    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [July 4, 1993]
    [Pages 999-1007]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Town Meeting in Eldridge, Iowa
    July 4, 1993

        The President. Thank you very much. Folks, this is supposed to be
    informal, so I'm going to sit down if you don't mind. That introduction
    you just heard is a good illustration of Clinton's first law of
    politics, which is whenever possible, get somebody you've appointed to
    high office to introduce you. They'll lie about you every time.
    [Laughter]
        I'm glad to be here with your secretary of agriculture, your
    secretary of state, and your

    [[Page 1000]]

    Governor, my longtime friend. We served together for a long time. And
    when he got elected Governor, he was 3 months younger than me. He
    displaced me from being the youngest Governor. Now there are 10 or 12
    Governors younger than we are. We've hung around too long and worked
    ourselves into middle age.
        I'm glad to be here with Congressman Jim Leach and with Congressman
    Lane Evans, who's the Congressman from across the river in Illinois. I
    want to say we had some contact with Senator Grassley before I came
    today, and Senator Harkin called me the day before yesterday and gave me
    a long litany of everything I was supposed to be doing. I said, ``Well,
    Tom, I don't even need to go to Iowa now. I've been educated, you
    know.'' [Laughter]
        It is true that there wasn't much of a sales job to get me to come
    here. If you could come to Iowa on the Fourth of July or stay in
    Washington and burn up, what would you do? [Laughter] So I'm glad to be
    back here. The last time I was in this part of Iowa was when I was on my
    bus trip. And actually, our bus trip went through almost every place
    that's badly flooded here, starting in northern Missouri and Iowa and
    Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin. And of course, you got some pretty
    substantial damage in South Dakota also.
        I am very glad to be back. I want to thank Secretary Espy for coming
    out here so promptly. I wish I could have come a few days earlier, but
    the legislative and other schedules in Washington just wouldn't permit
    it.
        I do want to say that I appreciate, Dale, what you said about
    Secretary Espy. One reason I asked him to be Secretary of Agriculture is
    that he represented a district in Congress that bordered my State, and I
    wanted to appoint somebody Secretary of Agriculture that actually
    represented farmers and that had seen crops flood and also seen crops
    burn, often on the same land. If you hang around long enough, you see it
    on the same land. And we are trying up there to be responsive and to be
    helpful. And I want to thank all the people here in Iowa and all the
    people throughout this Mississippi River area who have been very
    cooperative with us and have helped us.
        I came here mostly to listen to you today, but I wanted to talk
    about--I've got three or four notes here. I want to just make sure I
    don't forget to say anything. Of the things we already know, we know
    that the damage from this flood is going to be somewhere in the
    neighborhood of a billion dollars. We feel that it is, anyway. I have
    only $100 million right now in my disaster fund under present law. And I
    signed a letter releasing that fund before I came out here. There is
    also a new law which has been passed by the Congress which provides
    disaster payments for 1993. It's got about $297 million in it. It is on
    my desk, and I will sign it as soon as I get back. And don't think I'm
    derelict. You couldn't get get the money even if I signed it yesterday.
    It'll take a while to get.
        So we're still going to be real short of funds. So I'm going to ask
    Congress on an emergency basis to provide some additional funding, and
    Secretary Espy is going to be working with the rest of the people in the
    executive branch and your Representatives from here to put together
    legislation that will adequately take care of the problems insofar as we
    can under Federal law.
        We are going to ask that the producers here receive the same
    benefits as the people who were affected by Hurricane Andrew and other
    major disasters last year, which is something that the congressional
    delegations and the Governors have asked us to do, and we're going to do
    that. And we will eliminate the August 1st deadline for disaster filing,
    which is what's in the present law. We'll present a bill to do that, and
    I've already talked to the leadership in the House and the Senate on a
    bipartisan basis from other States. And they don't have any problem with
    doing that. They know that we need to.
        The last thing I'd like to mention before I open it to your comments
    and questions, because you may have some other specific things we can
    do, is that I have asked Secretary Espy to work with the other Federal
    agencies and with the appropriate people in Congress on a long-term
    reform of the crop insurance system. Any farmer who's ever fooled with
    it knows it's a good thing if you've got it, if you've got insured what
    goes wrong, in just the way it's supposed to be. But it's nowhere near
    what it ought to be. If you don't get your beans planted in the first
    place, for example, you can't get any insurance on it, even if you pay
    and pay and pay for years. That's a big issue. I come from a State that
    has not near as much corn as Iowa, just a little bit of corn, but a
    whole bunch of soybeans. It's not a program crop, and if you take out
    crop insurance against it and then it gets wet and you can't plant it at
    all, under

