empowering everybody to participate.  The enterprise zones are
about giving poor communities the incentive to draw capital to
put people to work.  These things will make our communities
stronger.

             And the crime bill was about communities.  Because
if your streets aren't safe, if your schools aren't safe, if
people don't feel secure, it's hard to call them to higher
citizenship.  What did Edwin Everett say -- if you've got the
right to vote but you're scared to go to the polling place, it's
hard to talk about citizenship.  That's why it was important.

             We're also trying to change the way government
works, reforming the way we finance our campaigns and try to at
least tell you what the lobbyists are doing in Washington with
new disclosure requirements, a bill that would make Congress live
under all the laws it imposes on you.  That's not a bad idea, I
think.  (Applause.)  These things are important.

             We're trying to prove something that I always
believe -- that you can have diversity and excellence at the same
time.  Look at our Cabinet:  Five African Americans, more than
twice as many as ever served.  (Applause.)  Fifteen percent of
all appointments, more than twice as many appointments to the
federal courts as the last three presidents combined are African
Americans.  (Applause.)

             But what really ought to make you clap is that these
judges have the highest percentage of well-qualified ratings by
the American Bar Association since they have been giving out the
ratings. They're not just from different racial groups and men
and women; they're well qualified.  (Applause.)

             So there are things that government can do. This
crime bill I want to talk about because it runs into the question
of harmony.  There are a lot of things the government can't do.
There are things the government can do, and it's still not
enough.  I know that crime bill wasn't perfect.  And I know it
imposed great, great challenges for the African American members
of Congress and for many people and religious faiths because it
contains capital punish provisions.  And many people oppose
capital punishment for everyone, and many others say that African
Americans are more likely to get the penalty, because poor folks
are more likely than non-poor folks to be convicted and sentenced
to death.

             I know that there are those who say that when we
build more prisons and make sentences for repeat offenders longer
and tougher, that will have a disproportionate impact on the
African American community.  But to that, I say this:  Every time
you look at the evening news, there's another funeral.  And
there's a disproportionate number of black kids lying in those
pine boxes, too.  (Applause.)  And that's wrong.  That's what's
really wrong.  And we have got to find a way, imperfect though it
is, to get all the Americans together, with all their different
perspectives, and move forward on this issue because if people
are not safe, we're in trouble.  And if we put the 100,000 police
on the street and do it right, they'll prevent crime, not just
catch criminals.  (Applause.)

             If we get these assault weapons off the street --and
it's now illegal for kids to own handguns -- if we start
enforcing that law, and if we do something with that prevention
money, if we give these kids something to say yes to, if we do
something with the job money, with the job training money, with
the drug treatment money, with the recreation money, if we give
people at that time of their lives when they've got all this
energy some constructive outlet for it, it will make a
difference. (Applause.)

             But if you really want it, to lower the crime rate,
reduce violence, and save more kids' lives, all the work is still
to be done.  All the work is still to be done.  And it's like
asking Sister Jones to go to heaven -- we've got to do this right
now.  We have to -- if we believe there is a crisis of the
spirit, a crisis of values in this country, we have to do
something about it right now.  (Applause.)  And we've got to do
it where we live.

             I would like to suggest just four simple things that
go beyond government programs.  And you know them all, and many
of you are doing them all.  But every American can make a
contribution.  We are raising a whole generation of kids who
aren't sure they're the most important person in the world to
anybody.  (Applause.)

             Now, consider this:  Today, about 40 percent of all
children are born in the homes where there was never a marriage.
Twenty-seven percent of all pregnancies end in abortion.  I don't
care what your position is, whether you're pro-choice or anti;
that's too many.  That's not about serious health problems or
emotional problems.

             So when the miracle of conception occurs, less than
half of those miracles wind up being babies born into homes where
there's a mother and a father and where the kid's got a better-
than-even chance of having the life that most of us have, or we
wouldn't be here in our neckties and nice dresses today.  Now,
that's just a fact.

             Dr. King once said, "Whom we wish to change, we must
first love."  (Applause.)  And I know not everybody is going to
be in a stable, traditional family like you see in one of those
1950 sitcoms, but we'd be better off if more people were.  I was
raised by a wonderful mother who worked, who cared for me, who
was a widow when I was born, went through a difficult marriage.
And at least every now and then I find somebody who thinks I
turned out all right.  (Applause.)

             So it can happen, but we have to say, who is going
to care for these children?

             In every single study that's ever been done of young
people who did well against all the odds with terrible circumstances
and all the things that could have gone wrong, it is always, always,
always the case that they had a relationship with somebody who cared
about them.  Somebody.  (Applause.)

             I don't think we ought to give up on families.
Yesterday I met with a number of ministers and one friend of mine who
pastors a massive church in the Washington area, an African American
church, has made the mission of his church the rebuilding of the
family.  Over 40 percent of the members are male, and he left our
breakfast to go back to meet with 150 couples who had split up or
never married.  Some of them were divorced.  Sometimes people had
flown in from thousands of miles away.  He was trying to get them
back together for the children's sake and because it was the right
thing to do.  We need to do more of that.  (Applause.)

             But he's not just talking about it, he's doing
something.  If that's not an option, then somebody's got to love
these children.  When I was in Des Moines, Iowa, in the campaign, I
saw a white lady holding an African American baby that had AIDS.  She
was from Iowa.  The kid was from Miami.  She had been abandoned by
her husband.  She had two children of her own.  She was living in an
apartment house, working at a meager job.  She thought it was God's
will that she take a child who was sick and abandoned.  And she did
it.  If she could do it, a lot of the rest of us should as well.
(Applause.)

