    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [May 10, 1993]
    [Pages 598-602]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Cleveland, Ohio
    May 10, 1993

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Congressman Stokes, Senator
    Metzenbaum. I want to thank Lou Stokes and Howard Metzenbaum for the
    support that they have given to this administration to making a new
    beginning for America, to putting the American people back to work, and
    to giving Washington back to you.
        I also want to say a special word of thanks to my friend Eric
    Fingerhut for coming here, the leader of the freshmen in Congress and a
    great Representative, someone who believes in the cause of reform. I
    want to thank your fine Mayor, Mike White, who labored mightily to try
    to get some more money for jobs here in Cleveland.
        I wish people all over America who think that our cities aren't
    working would come to Cleveland and see houses being built, the stadium
    going up, new malls being built, and things happening. I think it is
    very, very impressive what is happening here under the leadership of
    Mike White. And I appreciate him very much.
        I also want to thank Congressman Hoke for coming here. I'm glad to
    see a bipartisan Representative. I'm trying to govern in a bipartisan
    way, and some of those fellows in the Senate don't want me to. But if we
    get together on America's problems as America, we'd do a lot better than
    pointing partisan fingers.
        Finally, I want to thank attorney general Lee Fisher and your State
    treasurer, Mary Ellen

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    Withrow. And I want to say a special word of thanks to Lee for his
    leadership in our campaign last year. I haven't been to Cleveland since
    the day before the election--that's right, that's what Lou said. I have
    been to Ohio once since I've been President. I look forward to coming
    back.
        I want to talk to you a little today about why I came to the middle
    of the country in the middle of the day to reiterate what is at stake in
    Washington. I just walked through the Galleria here. I want to thank the
    people who opened it up to me and Mr. Cleary and Mr. Masters. I want to
    thank all the store owners who came out to see me. Some of them gave me
    some things and some of them sold me some things, which is, after all,
    the most important thing. They did a good job.
        I wanted to come back here to remind you that the reason I did all
    that work last year and came here and asked the people of Ohio and
    Cleveland to vote for me was not so I could live in the White House but
    so I could give the Government back to you.
        The struggles in which we are engaged now are very important ones.
    It may seem strange to you, but there are really people in Washington
    who believe the most important thing we can do is to avoid change at all
    costs. It may seem strange to you after years of living with a
    Government where the debt of this country went from $1 trillion to $4
    trillion between 1980 and 1992, where unemployment went up and wages
    went down and we began to lose our competitive position, where we cut
    defense but had no plan to put our defense workers to work building the
    domestic economy, with all the troubles we've got, where we've got 37
    million Americans with no health insurance and others in small
    businesses terrified they're going to lose it and people who can't
    change jobs because they've had somebody in their family sick and they
    know they can't get health insurance in a new place, it may seem strange
    to you, but there really are people in the Nation's Capital who say no
    more change. Well, I think most of you want us to do something, and I
    think you want us to be bold. I think you want us to try to turn this
    country around, and I think you would rather see us err on the side of
    effort than on the side of just preserving the status quo.
        You look at these children here, these schoolchildren, or those fine
    schoolchildren back there or these young naval cadets. This whole deal
    is about whether they are going to have the American dream, about
    whether people who work hard and play by the rules are going to wind up
    better off or worse off.
        We've got a lot of complicated problems. I knew when I got there it
    wasn't going to happen overnight. I tried to make it happen overnight.
    I've been criticized for doing more than one thing at once. I've always
    felt--can you do one thing at once? Wouldn't it be nice if all you had
    to do was go to work and not take care of your family? Wouldn't it be
    nice if you could pay your bills and not earn any money to pay them? I
    don't understand this whole--you can't do one thing at once. But anyway,
    that's what they say.
        We are trying to do a lot of things, but they all relate to
    restoring the economic vitality of this country and restoring the middle
    class and the values of the middle class to a central part in American
    life. That is what this whole economic program is about and what I came
    to talk to you about again today.
        No one said it would be easy, but it has been immensely rewarding.
    In about 110 days, after two vetoes, I can look back and say we signed
    the Family and Medical Leave Act to guarantee you don't lose your job if
    you've got somebody sick in your family. We have put forward
    comprehensive plans to use technology to generate new jobs,
    comprehensive plans to help move people from defense jobs into domestic
    jobs and to make sure that our young people who come out of the service
    after serving this country are not just left out in the cold because of
    the cutbacks. And we got a record approval of the outline of a budget
    that cuts the deficit of this country over $500 billion in the next 5
    years with over 200 specific budget cuts and, yes, with some tax
    increases. Seventy percent of them fall on the upper 5 percent of the
    American people whose taxes went down and whose incomes went up in the
    1980's. I think it's a good plan, and it will restore health to the
    American economy.
        You know, we're trying to do something no generation of Americans
    has ever had to do. I came into office with a record debt. And then
    after the election I was told the deficit was really about $50 billion
    higher in 3 of the next 4 years than we'd been told before. And yet, we
    looked around, and we saw we'd reduced our investment in education and
    training, reduced our investment in new technologies, had

