[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I)]
[April 7, 1992]
[Pages 546-549]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the American Business Conference

April 7, 1992
    Thank you, Jim, very, very much. Thank you all, and I'm just 
delighted to be back with you. And Jim Jones, thank you, sir, for the 
introduction, for your leadership not just of this wonderful 
organization but of the exchange and for everything else you do for this 
economy.
    Some people think I've been traveling a little too much so today, as 
an example of my new policy, no trips further than one block away from 
the White House. [Laughter]
    It is a pleasure to be with you. I'm delighted to have been 
accompanied by Barbara Franklin, who many of you saw coming in, I think, 
our new Secretary of Commerce in whom I have great confidence, Barbara. 
And she and I both agree that she has large shoes to fill over there at 
Commerce with one of your originators, one of your founders, my dear, 
close friend Bob Mosbacher, sitting in the back, back here. What a job 
he did for his country as Secretary.
    But let me just say it is always a pleasure to speak with the 
members of the ABC, the American Business Conference, because it's a 
pleasure to speak with the best, people that get things done. And I'd 
like to talk to you today about the future, the future of our country 
generally, and more particularly, the future of our country's business 
environment. In fact, we cannot separate the two. The America of the 
21st century--Jim talked about some of the aspects of this, what ABC's 
about, its ability to make peace in the world, but to foster strong 
families, to create rewarding jobs--will be shaped today, in large part, 
by how hospitable we make America for business.
    We can learn from your achievement. The key to the success of any 
high-growth company is the wise deployment of resources. The successful 
company channels labor and investment into those areas with the 
potential for the greatest expansion, for the highest return. And you 
take the risk; you reap the reward; everyone, meanwhile, benefits from 
the wealth you create. And that, in brief, is the genius of 
entrepreneurial capitalism, a system that has made America the envy of 
the world.
    For 200 years our prosperity has sprung from our ability to 
innovate, to create, to change as the world changes. But America's world 
leadership is not automatic; it's not a birthright. We must continue to 
earn it day by day, quarter by quarter, year by year. And the world now 
is changing at a pace that no one could have dreamed of just a 
generation ago. And America, which has led the world's transformation, 
simply must change with it.
    Over the last several years, deadweights have begun to slow the 
engine of growth, inefficiencies a competitive economy simply cannot 
tolerate. And today I want to discuss five areas of reform, five 
critical ways in which America must change if we are to continue to lead 
the world. You understand the urgency, for each of these problems 
presents itself to American companies not as an abstraction but in the 
most immediate way, as a cost of doing business, a cost you can't 
control, an expenditure with no possible return.
    When our legal system becomes incapable of resolving disputes in a 
timely and civil manner, business loses the incentive to innovate and 
take risks. Secondly, when health care costs escalate, business picks up 
much of the tab. When Government imposes barriers to trade, business 
pays the price in opportunities lost. When our children leave school 
without rudimentary skills, business bears the burden in lowered 
productivity. And when Government freezes in gridlock, business can no 
longer plan rationally for the future.
    Let me begin with the crying need to