    [[Page 1001]]

    the present system you can't recover. It's just not a very good,
    comprehensive, or appropriate system in my opinion. So we're going to
    try to see if we can't get some reforms up that people will agree to.
        And there are some other actions that Secretary Espy can take that
    he may want to talk about or you may want to ask about. But these are
    the specific things we think we can do. I hope it will be enough so that
    we don't lose a lot of farmers who are operating on the margins. I went
    through that whole thing in the 1980's when I was a Governor of a big
    farm State, and every other day I had a friend who was dropping out of
    farming. And we're going to do what we can to move as quickly and as
    aggressively as we can. I hope it will help.
        I think it's real, real important to get this long-term reform of
    the crop insurance system and work it out so that people can access it,
    and then if they got it, it amounts to something when they suffer a
    loss. So we're going to do what we can to get that done.
        I thank you for spending part of your Fourth of July with me. I know
    you could be out shooting fireworks, and I'm sorry about all the water.
    We had a whole lot of my State under water 3 or 4 years ago when the
    Arkansas River flooded, and we had towns under water, house under water
    like what I saw today, a town and an awful lot of farmland. I know what
    you're going through. I'm very sorry. I hope this will help, and I
    assure you we'll be very diligent in pushing to get this action through
    Congress. If you have any other ideas or suggestions we would be glad to
    have them.
        And thank you again, Governor. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you,
    Madam Secretary. Congressman Leach, I'm glad to be in your district and
    see you looking so hale and hearty. And thank you all very much for
    having us.

    [At this point, a participant expressed appreciation for the President's
    visit and discussed severe weather conditions in 1988 and 1991.]

        The President. Can I ask just one fact question before we start,
    just for my interest because we're a little bit further north than my
    home State. Can you plant soybeans this late here?
        Q. This is the cutoff.
        The President. You mean 3 weeks from now, if the land dries off,
    it's too late to plant, isn't it?
        Q. Right. Some people have planted as late as the Fourth of July and
    get a half a crop. At this point it's not worth the risk of planting a
    crop. The cost you have of putting it in the ground, you're not going to
    recover that. So at this point, it's just too late, I think, in the
    State of Iowa to plant soybeans. There was some corn ground that was
    switched to soybeans, but it's too late to do that now, too.
        Q. Thank you, Mr. President, for your interest in agriculture. I
    really appreciate it. And my question to you is, will you require
    repayment of the advance deficiency payments even though the fellow
    didn't get the corn planted? I would think that would be a very great
    help to those that didn't get planted to not have that burden of
    repayment.
        The President. I think I'll let Secretary Espy answer that. We
    talked about that very thing on the airplane when we were about to land,
    and we saw how much land was under water. It was the first thing that
    came up when we were looking at the damage.
        Secretary Espy. This is something that we've been looking at a lot
    lately, as you might imagine. And since I returned to Washington from
    Iowa I've reviewed the law. And any outright waiver of the advance
    deficiency payment that you've already gotten is going to be really,
    really difficult to do, certainly if you're not in the program.
        But what we want to do is to extend the signing date for program
    crops, and we'll probably do it until the end of the month, July 31st,
    so that you can come in and declare your intent to plant another crop,
    particularly corn. Then you will fall in the 0-92, and then you could
    keep your advance deficiency payment.
        For those farmers that already have the payment, we can't waive it
    outright, but we'll certainly work with you to make sure we stretch out
    the payment, or we can go to Congress to ask that we have fallback
    authority to do some other things.
        The President. Under the law, just to flat out do it, we don't have
    the authority right now. So you either have to change the law or do what
    Mike said in terms of putting back the filing date and having people
    come in and make a declaration.