             Someone has got to care for these children.  I've heard
Reverend Jackson talk about this.  I think about it all the time as
my daughter grows up.  We have to find in families where the mother
is doing all the work and there needs to be somebody outside the
family, a male figure, who can at least relate to children, who can
say things like, what are you reading and how are you doing in class.
This is right and this is wrong. I'd like to see your report card.
What do you want to do five years from now?  (Applause.)

             You know, how many children do we know -- how many
children, how many of these kids that are shooting one another never
think about five years from now?  The future to them is five minutes
from now.  Why is that?  Because no one is asking them about it.
Where there is no vision, people perish.  They cannot visualize five
years from now.  (Applause.)  So that's the first thing.

             The second thing we've got to do is help these kids at
least grow up without fear -- which means we've got to keep them from
getting shot and stop them from shooting.  And laws can help, and
policemen can help, but every two hours in this county another kid
under the age of 19 dies from gunfire.  A-nine-year old boy wrote me
from this city right here in New Orleans and said, please do
something about this.  I'm afraid I could get killed.  And on
Mother's Day, a month after he wrote me, he got killed just walking
home from school.

             Now, there are things people can do in their
neighborhoods to stop this.  We are giving you more tools in terms of
the laws and the police, but we've got to have help.  Schools can be
made safer.  Walking routes can be made safer.  Use the Crime Bill
funds.  The churches are eligible to participate -- and give kids
something to do after school to get them off the street where they
can be in recreation.  (Applause.)   I got so tired when we were
debating that Crime Bill hearing people badmouth Midnight Basketball.
I'd a lot rather have somebody shooting hoops than shooting bullets.
(Applause.)  But you have to make that work.

             The third thing I would say is, we have to be more
honest.  Sometimes it is almost embarrassing, I know, but we've got
to be more honest with our young people in teaching them to respect
themselves -- their bodies, their souls and their futures.
(Applause.)

             And we always talk about how irresponsible it is for
young men to father these children and run off, but we've got to get
more young women to make a different choice in life too.  We have
simply got to find a way to deal with this.

             Thirty years ago one of 40 white births was out of
wedlock, now it's one in five.  Thirty years ago, one in five African
American births was out of wedlock, now, over half.  But the white
out-of-wedlock birthrate is growing much faster than the African
American rate.  So, we are going to have equal opportunity for all
before you know it.  (Laughter.)

             You're laughing to keep from crying, but it's not funny;
is it?  We're going to see a merger of this.  No more race
discrimination; more than half of everybody's babies will be born
where there was never a marriage.  That is a disaster.  It is wrong,
And someone has to say, again, it is simply not right.  You shouldn't
have a baby before you're ready, and you shouldn't have a baby when
you're not married.  You just have to stop it.  We've got to turn it
around.

             Now I want to make it clear we shouldn't stigmatize
these babies and when they're born we should to take care of them.
We ought to love the babies.  We ought to love the parents.  We ought
to give them the best future we can, but we have to tell people, look
at the facts.  Look at what happens to people.  Look at their
incomes, their education levels, their future. We've got to get
people out of thinking that the future is five minutes away and
realize it is five years or ten years or twenty years away.  And you
have to do that.

             I'll try to do my part, but this is not a government
deal.  This is the way people are behaving, as if there was no
respect for themselves and no future.  We have to stop.

             Finally, let me say, I ask you to help lead us in
bringing back an ethic of service to this nation.  We're going to
kick off our National Service Program on Monday which will, this
year, involve 20,000 young Americans in serving their community, many
of them in church groups.  The Congress of National Black Churches is
an active participant in national service.  We want kids working with
churches to solve a lot of these problems and earning credit for
their college education.  Year after next we'll have 100,000 young
people.  You can put them to work.  When people are serving one
another, when they're acting as role models, they'll be better people
themselves.  And you can do that.

             All these things you can do -- help our kids be safer,
help make sure every child is loved by somebody and disciplined by
somebody and cared for by somebody.  And help our kids change this
culture which is ending family life and childhood as we know it and
bring us back to the spirit of service.

             Finally, let me say this:  I came here to say this
because I don't believe in preaching at people. I believe you are the
heroes of this whole thing.  A lot of you have been out there like
the little Dutch Boy with your thumb in the dike against all these
forces for years.  A lot of you have been doing these things.  A lot
of you have run the day care centers and run the recreation programs
and run the prison ministries and counseled the young people.  You
have done this.  But America now knows that we must all do this.

             So I say, I honor you. I honor the members of your
church that get up and go to work every day and follow the law and
pay their taxes and do their best to raise their kids.  And let us
say for the record since all America is watching this, most of the
members of your church do exactly that.  They play by the rules, and
they work hard and they do their best.  (Applause.)

             But let's not kid each other, folks.  I'm going to go
back to Washington.  And I'll keep trying to create jobs.  And we'll
do a good job of that.  And we'll open America to the world.  I'll
keep working for peace and freedom around the world.  I'll keep
working for better education and training opportunities.  I'll keep
trying to solve this terrible riddle of why we can't get jobs in the
inner city and poor rural areas.  And we'll try to find ways to do
that.

              But in the end, if we're going to get the rhythm right,
if we're going to enjoy the progress we're making, even in an
imperfect world, we have to get the bedrock right.  We have to know
that the spirit that we believe in is rifling through this country
and is going to work.

                  You know, Paul -- St. Paul -- was not Timothy's
father, but he was his spiritual father.  And he said, when I call to
remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, I put thee in
remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee.  I
believe and you believe that every child has a gift of God within
them.  When the gift dies, it is our sin as well as theirs, and our
loss as well as theirs.

             So let us leave here resolved to stir up the gift of God
that is within us and do those things that will enable us to go
forward with joy and confidence to make the future what it ought to
be.

             Thank you and God bless you all.



                                 END12:52 P.M. CDT