Senate Journal: Page 1413: Tuesday, April 25, 1995

    how are we going to keep the American Dream alive?  How are we going to
    keep America, the worlds strongest force for freedom and democracy, into
    the next century, and change the way the government works?

         There is broad consensus that the government in Washington should
    be less bureaucratic, less oriented toward rule-making, smaller, more
    flexible, that more decisions should be devolved to the state and local
    government level, and where possible, more decisions should be given to
    private citizens themselves.  There is a broad agreement on that.

         The question is, what are the details?  What does that mean?  What
    should we do?  What should you do?  Thats what I want to talk to you
    about.  There are clearly some national responsibilities, clearly some
    that would be better served here at your level.

         The main reason I ran for President is, it seemed to me that we
    were seeing a national government in bipartisan gridlock, where wed had
    12 years in which we exploded the deficit, reduced our investment in
    people, and undermined our ability to compete and win in the world.  And
    I wanted very badly to end the kind of gridlock wed had and to see some
    real concrete action taken to go forward, because of my experience doing
    what youre doing now.

         My basic belief is that the government ought to do more to help
    people help themselves, to reward responsibility with more opportunity,
    and not to give anybody opportunity without demanding responsibility.
    Thats basically what I think our job is.

         I think we can be less bureaucratic.  We have to enhance security
    at home and abroad.  But the most important thing we have to do is to
    empower people to make the most of their own lives.

         Now, we have made a good beginning at that.  As I said, weve been
    able to get the deficit down.  You know here in Iowa, because youre a
    farming state, that weve had the biggest expansion of trade in the last
    two years weve seen in a generation.  We now have a $20 billion surplus
    in agricultural products for the first time ever -- this means more to
    me than you -- but were selling rice to the Japanese, something that my
    farmers never thought that wed ever do.  Were selling apples in Asia.
    We are doing our best in Washington -- some of us are -- to get the
    ethanol program up and going.  This administration is for it, and I hope
    you will help us with that.

         And were making modest efforts which ought to be increased to work
    with the private sector to develop alternative agricultural products.
    Today I saw corn-based windshield wiper fluid, and something that I
    think is important, biodegradable,   agriculturallyrooted golf tees. And
    a lot of other things that I think will be the hallmark of our future.
    We have only scratched the surface of what we can do to produce products
    from the land, from our food and fiber, and we must do more.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: Senate Journal (76th General Assembly: Session 1)

© 1995 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

Comments? sjourn@legis.iowa.gov.

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