    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [July 14, 1993]
    [Pages 1075-1081]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Jan Mickelson of WHO Radio in Des Moines
    July 14, 1993

    Midwest Flooding

        Mr. Mickelson. Mr. President, 1040 WHO Radio, KLYF-FM, and TV-13
    welcomes you to Iowa and the Nation's heartland. Thank you for coming.
        You spent the morning and the midday touring the wreckage and the
    damage, flood damage. Give us some of your impressions, sir.
        The President. I did have the opportunity to tour, first of all, by
    helicopter. I spent about a half an hour flying over the Des Moines
    area, and then I stopped in a supermarket lot where water was being
    distributed. I talked to people who had lost everything in their houses,
    they've lost their businesses, people who obviously have had their farms
    flooded out. It was a very moving thing. I talked to parents who were
    worried about their children and whether they could get adequate water
    and how they were going to do that safely. And some of them had been
    able to send their children to relatives in other communities; some had
    not.
        But the spirit of the people seemed pretty undaunted. Several people
    broke down, and they were very choked up, but they were resolute. And I
    think that, as terrible as these things are, in some ways they bring out
    the best in people. I saw an enormous number of people who had just
    stopped their lives and come in to volunteer and help other people deal
    with their problems.
        I will say this: This is a different sort of emergency than I saw 10
    days ago when I came to Iowa and Illinois. It's gone beyond the flooding
    of farmland, obviously, to the destruction of a lot of homes and
    businesses and the public safety issue here with the water. Your people
    I think have done a very good job working with the Federal agencies and
    the State people, and I was very impressed by that.

    [[Page 1076]]

        I guess we ought to just do a rundown, since we have people
    listening to us from other States. We know now that there have been five
    States declared disaster areas: Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and
    Minnesota. We also have Federal officials in South Dakota, Kansas, and
    Nebraska reviewing the damage there.
        A lot of people here are clearly and justifiably concerned about
    these losses. And I want to make just two or three comments about that.
    First of all, just before I came on this program I talked to the
    Director of our Office of Management and Budget, Leon Panetta, and
    authorized him to send today to the Congress a bill to provide emergency
    help to the families, the farmers, the businesses, and the communities
    who have been hurt by the rains and the flooding along the Mississippi
    River and its tributaries.
        The bill will initially ask for about $2.5 billion in disaster
    funds, based on preliminary estimates of damages and several hundred
    million dollars in what are called contingent appropriations. That is,
    if the damages come through, the money can be released; if not, then
    it's not released and doesn't go against the spending. We expect that
    the damages, frankly, the compensable damages will be greater than that.
    And in the next 4 or 5 days we expect to be modifying that bill some.
    But we felt it was very important to go ahead and get the bill in, start
    it through the congressional process. And over the next 4 or 5 days
    we'll be getting more hard estimates of damages in, and it can be
    modified, first in the House and then in the Senate. After that, if
    further modifications are needed, we will be able to go back and ask the
    Congress to do more.
        The principle, the operative principle here, ought to be that the
    people who have been hit by this disaster should not be treated any
    differently than people who were victims of Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane
    Hugo, the terrible devastation on the island of Kauai in the State of
    Hawaii. We ought to treat everybody the same.
        Let me just make one other point in addition to the aid. I want to
    compliment the work that has been done at the local level and by the
    Federal agencies here. The Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy, has been
    here three times. The Director of the Federal Emergency Management
    Agency, James Lee Witt, has been here extensively. He was just
    complimented at the Hy-Vee parking lot here because the hospital needed
    some water purification equipment, and he produced it within 24 hours.
        You've got the Departments of Transportation and Commerce and
    Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, the Small
    Business Administration, the Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, and
    National Guardsmen from all over working hard here. So I have been very
    impressed with that, and we're going to keep doing that.
        I want to say a special word of commendation to FEMA and to the
    Director, James Lee Witt, because they have really worked hard to cut
    through the redtape. I got asked a lot of questions in the crowd today
    at the parking lot, and there must be people all over this Mississippi
    River area asking those questions. So let me say that you can go to a
    disaster assistance center set up by FEMA, and they'll give you one-stop
    shopping. That is, if you have some problem that is not necessarily
    covered by the Federal Emergency Management Act, if you just show up
    there, they'll work you through the system and what's there. We're going
    to have, I think, a coordinated and effective as well as a compassionate
    effort.
        So those are the two things I wanted to say. For the people here who
    still have questions about where they are and what they need, go to the
    disaster assistance center. Secondly, I'm going to send the bill up to
    the Congress this afternoon and urge them to move in a speedy way. When
    I say $2.5 billion, let me emphasize there's probably another $1 billion
    in ongoing appropriations of the Congress which can be used to deal with
    the agricultural and other losses here, just money that's already out
    there that we'll just reprogram for the hard-hit areas. And as we get
    more disaster estimates in over the next couple of days, if it's
    warranted--and I think it will be, based on what I've seen and heard--we
    will modify the figures upward.
        But I want to say, again, I've been very impressed. This has been a
    particularly moving experience for me and for the Vice President and for
    our families because so many of these towns that were hit were on the
    bus tour that we took last year. And when I've looked at these towns and
    I've seen what's happened, so many of them, you know, particularly along
    the river, in East St. Louis and Hannibal and Wayland and Keokuk and
    Fort Madison, Burlington in this State, Muscatine, Davenport,
    Bettendorf--