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    no plan to deal with people who lose their jobs because of defense
    cutbacks. And so we had to do something nobody had ever done. We had to
    try to find out how to bring the debt down and invest in our people,
    their jobs, and their future. I think we have got to do that. If we
    don't do both, we're going to be in big trouble.
        Now look at the result. Since the election, since it became
    absolutely clear that this administration was dead serious about
    bringing this deficit down. Interest rates in many areas have hit an
    all-time low, home mortgages are at a 20-year low. I know there are
    people in this audience who have refinanced a home mortgage in the last
    5 months. I know there are people here who have lower credit card rates,
    lower business loan rates, lower other rates because of interest rates
    going down. That's going to put $100 billion back into this economy to
    spur investment and growth and jobs and income if we bring the deficit
    down.
        Now, we're going to go into a fight where everybody's going to say
    cut more spending and raise fewer taxes. And you know, what that really
    says is cut somebody else's spending and raise somebody else's taxes. I
    wish it were possible for us all to hide behind a tree and point at
    somebody else. But let's face it, in the last 12 years we got into this
    mess not overnight and we're not going to get out of it overnight. We
    also, whether we like it or not, got into it together. We're all in it
    together, and we'd better get out of it together. We're going to have to
    climb out of it together, march out of it together, and walk out of it
    together.
        But this plan is fair. This plan has a big increase in the earned-
    income tax credit to try to relieve families with income of under
    $30,000 of the burden of the energy tax I proposed, which will raise
    money and help to clean up the environment. This plan has an increase in
    this earned-income tax credit so much that if you work 40 hours a week
    and you've got a child in the home, if you will apply for the tax
    credit, you will be lifted out of poverty. That is an elemental
    principle and a fundamental departure in America. We're going to reward
    work and not welfare for a change. If you work and you've got kids,
    we're going to lift you out of poverty. This will work. It will bring
    the deficit down. It will be fairer to working families. It will help us
    to keep interest rates down. It will help us to grow the economy. And
    over the next 5 years, we'll have some money to invest in education and
    training and new technologies and jobs and trying to help all those
    people in those high-tech jobs that are losing them, because of defense
    cutbacks--they can make us strong here at home if we do it right. But
    we've got to do it as a package.
        If everybody goes around saying, ``What's in it for me?'' instead of
    what's in it for us, the thing will come apart. That's what paralyzes
    America. Every time we've got to make a tough decision, somebody says,
    ``Let somebody else do it.'' There's nobody else to do it but us. We're
    going to have to lift our country up, and we're going to have to do it
    together.
        One of the things that I do want to do is to repeal the tax breaks
    that lobbyists get. There are 80,000 lobbyists in Washington making sure
    that I can't take care of your interests.
        One of the things that we also have to do, I think, is to reform the
    political system. I told you if you would elect me President, I'd do my
    best to reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups to
    increase your influence, to make it possible for all of the Members of
    Congress, without regard to party, at least to feel freer to follow
    their conscience and their constituents and to listen to them with an
    open ear and an open heart.
        Well, there are two bills moving through the Congress now that will
    do just that. When I took office the first thing I did was to sign an
    Executive order saying that people that had top jobs for me couldn't go
    back into lobbying for 5 years and could never lobby for a foreign
    government. Then a bill was introduced into the Congress that just
    passed the United States Senate which, for the first time, requires all
    the lobbyists to register and requires them to report all the gifts they
    give to Members of Congress over a small amount, so you'll know.
        And at the end of last week we announced a new campaign finance
    reform bill, which will do this: It will reduce the influence of big
    money; it will reduce the influence of political action committees; it
    will reduce the influence of lobbyists; it will give political campaigns
    back to you. It does it by limiting the amount of money that Members of
    Congress can take from political action committees by reducing the
    maximum contribution in many areas. It does it by saying that lobbyists
    cannot give money or raise money for Members of Congress that they
    personally lobby. And by repealing the tax ex-