    [A participant expressed appreciation for the President's visit and
    discussed other conditions adversely affecting the crop yield, the
    special stress the flood places on young farmers, and

    [[Page 1002]]

    the possibility of an assessment fee on commodities traded to be set
    aside for disaster assistance.]

        The President. You know, there's another issue that you alluded to
    there that I don't have an answer to, but I worked on it quite a lot
    when I was a Governor, and that is the whole question of the small
    number of young farmers, unless there are just young farmers that farm
    their parents' land, and it's all paid for, and they've got their debt
    paid down. The average age of a farmer is pushing 60, just on the near
    side of 60. That looks younger to me all the time--[laughter]--but still
    it doesn't quite qualify as young.
        We spent a lot of time when I was a Governor trying to work out
    financing operations and some other things for first-time farmers.
    Secretary Espy and I spent a good deal of time talking about that. Maybe
    this is not a discussion for tonight because we're all here worried
    about the floods, but if you had any specific ideas about kinds of
    initiatives we might undertake or partnerships for the States for first-
    time farmers to get young people in or help them get through those first
    rough years if they've got some accumulated mortgage or other debt, I'd
    really like to know it, because I think it's a pretty serious social
    problem for this country to have the average age of farmers going up
    every year and almost no young farmers coming in.

    [Governor Branstad suggested that a law regarding use of tax-exempt
    bonds to finance State farm loan programs be made permanent or at least
    extended.]

        The President. That whole tax-exempt bond law is now part of the
    discussion now being held on the budget, and I am strongly in favor of
    extending it. We had a program like that at home. It works, and I'm
    strong for it. I think it will be extended.
        Governor Branstad. It could be made permanent as opposed to extended
    for a year or so.
        The President. I think it will be extended. We're trying to make it
    permanent, and I hope we can do it.

    [A participant discussed the loss of crops that had not yet been planted
    and the requirement that a certain percent of any county must be damaged
    before the disaster assistance program provides assistance. Secretary
    Espy then advocated reform of the crop insurance program.]

        The President. Let me just mention one other thing. You asked a
    question about the county loss thing. That's always been in the Federal
    law, at least as long as I've been fooling with it. And under normal
    circumstances it's a pretty good rule of thumb, you know, for example,
    if there's, I don't know, a tornado or heavy rains that are uniform
    across the State. But when you have something that comes directly out of
    the flooding of a river like this, it's possible, depending on the size
    and shape of the county, that people could be wiped out and could be
    living just across the county line and their county not trigger.
        So what I think we're going to have to do on that--I can't promise,
    but I'm aware of it because I've been through it before--what we're
    going to do is wait until all the reports come in, and we can see what
    the shape of the damage is. And if we've got substantial numbers of
    people who are really wiped out who are in counties where they don't
    have the 35 percent county loss for just pure geographical fluke, then
    we need to make some provisions for that, and I think we'll be able to.
        Q. We need to have a crop insurance program with a catastrophic
    feature to it, and we don't have that now.
        Q. I would like to say one thing. I'm from Illinois just across the
    way here, but I'm not from Iowa, but it's been bad over there, too.
        Q. Mr. President, I'm 23 years old, and this is my first year of
    farming. I had been planning on starting, and I grew up on a farm, but
    everything I've done I've done myself. And I'm kind of wondering where
    the money's coming from that you're planning on helping everybody with.
        The President. Where's the money coming from, the $850 million?
        Q. Exactly.
        The President. Well, I don't think we'll have any trouble getting it
    because this year we're way below the spending targets established by
    the Congress before I became President. We've got the deficit way down;
    it's much lower than they thought it was going to be. Our interest
    payments are much lower because interest payments are down. And I think
    the Congress, they'll do one of two things: They'll either appropriate
    it as an extra expense, or they'll just cut the money out of somewhere
    else and pay it.