    [[Page 1077]]

    we visited all those places. We visited Prairie du Chien and La Crosse
    in Wisconsin. So I've met a lot of the people that have been hurt by
    this flood, and I just want you to know that we're going to do
    everything we can to be there and be a good partner. And if there are
    more things that should be done. I want the people to let us know
    through FEMA.
        Mr. Mickelson. I had a chance to speak with one of Iowa's
    congressional delegation last night, Senator Grassley, who was most
    appreciative that this has been a bipartisan effort, and he wanted to
    have me make certain to pass on to you how much he appreciated being
    included today, as well as the Republican side of the aisle.
        The President. It rains on all of us, you know.
        Mr. Mickelson. Yes, on the just and the unjust, I think the Good
    Book says. [Laughter]
        The President. That's right.
        Mr. Mickelson. The second thing is, this $2.5 billion you're talking
    about--and you implied that it will be left somewhat open-ended--we
    won't even know for sure the extent of the damage, especially the crop-
    related damage, until fall when we figure out what is left of the
    wreckage. Will that also be included as part of this package?
        The President. Well, some of that will be. Some of the fall's money,
    I think, will have to come out of the next fiscal year, maybe. But keep
    in mind, that may be a wash on the Federal budget, because the more crop
    land that's taken out of production, the more you'll have some upper
    pressure on prices, and probably less crops in the loan program. So
    while we'll spend more Federal money in some senses on these crop
    losses, we'll spend somewhat less in other areas. And we're just going
    to have to work that through as we go along.
        Some of that money will be covered under existing Federal law. Some
    of it will be covered probably by the next fiscal year. Some of it, we
    may have to come back in for another supplemental appropriation. We're
    just going to have to play it by ear because we literally won't know.
    Senator Grassley and Senator Harkin were both commenting, along with
    your congressional delegation today and of course Governor Branstad, who
    is a farmer, they were all saying we won't know the full extent of the
    farm losses until the fall. And so we'll play it by ear, and as they
    become evident, we'll do what's appropriate.
        Mr. Mickelson. The way it was handled in Hurricane Andrew, we'll try
    to duplicate that? Some cases, the matching funds, requirements from the
    States and localities was waived in the case of Hurricane Andrew. Will
    that be the case here in Iowa?
        The President. In some cases they were, on a case-by-case basis.
    I've asked the FEMA Director, James Lee Witt, to look at that. FEMA has
    gotten some good publicity for a change, and I'm glad to see that in the
    course of this. Part of it is, the Director was not only the director of
    emergency assistance in our State, but before that he was a local
    official. So I think we're pretty sensitive about what can and can't be
    paid. We're prepared to look at that, but we should look at it under the
    law. We have to look at it on a case-by-case basis, and we will.
        Mr. Mickelson. Mr. President, joining us via our live line from the
    scene of more flood damage around and along the Mississippi River is
    Anne Keith from KMOX Radio in St. Louis. Anne, we'd like to welcome you
    to WHO and to our listeners.
        Anne Keith. Good afternoon, and good afternoon, Mr. President.
        The President. Good afternoon, Anne.