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reform our country's civil justice system. Every American has heard 
stories of bizarre or frivolous lawsuits. But most of you have lived 
with them, tales that could have been torn from the pages of Kafka. 
Consider one example related by one of your members, Roger Coleman, 
president of Rykoff-Sexton, a food manufacturer and distributor.
    After record earnings in 1989, Mr. Coleman publicly expressed his 
confidence that 1990 would be even better. And when earnings fell short, 
his hopeful statement became the cause of a shareholder class-action 
lawsuit. First, in a meeting with plaintiffs' contingency-fee lawyers, 
at which the merits of the case were never even discussed, the issue, 
says Mr. Coleman, was ``the depths of our pockets.'' And next came the 
nightmare of discovery, endlessly expensive and invasive. The company's 
managers, instead of managing, spent their time preparing for 
depositions. The lawsuit, he says, ``brought everything to a stop.'' In 
the end, rather than permit the total exhaustion of company resources, 
Mr. Coleman decided to settle. And the tab for this exercise in 
futility, $8.7 million. And as he says, ``That's over $8.7 million that 
was diverted from new investments in jobs and facilities.''
    The scenario is repeated daily throughout American business. And it 
is not repeated, let me stress, among our world competitors. Only the 
United States has seen the number of lawyers double over a 20-year 
period. And only the United States spends more than $80 billion annually 
in direct litigation costs, perhaps 4 times that in indirect costs. 
According to a recent survey, 40 percent of companies that had been the 
target of product liability suits have discontinued certain types of 
product research.
    We must remove this ball and chain from our ability to produce, our 
ability to compete worldwide. And my Competitiveness Council, led by the 
Vice President, has offered 50 recommendations for legal reform. They 
would limit discovery to reasonable proportions, discourage some 
frivolous suits through a ``loser pay'' rule, and offer alternative 
means of resolving disputes.
    This broad legal reform will not be easy. Just look at the fight 
that we've had on product liability reform. We introduced a reform bill 
in 1990 and again in 1991. And the Senate opposition, the majority in 
the Senate refused to bring it to a vote. And in the House it's stuck in 
two committees. The special interests are lining up against legal 
reform, and we could certainly use your help in moving it forward. We 
must reform the legal system of this country.
    If we are successful, the effects will be far-reaching, extending 
into another area critically in need of change. Medical malpractice 
premiums almost doubled in the second half of the eighties. Doctors are 
practicing defensive medicine, ordering an estimated $20 billion a year 
in unnecessary tests and procedures to protect against frivolous 
lawsuits.
    The trends in health care costs are simply unsustainable. From less 
than 6 percent 30 years ago, total health care expenditures are today 
about 13 percent of GDP. Some midrange estimates put that figure at 30 
percent by the year 2030. That's 30 cents of every dollar of national 
income spent on health care. Right now, according to one Federal study, 
American corporations already spend more on health care each year than 
they earn in aftertax profits.
    We must reform the system, but we face a crossroad. Some have 
advocated nationalized care; others propose the so-called ``pay or 
play'' approach, which I am convinced is merely a step on the road to 
nationalized care. Neither is acceptable. Neither will preserve the 
quality of our country's health care, which remains the best in the 
entire world. And I will not let that high quality be taken away from 
the American people through some scheme of Government control.
    Nationalized care means rationed care. Its promise of cost 
containment is a mirage. ``Pay or play'' would dump still more mandates 
on business. For employers, a 9-percent payroll tax would mean a 34-
percent increase in health insurance costs. And that money has got to 
come from somewhere. And for a company unable to pass along the added 
costs through higher prices, that means decreased investment; it means 
lower wages; it means fewer jobs.
    There is an alternative, a good one. And my proposed health care 
reform will build on the strengths of the existing system, pre-