    [[Page 1003]]

        Everything we've done so far since I've been there, we've just cut
    something else and put it into some supplemental bill, which is what we
    did, for example, to add another 200,000 summer jobs this summer.
        So they'll either find something else to cut and pay for it, or they
    may, because it's a genuine one-time emergency, just appropriate the
    money since we're well under the spending limits approved by the
    previous Congress.
        Q. In my opinion, what would help us out now and in the future would
    be not this new tax. We're taxed enough the way it is right now. We only
    get 50 cents on the dollar. By the time we spend it, I would just as
    soon be able to spend my money the way I want to spend it.
        The President. You won't have to worry about this causing taxes
    because it's a tiny fraction of a huge Federal budget anyway.
        Q. But the whole United States is getting taxed on this, and it's
    not helping--what percentage of the United States population is farmers?
        The President. Three percent, but 100 percent of them eat.
        Q. Yes, and 100 percent of them are going to get taxed, too. I would
    just as soon that you not tax me as a farmer, and I would just as soon
    if you didn't raise taxes on the rest of the Nation, too.
        The President. Well, if we had a decent crop insurance program, we
    wouldn't have to worry about disaster payments. In other words, if we
    had one that worked, if there was a system of crop insurance that
    worked, we wouldn't have to worry about it.
        Q. As a farmer we've got enough to gamble on with the weather, let
    alone gambling on our Government raising taxes. And I remember somebody
    saying no new taxes about 6 months ago, I believe.
        The President. Well, you didn't hear me say no new taxes. I've
    promised to raise taxes on the wealthy because their incomes were
    produced----
        Q. I'm far from wealthy, Mr. President.
        The President. Well, if your income is under $30,000, you'll
    probably get a tax cut under my plan. If it's between $30,000 and
    $100,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will cost you
    a very little amount of money.
        Q. Thirty thousand is a wealthy man then?
        The President. No, that's not what I said. But when I took office,
    sir--let's have a political debate. I didn't think we were going to talk
    about this, but I'd be more than happy to. Let me tell you something.
    After the election--not during the election when they had all the
    figures--the previous government announced after the election that the
    deficit was going to be $165 billion bigger than they said before the
    election. We just discovered we're going to have $50 billion more in
    deficit. This is just for 4 years, not the whole 5-year period.
        So my choice was pretty simple. I could ignore that, or I could ask
    middle class people between $30,000 and $100,000 to pay a modest
    contribution to the deficit, get almost all the money from people above
    $100,000, and cut spending by as much as we would raise in taxes, reduce
    the deficit $500 million, and bring interest rates down.
        Let me finish. You've started to talk so you're going to listen to
    me now. [Laughter] Since I became President we dropped long-term
    interest rates a point; they're at their lowest rate in 20 years, only
    because there's finally a Government in Washington trying to bring this
    deficit down. Millions of Americans have refinanced their homes since
    January, and they've saved more money in one year than they're going to
    pay in 5 years by far if this small fuel tax passes that the Congress
    has approved, by far.
        The people whose taxes were raised substantially are people whose
    taxes were lowered in the 1980's while taxes on the middle class were
    raised. And for every dollar that the taxes were raised, even on the
    wealthy, we cut spending. We have cut everything in the Federal
    Government. We have a 5-year hard freeze on all domestic spending which
    includes the increases we're putting into Head Start, job training, and
    new technologies. We have slashed spending. We have raised 74 percent of
    the taxes on people with incomes above $100,000, and we held harmless
    everybody below $30,000.
        I think it's a fair deal. And not only that, if it gets the interest
    rates down, the country will get more money out of it than they'll pay
    in taxes. Even the people who don't agree with me admit, right in the
    Wall Street Journal, if we keep interest rates down this low, it will
    put $100 billion a year back in the pockets of ordinary Americans to
    refinance their homes, their business loans, their farm loans, their
    consumer loans, their car loans, their college loans. And it's because
    we have let the deficit