    [At this point, Ms. Keith asked about flood insurance reform and the
    length of the response time.]

        The President. The consensus is that we've had a more rapid response
    this time than in previous ones. And I think the reason is that we do
    have a very high level of coordination here among the agencies. We do
    have some problems with flood insurance. We've got some real problems
    with crop insurance, and I think there's a real consensus about the fact
    that we have to reform the crop insurance system and some of what ought
    to be done about it. On the flood insurance, I think that's something
    else we'll have to look at. But I think that we're getting pretty good
    marks this time for getting out ahead of the curve on the disaster
    coordination. And if you have any other specific ideas about what we
    should do, I'd be glad to have them.
        Mr. Mickelson. Also joining us from our live line from Minneapolis
    from radio station WCCO is Steve Murphy. Steve?

    [Mr. Murphy asked for assurance for farmers

    [[Page 1078]]

    that Government relief would be adequate.]

        The President. I think we know enough about what the size of the
    problem on the farm side's going to be that I can clearly give you that
    assurance. The real problem we've got is that the crop insurance program
    itself has some serious shortcomings. And we're going to have to move in
    and reform that and, in the meanwhile, try to hold as many of these
    farmers short of total destruction as we can. We're working on it very,
    very hard.
        Secretary Espy has used and will continue to use every bit of
    flexibility that he has under the present law to try to save as many
    farmers as possible and to try to deal with the individual situations
    that we face. As I said earlier, a lot of the people working on this
    disaster have dealt with this kind of thing, flooded farms and flooded
    towns and these kinds of problems. And Mike Espy represented a farm
    district in Mississippi before he became Secretary of Agriculture.
        We are determined to do everything we can to minimize the damage and
    to try to keep these farmers farming. And we're going to do the best we
    can.
        Mr. Mickelson. Do you visualize a formula?
        The President. What do you mean?
        Mr. Mickelson. Is it possible for the Federal Government to restore
    everything 100 percent?
        The President. Well, I don't think so. It's not possible to restore
    everything 100 percent because some of these programs are loan programs.
    But there are a lot of things that can be done. I believe, with the
    flexibility the Secretary has asked for that will keep these people
    farming. And that's our goal now, to try to help put people's lives back
    together and keep the farmers farming. And I think we'll do that.
        Mr. Mickelson. We want to include our listeners in this mix, Mr.
    President, and we have asked our listeners to call us from all over the
    State with questions, flood related. But I'd like to just use the
    privilege I have as a talk show host to ask you a personal question of
    my own, if you don't mind. What gives you your greatest pleasure as a
    President, flying around in Air Force One or being able to preempt Rush
    Limbaugh, as we're doing right now?
        The President. Oh, the latter. That's not even close. [Laughter]
        Mr. Mickelson. I figured it wouldn't. Let's talk to some of the----
        The President. Actually, my greatest pleasure being President is
    when you do something that you think affects people's lives in a
    positive way. There is so much in public life----
        Mr. Mickelson. Would you include category B in that category?
    [Laughter]
        The President. Perhaps only because of the purpose for which I'm
    here today.

    [At this point, a participant asked how disaster assistance costs would
    affect deficit reduction.]

        The President. Well, I think this particular one has a fairly happy
    answer, but let me give you the general argument. The thing that has
    gotten our budget in trouble are ongoing trends. Particular disasters
    that do, frankly, increase spending on a one-year basis have not
    contributed in any significant way at all to the Government's deficit
    problem. And I think that there is a general feeling in the country, and
    certainly in Washington among people of both parties, that when
    something like this happens you have to put the people first.
        Now, in this particular case, while I will ask for $2.5 billion in
    budget authority, and it may go up based on the real losses, it's
    happening in this budget year where our deficit is more than $20 billion
    less than we thought it was going to be in January. Because there's been
    a serious debate in the Congress and an effort that is progressing to
    bring the deficit down dramatically, long-term interest rates have
    dropped. And as they have dropped, the cost of carrying the debt has
    gone down. And some other expenses we thought we would have, have not
    materialized. We've had about one million new jobs in the economy, for
    example, since January. So our deficit this year is projected to be over
    $20 billion less than we thought it was going to be, so that while this
    will cut into that, at least we'll still wind up way short of where it
    was projected in January.
        Mr. Mickelson. Every county in the State of Iowa is on your list
    now, eligible for disaster relief.
        The President. Every one.
        Mr. Mickelson. I can't remember that ever occurring in midwestern
    history. What about you, sir? This is just----
        The President. It's very----
        Mr. Mickelson. ----devastating.
        The President. We've never had a time, for example, in my State--
    which has more tornadoes per capita than any State and where we've

    [[Page 1079]]

    had a lot of flooding--we've never had all our counties on disaster
    relief. And this is highly unusual.

