[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H976-H977]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENT CLINTON AND BIG GOVERNMENT
(Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House
for 1 minute and to include extraneous material.)
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, last week President Clinton said this was
the end of the era of big government. And this week, the President says
that he established a record of remarkable consistency.
Mr. Speaker, let's review the facts. President Clinton is responsible
for the largest tax increase in American history. He tried to take over
one-seventh of the U.S. economy by socializing the Nation's health care
system. Last year, the President submitted four budget plans, none of
which balanced, all of which had $200 billion deficits as far as the
eye could see. And only until very recently has the President submitted
a balanced budget, but even that puts off the tough choices for future
politicians and spends $326 billion more on failed Washington programs.
If this is the end of big government, I must be in political
fantasyland.
Mr. Speaker, let's cut through the double-speak see that, in reality,
Bill Clinton has become big government's little buddy.
Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record:
[[Page H977]]
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 31, 1996]
Clinton Says Record Shows ``Remarkable Consistency''
(By Ann Devroy and John F. Harris)
President Clinton said yesterday his declaration last week
that the era of big government is over was not a departure
from the philosophy he brought to the White House three years
ago and said he will show voters this year that he has
compiled a record of ``remarkable consistency.''
Clinton's comments came in an Oval Office interview a week
after a State of the Union address in which he embraced many
of the limited-government themes sounded by congressional
Republicans. Despite his advocacy of a federal overhaul of
health care earlier in his administration and recurrent
charges by his critics that he has moved across the political
spectrum with the polls, Clinton said his basic approach to
the presidency has not changed.
``I believe I've given the American people a coherent view
of the world,'' he said, adding: ``Just because I'm not for
big government doesn't mean I think we should have a weak
government or that there's nothing for government to do.''
Clinton said that while he hopes other Democrats share this
vision, he will not make recapturing Congress for the
Democrats a primary goal of his 1996 campaign. Such an appeal
based solely on party, he said, would be ``self-defeating.''
On welfare reform, Clinton said he has not given up hope
that a compromise bill acceptable to him will be approved
this year. But he set a new price for his signature on a
welfare system overhaul, asserting that the Senate proposal
he indicated he would support last fall will have to be
changed for him to support it now. He called on Republicans
to send him a revised bill that would contain fewer cuts in
funding for food stamps, provide child care for welfare
recipients who work and preserve current protections for
disabled children.
One of Clinton's major campaign pledges in 1992 was to
replace welfare ``as we know it,'' but he must reconcile that
with his veto of a Republican welfare plan earlier this year
because it was too hard on children. Since the veto,
Republicans have been debating among themselves how to revive
the issue. One alternative they have discussed is to agree to
unite behind the Senate version, which was adamantly opposed
by House Republicans.
That way, some Republicans argue, Clinton would have to
sign the bill--as he earlier indicated he would do--hereby
angering liberals in his party, who think the Senate bill
amounts to an abandonment of the party's traditional
commitment to the needy.
Clinton's comments yesterday appear to add a new hurdle to
getting any version of welfare overhaul through Congress this
year. Some argue it is an academic discussion anyway, because
Republicans have deep disagreements over whether to try for a
deal, how to proceed and whether a more limited measure like
the Senate version could make it through the House.
In the interview and later talking to reporters, Clinton
said any new version sent him should ``at least reflect''
understandings on improvements reached between him and
congressional Republicans during their marathon balanced-
budget talks at the end of 1995.
``We reached an understanding,'' Clinton said, that ``we
should do more'' on child care funding, food stamp proposals,
funding that covers Social Security disability payments to
children and provisions affecting the children of legal
immigrants.
Republicans disputed Clinton's description of the talks and
his call for using them as a basis for new legislation. Tony
Blankley, spokesman for House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.),
said the welfare discussions were in the context of
Republicans taking less than real reform in order to get more
of a real balanced budget. Without the balanced budget, he
said, the equation doesn't hold up.
``It's not going to happen,'' he said of legislation
rewritten to reflect the president's newest specifications.
Adding new requirements now to the one version he did embrace
``offers a flavor of the kind of two-step he did in the Oval
Office last month,'' moving the goal posts as the game
proceeded, Blankley said.
Administration officials are vague on what precisely
Clinton and the Republicans reached understandings about. But
one senior official said Republicans agreed to add back about
$4 billion of the $26 billion in cuts they proposed for food
stamps, and were no longer seeking to make the program a
block grant. On child care, they did not object to adding $2
billion in spending and to allowing women who work 20 hours a
week to meet the work requirement to keep benefits.
On Social Security disability payments, the Republicans,
officials said, did not object to loosening requirements to
allow more traditionally disabled recipients to retain their
benefits, while removing alcoholics and others. The two sides
also ``threw out a number of ideas'' on how to loosen the GOP
requirement that legal immigrants not be eligible for most
welfare benefits, an official said.
Clinton was relaxed and voluble for most of the interview,
becoming more intense only when defending himself when asked
if he has been inconsistent in his approach to government. He
was joined in the Oval Office by a handful of senior aides,
including senior adviser George Stephanopoulos, press
secretary Michael McCurry and communications director Don
Baer, none of whom joined the discussion.
Regarding the 1996 campaign, Clinton said he has gotten a
good reception to the conciliatory tone of his State of the
Union speech and said seeking common ground with Republicans
would be part of his election-year message.
But asked if he would ask voters to give him a Democratic
Congress to help accomplish second-term goals, Clinton said,
``The American people don't think it's the president's
business to tell them what ought to happen in the
congressional elections.''
Presidents have been only modestly successful in recent
elections in getting voters to link their presidential votes
to congressional votes by party. George Bush, when he was
elected in 1988, saw his party lose seats in Congress, as did
Clinton in his 1992 election. But the reelections of Richard
M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, in 1972 and 1984, saw their
Republican Party make double-digit gains in congressional
seats.
``The evidence that the president's been successful making
that kind of argument to the American people is not very
heavy,'' Clinton said.
He added, ``I think it ought to be obvious to people that
Speaker Gingrich would like to have a Republican president
and it's obvious to people that I would like to have more
Democrats in the Congress, but I think what the American
people want to know is: What are these people saying, how's
it going to affect me, and then I'll make a decision about
how I'm going to vote.'' The president said he would ``make
my case'' about what he wants to do in a second term. ``I
hope it will embrace a lot of the people that are running for
Congress in my party. But to tie the two things together I
think would probably be self-defeating.''
Asked about his changes in governing philosophy since he
took office and to reconcile his first speech to Congress in
1993 with his State of the Union address last week, the
president flushed and rejected the premise that the different
themes showed a different philosophy.
In 1993, he began his speech by saying, ``Tonight I want to
talk to you about what government can do because I believe
government must do more,'' and went on to outline a ``package
of jobs investments of over $30 billion to put people to work
now, to create half a million jobs: jobs to rebuild our
highways and airports, to renovate housing, to bring new life
to rural communities.'' Last week, he twice proclaimed, ``The
era of big government is over.''
Clinton said the two speeches are inconsistent ``only if
you have that kind of selective quotes.''
``I've worked very hard to work out a coherent philosophy
that is different from either just letting the market run the
world and America, or pretending that the government can
solve all the problems,'' he said. ``I have worked on it very
hard for years and years and I believe that there's a
remarkable consistency in what we have done.''
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