    [[Page 1004]]

    get out of hand and we're bringing it down. We've got interest rates
    down. We can turn the country around. I think it is a fair plan. And you
    may believe you're taxed to death, but our taxes are lower than all of
    our competitors. And now our interest rates are, too, because we're
    finally doing something about the deficit.
        I might say--all the people who talk about how terrible this was--we
    just had a hearing in the Senate last week, and it was a straight party
    line vote voting this bill out of the Senate Finance Committee. But all
    those people that said the issue was spending in the Senate Finance
    Committee, you know how many amendments the other side offered to cut
    spending--they said, you know, ``It's spending, stupid. It's not taxes.
    It's spending''--zero. Not one, not one amendment, because I had taken
    all these politically tough spending cuts. We slashed education, slashed
    veterans, slashed--we cut everything in the world in a wide budget.
        And I just think it was worth it to get the deficit down. If you
    don't believe that you should have any tax increase at all, even a very
    modest one, to reduce the deficit, you're entitled to that opinion. But
    I think you'll make more money from lower interest rates than you'll pay
    in higher taxes. And I think it's fair.
        Q. Not if I don't borrow money. I've got my money saved from earning
    it, and I wish the Government could----
        The President. Most 22-year-olds don't have that kind of money.
    Lucky you. I'm proud of you.

    [A participant thanked the President for visiting and advocated action
    during the G-7 summit to improve market access overseas. He also stated
    that commodity organizations across the country would support the
    NAFTA.]

        The President. Thank you. Yes, give him a hand.
        If I might, let me just say one thing, to go back to the comment the
    young man who just spoke made about the taxes. If everybody in this
    country who wanted to work had a job and we had free and open markets in
    the world, then we could lower taxes and reduce the deficit. That's the
    real truth. The real answer to this whole issue is how to get growth
    back into the economy. That is the ultimate answer. It's not to have the
    argument he and I just had. But the argument is how can you have more
    people working and have more markets open.
        And if I might just make two comments on that. Since 1987, about
    two-thirds of the new jobs generated in the American economy have come
    from expanded trade. That's how you add jobs in a world where you're
    already a wealthy country and most people are working. I'm glad to hear
    you say what you did about the North American Free Trade Agreement. I
    believe that most of the fears the American people have are not well-
    founded about that. There are some problems with it. We're trying to get
    side agreements on labor standards and the environment to make sure the
    Mexican Government strengthens those things. But believe me, folks,
    anybody who wants to move a plant to Mexico and work people for low
    wages and export products back in here, they can do that today. In other
    words, if we don't hit a lick at this NAFTA deal, everything that people
    are worried about with NAFTA can happen today.
        But before Mr. Salinas became President of Mexico, we had a $5
    billion trade deficit with Mexico. Today, we have a $6 billion trade
    surplus. Last month Mexico replaced Japan as the second biggest
    purchaser of our industrial products. And you know what it does for you
    folks here and the kinds of crops you raise. It's a good deal.
        So we're going to try to pass it. The people who are against it are
    genuine and passionate, and they represent folks just like you who work
    hard, play by the rules, and are getting the shaft and are scared to
    death and are afraid this will make it worse. But I honestly believe it
    will make it better. If I didn't think it would be more incomes and more
    jobs and better for the farmers, I wouldn't do it.
        And I assure you, when I go to Japan, I'll carry the message you
    sent me with.

    [A participant supported improved market access through NAFTA and the
    GATT. Another participant suggested that the Farmers Home reserve be
    reopened, and Secretary Espy said that would be considered. A
    participant then discussed the need for adequate drainage of farmland,
    his view that efforts to save wetlands and ducks had gone too far, and
    the issue of foreclosure.]

        The President. I don't know--Iowa--is this thing on? I don't know
    what to say. Where I come from, we grow more rice than anybody else in
    the country. We're kind of interested in that market access you're
    talking about. And

    [[Page 1005]]

    the rice land floods anyway. So our ducks don't give us that kind of
    trouble. I never knew I was supposed to be as hard on ducks. I may have
    to reassess my position on this. I'm not kidding. I mean, I'm really
    not. Where I come from it's a big deal, but it's not a problem because
    the rice land's flooded anyway at duck season.
        You want to say anything about the other issue?

    [Secretary Espy discussed farm legislation planned for 1995. He
    announced that based upon the Presidential emergency declaration farmers
    would be allowed to modify their conserving use acreage and stated that
    farm foreclosures not presently under purview of the courts would be
    suspended pending review. Following his remarks, a participant asked if
    the farm legislation planned for 1995 would provide for increased farm
    subsidies which would allow farmers a profit margin.]