    [A participant asked if Federal troops could help with sandbagging and
    water relief efforts.]

        The President. Well, if we need them, we can provide some,
    certainly. But so far, it's my understanding that the National Guard and
    the other human resources are sufficient for that at this time. If we
    need more, we can provide more. We've made it clear. The FEMA Director,
    James Lee Witt, knows that basically that's a high priority, and if they
    need more bodies, more help, that we'll try to provide it.

    [A participant asked if water levels set by the Corps of Engineers could
    be changed to prevent future floods.]

        The President. Mitzi, let me just say for the benefit of the
    listeners, Lake Ouachita and Lake Hamilton are two of the three lakes
    around Hot Springs where I grew up. So she and I are from the same place
    more or less.
        The answer to your question is, yes, some more can be done for some
    of these communities, but a lot of this flooding occurred in the 100-
    year flood plan, that is in areas that are projected to flood only once
    every 100 years. And the Governor told me today that some of this water
    was 4 feet above the 100-year level. It is often very difficult and
    quite expensive to protect beyond the 100-year flood plain.
        But I do believe what should happen is that, as we get the water
    down and we manage that process, all the communities affected need to
    look at what their flood protection is and to analyze whether more needs
    to be done. There clearly are some communities that had virtually no
    protection at all and that were vulnerable well below the 100-year flood
    level. And I think that just needs to be a community-by-community
    assessment. And we, of course, will work with all of them.
        So my short answer to you is yes, I think the Corps can help some of
    the communities, but I do not believe that any reasonable effort would
    have forestalled all of the damage here. This was an unusual flood. It
    will be more than a century in all probability before anything remotely
    like this occurs again.

    [A participant asked how soon Congress would act on disaster legislation
    and suggested an investigation of Corps of Engineers water management
    practices.]

        The President. Thank you. Let me answer you the first question
    first. I think that Congress will move very quickly on this. As I said,
    I authorized the bill to be sent up there today to start the legislative
    process. We want it frankly, to take a few days because we want to get
    the latest damage estimates. We'll know a lot more about 6 days from now
    than we know today. So if that bill needs to be amended in any way, we
    can amend it in the process. But by starting today, we ought to be able
    to move it through, I would say, in just a couple of weeks, and then the
    money would be released virtually immediately.
        Also keep in mind, some of the funds which are emergency funds, like
    emergency help to people who have lost everything, been wiped out of
    their homes, that come through the FEMA programs, there's already money
    associated with that. I want to emphasize that again. A lot of the money
    that can be used to deal with this emergency may be already appropriated
    and in that sense may not in any way increase the deficit or cause any
    problems. But a lot of the funds will have to be done over and above
    that.
        Now, with regard to the Corps of Engineers, let me say that you're
    the first person who has mentioned that to me. I'll be happy to look
    into it. We had a horrible flood in my State and lost a couple of little
    towns completely. I mean, they were totally underwater, and they lost a
    lot of farmland a couple of years ago. And there were all kinds of
    questions about whether the Corps of Engineers back up the river had
    managed the dams properly. But I had----
        Mr. Mickelson. Same questions are occurring now.
        The President. Same questions. And they're legitimate questions, and
    they can be looked into. But I have to tell you again, I want to say
    that when water gets 4 feet higher than the 100-year flood plain, it's
    almost impossible to conclude that some technical decision back up the
    river could have made a big difference. I think that it's worth looking
    at. I think we should look at all aspects of this. But I think that it
    is unlikely that that made a major contribution to this problem.

    [A participant asked about the Red Rock area and about assistance for
    people in the restaurant

    [[Page 1080]]

    business.]