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serving the quality of American care. We will increase consumer choice. 
And through transferable credits, we will assure access to basic health 
insurance for the uninsured and control costs through market incentives. 
And we will not have to raise taxes in the process, raise taxes on the 
employers.
    I've targeted a third area for attention, like the others, 
absolutely critical to our success in the coming decades. You understand 
that for America to succeed economically at home we must succeed 
economically abroad. The fastest growing companies among your group, the 
ones creating the greatest number of jobs here at home, are those with 
far-reaching involvement in foreign markets.
    I am committed to opening markets to American goods and services, 
removing the Government-imposed barriers that act as a hidden tax on 
American business. Each market shut off by protection is a lost 
opportunity to sell your products. A successful conclusion to the 
current Uruguay round of trade negotiations, for instance, could 
increase world output by $5 trillion over the next decade. More than $1 
trillion of that boom will go to the United States, creating a higher 
standard of living and, yes, more jobs for Americans.
    And then, even closer to home, an area where Bob Mosbacher did so 
much and now Barbara Franklin has taken up the cause: exports to Mexico. 
They have more than doubled over the last years, creating more than 
300,000 American jobs. Now, our North American free trade agreement, 
Mexico, Canada, and the U.S., will lock in and even multiply these 
gains, creating a $6 trillion market for American products in Canada, 
Mexico, and the U.S.A.
    As world trade expands, the need for a sophisticated, well-educated 
work force will intensify. And yet the fact is grim and undeniable, and 
Jim referred to this one in introducing me, our current educational 
system is unable to produce the workers the highly competitive world 
market demands.
    Our educational failures have hit American employees hard. English 
is now the language of international business, and yet only 20 percent 
of 17-year-olds can write a simple two-paragraph letter applying for a 
job. The situation in geography, math, science is equally dire. Too many 
businesses are forced to pay twice for the education of prospective 
employees, once through taxes that support our schools and again through 
job training to remedy the failures of those schools in educating our 
young.
    Communities have begun taking matters into their own hands, with 
local businesses often acting as catalysts. ABC's Vital Link, which 
works with local schools to establish learning incentives for students, 
is a perfect example of the community-based efforts that our children 
need.
    And still, there is much for the Government to do. This year seven 
different Federal agencies will spend $18 billion on a patchwork of 60 
mandated vocational training programs. Is it any wonder that so many 
Americans who seek training don't know how to get it? Now, working with 
State and local governments, we've got a new program: our Job Training 
2000 initiative, we call it. And that will bring coherence to these 
programs and try to offer ``one-stop shopping'' to aspiring workers. Job 
Training 2000 perfectly complements the revolution now taking place in 
American education as a whole.
    And through this, I hope you've heard of it, our America 2000 
initiative, we will reinvent, literally reinvent our schools. Your 
chairman, Jim Jones, is a leader in what we call the New American 
Schools Development Corporation. It's a private group created at my 
request to launch an entire generation of break-the-mold new American 
schools.
    This revolution is essential to creating a world-class work force. 
Now to do that, we need to set world-class standards for students and 
create a system of voluntary national tests to measure their progress. 
We've got to redouble our efforts to rid our schools of drugs and 
violence, to cleanse America of this scourge that wastes so many young 
lives. And we must make schools more accountable by forcing them to 
compete. And that means giving parents the opportunity to choose their 
children's schools, public, private, or religious.
    I am convinced that each of these major reforms, restoring sanity to 
our legal system, ensuring quality health care for all,

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expanding world trade, reinventing American education, is essential to 
this country's productivity. But each faces powerful opposition from 
special interests who profit from the status quo. And so, I've targeted 
a final reform, no less important than the others. If America is to 
change, our Government must change.
    And last week in Philadelphia I presented seven specific programs, 
proposals really, to deal with the paralysis that grips the Congress. 
And the results of this gridlock are dismally plain. Congress was 
incapable even of passing a short-term stimulative economic growth 
package. But they must understand I am going to continue to fight for 
measures essential to economic growth, and that includes something you 
know something about, a lot about, including a cut in the tax on capital 
gains.
    And you have sitting here today a leader that knows something about 
the success of a capital gains cut, Jim Jones. Because if my memory 
serves me correctly, it was the Jones-Stieger initiative in '78 that 
showed what can happen in the way of new investment, entrepreneurship, 
when a capital gains tax cut was enacted.
    The American people, and I can understand this, are rightly fed up 
with business as usual, a deficit that is a fiscal and a moral outrage, 
a permanent governing class oblivious to the national interest, and 
hundreds of self-perpetuating programs that don't even aid the people 
they were designed to help. Now, I refuse to believe that this is the 
legacy we'll leave our kids. But it will be if we don't reform. I'm 
talking here about perks. I'm talking about the gymnasium. I'm talking 
about fundamental reform of the United States Congress.
    The reforms that I've outlined here today are grounded in basic 
principles, a way of looking at the world. As Jefferson said, ``The 
pillars of our prosperity are the most thriving when left most free to 
individual enterprise.'' In practice, that means Government must trust 
the wisdom of the markets more than the whims of the bureaucrats. The 
freely made decisions of business men and women must take precedence 
over the engineering schemes of Government. And all of our institutions, 
from the Congress to the local school board, must be accountable to 
those that they serve.
    Over the last decade, America has changed the world. Given what's 
happening out there in this election year, we sometimes fail to count 
our blessings. There have been fundamental changes in this world, 
changes for world peace. And today we are blessed with those changes, 
and we are also blessed with the opportunity now to change America. With 
these principles that I've outlined here as our guide, I am absolutely 
convinced we will meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities of 
the world that is now being born.
    Thank you all very much for what you do. And may God bless our 
country. Thank you all.

                    Note: The President spoke at 2:11 p.m. at the 
                        Willard Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to 
                        James R. Jones, chairman of the American 
                        Business Conference and chairman of the American 
                        Stock Exchange.