        The President. If I could just--Mike, you might want to say
    something about that, but if I could comment on that, just make two
    points. First of all, on the disaster issue, we're either going to have
    to have an adequate, reliable, comprehensive disaster program or a
    decent crop insurance program that works. And if we had one, we wouldn't
    need the other.
        On the question of supports, I can tell you again, the last two farm
    bills I went through as the Governor, with my farmers on the receiving
    end of them. As you know because you're a farmer, we had a 20 percent
    unilateral cut in farm supports in the '90 farm bill. So American
    farmers have really done their part to reach out to our competitors
    overseas and ask them to open their markets and stop their supports.
        I think it's fair to say that the '95 farm bill, at least from my
    point of view, since I'm in a different position now, my attitude about
    it is going to be determined by a couple of things, one of which is,
    what are these other countries doing? That is, what's it going to take
    for our people to make a decent living? And if other countries make an
    appropriate reduction so we got a fair chance to compete in a market
    system, well, that's one thing. If they don't, then I think we're going
    to have to take a completely different look at this '95 farm bill about
    how it's structured. And I think it's fair to say it's up in the air
    now, and it depends on what happens and what our competitors do. But I'm
    going to be very sensitive to people like you because, you know, there's
    a limit below which we ought not to go in terms of how many farmers
    we've got in this country as long as we're the most productive in the
    world. It's just crazy to stay on that trend.

    [A participant suggested that the problems of fuel availability and
    pollution could be effectively addressed by use of ethanol.]

        The President. I agree with that. Let Mike talk a little about what
    we're doing.

    [Secretary Espy indicated that the USDA strongly supported the use of
    ethanol as a viable alternative resource.]

        The President. You know, if I might say, when that whole energy tax
    issue was being debated, we recommended that ethanol be exempt. And then
    we had an alternative that was effectively going to just take the tax
    out of the production sector, out of agriculture and industry
    altogether. But the Senate decided that rather than do that, they'd go
    to some more broad-based fuel tax. But if they do it in a way that's
    consistent with State law, it will still be okay for the farmers, I
    think.

    [Secretary Espy noted that during the budget process the administration
    had supported an exemption for ethanol production in the energy tax.]

        The President. Can we take one more question?

    [Governor Branstad said he had testified about ethanol before the
    Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of a coalition of Governors
    and expressed his concern about what position EPA would take concerning
    ethanol. He requested that the President watch the issue to ensure that
    ethanol production had an opportunity to compete.]

        The President. Yeah, I've noticed them doing that. [Laughter] Go
    ahead.
        Q.  President Clinton, I'm a local small businessman and employ
    approximately 30 people. And just to let you shift gears for a second
    here, can you or would you please tell me something that can alleviate
    my concerns about the upcoming striker bill. I'm concerned that it will
    be detrimental not only to the small businessmen but to the economy in
    general, which again is going to directly affect the farmer.

    [[Page 1006]]