        The President. First of all, I didn't go down that far, but I did
    talk to some people about it. There are a couple of problems. One is how
    to manage the outflow of water from the dam. The other is, to the extent
    we have any control over it, how to drain all this flooded farmland
    between here and the Mississippi River. See, you've got these
    tributaries that cause all the flooding around Des Moines, but you've
    got about a--well, from here to the Mississippi River you've got a whole
    swath of land that is totally flooded. So it's like you've got another
    big lake here that's 3 miles wide at its widest point. And to whatever
    extent we can control that, that needs to be drained in a way that
    doesn't just throw all the water back in at once and then down on the
    folks down river. So all that will have to be managed very carefully and
    by people who are expert in doing it.
        Secondly, with regard to the restaurant business, for the people who
    work there and the people who own it, you should check in at the
    disaster assistance centers and ask essentially about two things. One is
    what kind of Small Business Administration programs are there to help
    you, because there are some, and they are pretty significant. I think
    you'll find them pretty significant. And secondly, for the people who
    work for you who may have lost everything in terms of their ability to
    earn any income for a significant period of time, there are some
    individual disaster assistance programs that might be available to help
    them. And at the disaster assistance center, they can give you all that
    information.
        Mr. Mickelson. The cliche question is like this, Mr. President:
    Could you please cut spending first right after you send us the $3
    billion? Talk to us about this. How will you be able to justify this
    level of expenditure to people who live in New Jersey?
        The President. Because it might happen in New Jersey someday,
    Because it happened in Florida and Louisiana and South Carolina with
    Hurricanes Andrew and Hugo. Because you just can't stop nature from
    taking its course, and we can't afford to paralyze the American people
    on this.
        And let me just back up and say I don't want to get into a political
    discussion on the budget today unless you wish to do so. I'll be happy
    to. But let me just point out to the American people who are listening
    to this, over the next 5 years, if this budget passes, we will have a
    hard freeze on non-health-care-related domestic spending. That means
    every dollar we increase Head Start by or we spend more on technology or
    spend to help people in California, for example, to convert from defense
    cuts to domestic economy and opportunities, will be made up for by cuts
    everyplace else. We have cut agriculture. We have cut veterans costs.
    We've cut all kinds of things in this budget to actually flatten that
    spending.
        So you've got a decline in defense spending, flat domestic spending.
    The only increases in this whole budget for the next 5 years net are
    increases in Social Security and other income-related programs and
    increases in health care costs, which are still going up at 9 percent a
    year while inflation is about 3 or 4. And that's the next big challenge
    for our administration. But believe me, we've got $250 billion plus in
    cuts there now, and we ought to keep them there. But we can't not deal
    with this disaster or some other disaster for fear of having it go up
    just a little bit.

    [A participant requested cooperation from private lending institutions
    in the coming years to help farmers recover from their losses.]

        The President. Well, let me make two points, if I might. First of
    all, you characterized what happened in the eighties rather well. We had
    a lot of droughts in the eighties, but we also had, as you well know, a
    huge amount of farm debt out there which had been taken out when there
    was inflation, rising prices, rising land prices, and high interest
    rates. And then when commodity prices collapsed in the eighties, a lot
    of farmers couldn't finance that debt. And it took about 5 years for the
    Federal Government to agree on a bipartisan basis on a farming
    refinancing system, which then the private lending institutions could
    plug into. I think that provided for forbearance, for example, and other
    things.
        I think you've got a lot of that out there now. There are also some
    real options that every farming State in this country has to try to help
    the lending institutions deal with the farmers. We won't go through all
    the details, but we do.
        The next thing I would like to say to you, however, is that we are
    working aggressively to try to change the regulatory environment in

    [[Page 1081]]

    which small business and agriculture live and relate to the federally
    insured financial institutions, the private banks. And I think that over
    the next year you will see a significant increase in credit offered to
    businesses and to agriculture because of this changing regulatory
    environment.
        Mr. Mickelson. Mr. President, we're out of time here. On behalf of
    KMOX Radio in St. Louis, WCCO Radio in Minneapolis, WHO Radio here in
    Des Moines, along with KLYF-FM and TV-13, thank you for coming and
    sharing your thoughts and visiting the heartland. I appreciate it.
        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The interview began at 1:30 p.m. at WHO Studios.