Remarks at Dedication Ceremonies for the Mount Vernon Plaza in Columbus, Ohio

Senator Glenn, Senator Metzenbaum, my good friend Dick Celeste, Chairman Paul Tipps, Mayor Moody, my friend Les Brown, Jerry Hammond, Amos Lynch, Bill Potter, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters:

How many of you think we have a great country? [Applause] How many of you think we can make it even better? [Applause]

I'm very proud to come here this afternoon to be with you, to talk for a few minutes about how you, yourselves, have helped to make the United States of America a better country. I spent 2 weeks at Camp David, and we made great progress forward toward world peace. But what you've done here is also a symbol of the greatness of our country.

Mount Vernon Avenue, as you know, in years gone by, has been one of the worst places with the worst reputation, perhaps, in the Columbus area. It was a place where housing was not good. It was a place where sanitation was not good. It was a place where health conditions were not good. It was a place where crime was high. And then you, the people of this area, decided to do something about it. Now you've got an area that's safe, healthy, clean, beautiful, and it's going to be even better in the future.

There are areas where the Federal Government has come in, with a few real estate people, and have got together with the promoters, put in a housing project, put in a place for older people, without consulting the local people, and it just didn't work. Near here you've got a few projects like that yourselves. Sawyer Towers, Sawyer Manor, and Treyitt Heights were originally planned to be places just as beautiful as this. But the occupancy rate is down; vandalism is high. And we've got a long way to go to make those places as beautiful as this.

Here you have made sure that the real estate promoters couldn't rip off the poor. Here you have made sure that you may work among the Federal, State, and local governments, along with private developers and yourselves.

The slums are gone. The people that used to live here still live here. The ones who ran the businesses before are still operating businesses here. I've seen slum development projects come in where 2 or 300 families used to live, level them to the ground with bulldozers, and the poor people had to live and move somewhere else, and then a few places for rich people sprang up to take their places.

But here in Mount Vernon Plaza and the area around, you've got more houses now, more places for people to live here now than you did before this great project started. This is the kind of cooperation that makes our country great.

One thing that I believe that you know is that we've got to have jobs for our people. When I came into office, we had about 10 million Americans who couldn't get a full-time job. About 7 million Americans didn't have a job at all. The unemployment rate was up at 8 percent, and the Democratic Congress, many others, and I went to work.

We've had a net increase in the last 20 months of 6 million new jobs in the United States. We're finding more new jobs every day. We're going to put the American people back to work, where you want to be.

I'm also concerned about areas like the ones I mentioned earlier, the Sawyer Towers, Sawyer Manors, Trevitt Heights. And I can tell you today that we are giving, through public housing, $4.3 million in loans, over $400,000 in grants, to make those places just as nice in the future as yours are here.

I believe our country is rich enough. I believe our people are intelligent enough. I believe we've got enough team spirit in our country to give every family a decent place to live, a good education for the children, safe streets to walk on, a beautiful place to look at and, also, jobs for our people and a better life for all. That's what I believe we can have.

But I have to admit to you that the Federal Government can't do it all. You've got to have good support at the local and State levels. And the main thing you've got to have is the people themselves who live in a community say, "We want to make our own area a better place to live." And once you have a little bit of beauty somewhere, that beauty can grow, because if one person sees a house in a block that's clean and painted, with a few flowers in the front yard or on the windowsill, then the next house to it wants to do the same thing. And folks start picking up trash on the streets, people start being proud of what they've got, and the first thing you know, everybody is living in a community that hasn't cost much, but is a much better place to live.

I want to remind you that we do have a great country. It's great because the people are great. We're a country that's strong, getting stronger. The Lord has blessed us in the United States of America, and we need to take care of the blessings that He's given us. We've got good land to grow crops to sell all over the world. We've got factories, steel, coal, things to make things out of, to sell in the rest of the world. But the main thing we've got is people who love peace, people who are strong, people who control their own government, people who are committed to freedom, people who are committed to equality, people who believe we can be better even than we are now. And with that kind of team spirit, a President of the United States, the Senators who represent you in Washington, your Congressman, your mayor, and your other officials can work together to realize those hopes and dreams that have always made our country what it is today—the greatest nation on Earth.

Thank you very much. God bless every one of you. We're in it together.

Let me have your attention for a moment. As President of the United States of America, proud of all of you, grateful for what you've done, I hereby dedicate the Mount Vernon Plaza for my credit, for your credit, and for a better life for all of you.

Thank you very much.