        The President. Well, you know that I have expressed my support for
    the bill, and I knew you knew that or you wouldn't have asked the
    question. I don't have any idea of whether it can pass the Senate or
    whether it will at this time.
        Here is the problem. Let's just talk about the problem. For many
    years the Federal law was that strikers could not be permanently
    replaced if they went on strike once a group voted to unionize, if the
    allegation behind the strike was that there had been an unfair labor
    practice. But if it was just an economic strike, that is, if the
    strikers say, ``We ought to be getting a better deal than we're getting,
    and we're fighting over this contract,'' that they could be permanently
    replaced. That gave the management of unionized firms a little more
    leverage in dealing with strikes where the argument was wages and
    benefits instead of, ``They did something wrong to us.''
        And it worked pretty well until the 1980's when the economy became
    more global and there was more pressure to keep down wages and benefits
    and when the public mood became decidedly more antiunion in the United
    States. The reason it worked pretty well is management had the right to
    do that under a court decision, but they never did it. I mean, it was
    unheard of. It never happened. For decades no strikes were just broken
    and people were run off on that account.
        Then in the 1980's it started to happen with some significant
    frequency, and that's what led to the pressure for the striker
    replacement bill. There was almost a compromise adopted in the--and let
    me just say that this gentleman's question is related to something else.
    Very few small businesses in America are unionized. A lot of small
    businesses believe that maybe they'd be more of a target for a union if
    people thought they could strike over wages and benefits. I personally
    doubt that very much because of the relationships most people have with
    their employees in small businesses. But that's really the fear, I
    think, behind your question.
        But where it is now is that it's passed the House. They don't have
    the votes in the Senate yet, and we're talking about whether they can
    get some sort of compromise to deal with the balance issue that I talked
    about. The people who are for it in the Congress--I don't mean everybody
    that's supporting it, but the people who are for it in the Congress have
    no interest in trying to make it either easier or harder than it is
    right now for people to organize themselves into unions. The question is
    whether that once the workers vote to join a union, the bargaining
    process plays out in a fair and balanced way.
        And so I think there will be a lot of debate in the next few weeks
    about whether some compromise along the lines of what they were talking
    about last time be passed to alleviate some of the fears that you've
    expressed and still deal with the balance question that came up in the
    eighties.

    [Governor Branstad expressed his appreciation for the President's
    visit.]

        The President. Thank you very much for what you said. I'd like to
    say one thing in closing if I might. First, I have very much enjoyed
    being here, and I appreciate your taking some of your family time away
    on the Fourth of July to come out and visit about these farm issues.
        Second thing I'd like to say is I really wish I had more time to do
    a little town meeting about the larger economic issues like the one the
    young man raised about the tax issue.
        This is a very difficult time for this country. And a lot of the
    decisions that I have to make as President are not simple or easy.
    Before I became President I never raised any taxes from anybody to
    balance a budget or reduce a debt. I lived in a State that had a
    balanced budget law that made my chief budget officer a criminal if he
    let 3 months go by where spending outstripped revenues and where I
    literally had the power to cut spending once a week if I wanted to, to
    keep the budget in balance. And we did what we did while having one of
    the fifth lowest tax burdens in the country as a percentage of income.
    So this whole experience dealing with this deficit has been very painful
    to me. And I guess we split the difference, he and I did, on what we
    said.
        When I was running for President I said that I thought we ought to
    raise some taxes to pay the deficit down on upper income people but that
    we shouldn't raise taxes on the middle class, and I meant it. When the
    deficit got written up $165 billion, the choice I had was to take the
    politically difficult decision in the short run to ask for a modest
    contribution from middle class folks, cut as much as I could in spending
    without really getting into hurting older people on Medicare or
    essential investments in education, and take three-quarters of the money

    [[Page 1007]]

    from the top 6 percent of the income earners in the country, or stick
    with literally what I talked about in the campaign and risk not being
    able to do enough to really get interest rates down and try to get the
    economy going again.
        It's a very tough call. It is not an easy call. But as you will see
    when you read in the papers about this trip I'm about to take to Japan,
    as tough a shape as we're in, we're doing better than Europe is. They're
    having negative growth. Japan's got the slowest growth they've had in 40
    years. And all these people have been after us for 10 years to get our
    deficit down. They said, ``If you'll get your deficit down, we'll do
    some things.'' And together we can grow the world economy.
        So I'm doing the best I can, believe me. You may think I'm wrong,
    and maybe time will prove me wrong, but I'm trying to make the best
    decision I can to create jobs and incomes for the American people so
    that we come out ahead on this deal, not behind. It is a complicated,
    difficult time that the goal ought to be to ask every question in terms
    of: Is it good for jobs? Is it good for incomes? Will it help the
    economy to grow? Will it help people to have security and health care
    and educating their children and to make this a stronger and better
    country?
        And on this, the Fourth of July, we're always going to have our
    partisan and philosophical differences, and that's what makes this
    country wonderful. But if we can always keep that goal in mind, then
    when we differ, at least we'll be arguing about the right things.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. at the Schneckloth farm. In his
    remarks, he referred to Iowa secretary of agriculture Dale M. Cochran
    and Iowa secretary of state Elaine Baxter.