remarks by president clinton to ncaa division i champion hockey team here is a press release from the white house remarks by president clinton to ncaa division i champion hockey team april q a following to national desk contact white house office of the press secretary washington april following is a transcript of remarks by president clinton to the university of maine black bears ncaa division i hockey champions the rose garden a m edt the president good morning ladies and gentlemen it s an honor for me to welcome the university of maine black bears the winner of the ncaa division i hockey national championship to the rose garden and the white house i understand from senator mitchell that this is the first team from the university of maine every to win a national championship and we re glad to have them here i m inspired not only by how the team pulled together to win the championship but how the entire state pulled together to cheer them onto victory coming from a state that is also relatively small in size but also filled with pride and tradition and community i can understand how the people of maine must feel about the black bears in our state people are still talking about the time we won the orange bowl over the number one ranked football team and that was back in i m sure that years from now the people of maine will as proud of this team as they are today you know in my state football is a slightly more popular sport than hockey we don t have a lot of ice laughter but after spending three months getting banged around in this town i can understand a little more about hockey than i did before i came here hockey is a tough game it s a hard hitting sport it does have one virtue though there s a penalty for delay of game i wish we had that rule in the senate laughter in government as in hockey leadership is important in the united states senate our team has a great captain the majority leader and the senior senator from maine george mitchell junior senator cohen looks so young i can t imagine laughter i m actually bitter about senator cohen because he looks so much younger than me on your hockey team the captain jim montgomery has done a great job he scored the winning goal late in the championship game leading you to a come from behind victory something else i know a little bit about sport brings out the best in individuals and in teams and in communities i share the pride that senator mitchell and senator cohen and congressman andrews and all the people of maine must feel for the black bears who have shown us all how to play as a team how to bring out the best in one another and how to come from behind i think it s important as i ask young people from around america who have achieved outstanding things in working together to come here to the white house to be recognized and appreciated by their country to remember that those kinds of values and those kinds of virtues need to be ingrained in all of us for all of our lives we now have another role model and i m glad to have them here today applause the president is presented with team jersey applause the president that s great i love it it s beautiful applause the president is presented with an autographed stick the president thank you that s great applause q mr president did you authorize the move on waco this morning sir the president i was aware of it i think the attorney general made the decision and i think i should refer all questions to her and to the fbi q did you have any instructions for her as to how it should be executed the president no they made the tactical decisions that was their judgment the fbi q is this a raid the president and i will i want to refer you to talk to the attorney general and the fbi i knew it was going to be done but the decisions were entirely theirs all the tactical decisions q what did you and senator mitchell talk about this morning q any chance for that stimulus package the president senator mitchell ought to pay my quarter laughter i was in there laughter senator mitchell you have to pay that quarter the president i was ready laughter senator mitchell he s worth a quarter any day q any chance for your bill sir the president we talked about what was going to happen this week in the senate and about what other meetings we re going to have for the rest of the week we only had about five minutes to talk and we agreed we d get back together later around noon and talk some more q senator dole said over the weekend that your compromise is no compromise the president well i know he did but look senator dole and a lot of the other republicans now in the senate voted for the same kind of thing for ronald reagan in and our research indicates that a majority of them over time voted for a total of emergency spending measures totalling over billion when reagan and bush were president in those administrations and many of those purposes were not nearly as worthy as putting the american people back to work i don t want to go back and revisit every one but you can do it you can look at the research there so this position they re taking is not credible we have a very tough five year deficit reduction plan all these costs are covered during that time and then some and the very people that are saying this has all got to be paid for don t have much of a history on which to base their position they ve got years of vote for stimulus measures of this kind that had very little to with putting the american people back to work so i think we ve got a chance to work it out and i m hopeful we ll see what happens today and tomorrow i m feeling pretty good about it the press thank you end a m edt canada remote systems toronto ontario