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    emption that lobbyists get, we're going to take that money and give it
    to Members of Congress as communication vouchers so we can open the
    airwaves to honest debate, and nobody is denied the opportunity to be on
    the television or the radio just because they're not an incumbent or
    just because they're not wired to the lobbyists. It is a good plan. It
    will give the Government back to you, the middle class of this country,
    and we ought to pass it.
        There are some other things that I think you need to know about that
    we're trying to do. We've introduced our plans for national service and
    to make college available to all Americans, and here's how it works. But
    I need your help to pass it, because there are interest groups that are
    against it. There are interest groups against everything.
        This plan would say to every American family: You can borrow the
    money to go to college without fear of going bankrupt because you will
    not have to pay it back until you go to work. And when you go to work,
    you can pay it back as a percentage of your income. So that no matter
    how much you borrow, you can't be required to pay more than a certain
    percentage of your income; you can't be bankrupted to secure your
    future.
        The bill also will give tens of thousands of young Americans the
    opportunity to pay their college loan, or a portion of it, off through
    service to our country as teachers, as police officers, working with
    kids in trouble. They can earn it before they go to college, while
    they're in college, or after they get out. But I think people ought to
    be able to work to make Cleveland and Ohio a better place and pay their
    college loans off.
        And believe it or not, if we just have the courage to change the way
    we're financing the college loan program, we can pay for most of this,
    particularly in the early years. Why? Because the way the college loan
    programs work now, we are losing billions of dollars a year in huge
    transaction fees to banks and in loan defaults, because the Government
    guarantees 90 percent of every one of these loans. So what happens? If
    somebody wants to default on the loan, what incentive does the bank have
    to go collect it? It would cost you 10 percent to pay the lawyer. So the
    taxpayers pay. I say let's make the loans direct. Let's cut out all the
    fat fees. Let's make people pay them back at tax time so they can't beat
    the bill, more responsibility and more opportunity for everybody.
        Let me just make two other points. First of all, while I have
    proposed over 200 specific budget cuts to take the lead in reducing this
    deficit by over $500 billion, I want you to know that nothing we can do
    will reduce this deficit over the long run to zero, which is what we
    want, until we finally face the fact that the biggest culprit in
    Government spending today is the exploding cost of health care. If we
    don't have the courage to try to provide a basic system of health
    coverage to all Americans, to try to give security to small businesses
    and working families who have health insurance but are terrified that
    they're going to lose it--if we don't do that, then you will never get
    this deficit down to zero because the cost of Government health care is
    going up by 12 percent a year. And 100,000 Americans a month are losing
    their health insurance.
        Now there is no easy answer to this. If it were easy, somebody else
    would have done it already. It's hard. Why? Because we're spending too
    much money on health care, but it's in all the wrong places. And the
    question is: How are you going to move the money from where it shouldn't
    be, in administrative costs and extra procedures and duplicated
    technologies and a lot of other things, to where it should be, covering
    people who don't have health insurance without bankrupting small
    business, without imposing undue financial burdens, without imposing new
    taxes on people that are already paying too much.
        Can it be done? You bet it can, but it won't be easy, and it will
    require people who have been making a killing out of the present system
    to accept some change. But I'm telling you, the worst thing we can do is
    to do nothing. When we come out with this plan everybody will say--well,
    whatever we say to get the money to people who don't have health
    insurance now or to provide health security to those who can't change
    jobs now, they'll call that a tax. But when we lower by millions and
    millions and millions of dollars a year the health insurance premiums of
    people who are paying too much or the paperwork burdens of the doctors
    and hospitals who are spending too much money filling out paper, they
    don't want to count that--the defenders of the status quo--as an offset.
        We are going to have to change, folks, but most of what we have to
    do is to move the money from where it shouldn't be to where

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    it should. We're already spending plenty of money, but we've got to move
    it around. And you ought to be able to see that not only will it cost
    some people some more money to have health insurance, but a lot of
    people who are paying too much will save. And that is what we have to
    do. If we don't have the courage to change, we will not get the
    Government budget under control. But most important, working-class
    families in this country and small business people will never have the
    health security without which it is virtually impossible to have a good
    life over the long run. We have got to do this. And I am determined to
    see that we do.
        Let me just close by saying this: This is a difficult time. I told
    somebody the other day that I was absolutely convinced after 100 days as
    President that all the easy decisions had already been made by somebody
    else. Every day I meet with my staff and I say, send me just one easy
    one. Let's declare a moratorium. We won't talk about anything hard
    today. Send me an easy one. I'm still waiting. [Laughter]
        But I want you to know that we can turn this country around; we can
    secure our future. It is in our power. We can bring the deficit down. We
    can increase our investment in education and jobs. We can meet the
    competitive challenges ahead of us. We can face the health care
    challenge. But we have got to have the courage to change. And we will
    win if we do that. I wish to goodness I could just say to every one of
    you, you don't have to do any of this. I'll just go to some other State
    and make them do it. [Laughter] But I can't.
        Everybody will always be able to find some fault with every
    comprehensive proposal like this. There's no such thing as a perfect
    proposal. I don't like everything about everything that we have
    presented in the hope of passing and securing change. But the test for
    this generation, the test for this whole generation is whether we are
    going to have the courage to make these changes, to rebuild the middle
    class, and to lift up the economy of this country and to lift up all
    these children in this audience today. I believe you have that courage,
    and together we're going to do it.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:10 a.m. at the Galleria Mall. In his
    remarks, he referred to Martin Cleary, president, Richard and David
    Jacobs Group, and Keith Masters, general manager, Galleria and Tower
    Erieview.