    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [May 27, 1993]
    [Pages 760-763]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Connie Chung and Dan Rather of CBS News
    May 27, 1993

        Ms. Chung. Good morning, Mr. President.
        Mr. Rather. Good morning, Mr. President.
        The President. Good morning, Dan. Good morning, Connie.
        Ms. Chung. Mr. President, I was watching you on ``CBS This
    Morning,'' and you were very funny. I think I heard you say that you
    also had a manicure in California. Is that right?
        The President. I was kidding, you know. It was a joke. J-O-K-E.
    [Laughter]

    Media Coverage

        Ms. Chung. But I also could hear a lot of excuses when you talked
    about the Travel Office problem, the haircut, the economy, the jobs
    stimulus program. Why not admit if indeed there was a mistake perhaps
    with the Travel Office or with the haircut? Why not just say so?
        The President. I did say that. I mean, the haircut thing was a
    boner, but I'm just saying I did ask whether I would inconvenience
    anybody and was told I wouldn't. It was a mistake. What else is there to
    say?
        The Travel Office thing, obviously I don't think it was handled as
    well as it should have been, and so I said so. Now that I've said this,
    I challenge you to tell the American people that I think that we have a
    right to run an office with three people instead of seven at taxpayers'
    expense, the primary job of which is to arrange travel for people who
    travel with me. And I challenge you to tell the American people that we
    saved 25 percent on the very first flight that we put out for
    competitive bid. I take responsibility for any mistakes made in the
    White House, and mistakes were made in the way that was handled,
    absolutely. But the goal was to save taxpayer money and to save the
    press money. And the press complained to me about how much the plane
    rides cost. I'm just trying to fix it. I still think we can achieve the
    goal and correct the mistakes. We did make a mistake.
        Obviously, on the stimulus thing--no one asked me about that--if we
    would have followed the right strategy somehow we would have won, and we
    didn't. But if you try to do a lot of things, you're going to make some
    mistakes. I'm going to admit my mistakes. All I want to do is to have
    the kind of relationship, with you and others, that will present me as I
    am to the American people and not as some sort of clay figure that's all
    pulled out of shape. I'm going to make a lot of--you get out and go to
    bat every day, you're going to make mistakes. Babe Ruth struck out twice
    as many times as he hit home runs. And so I expect to strike out. But
    I'm going to make a few hits too, if I keep going to bat.
        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, we will accept that challenge. And Connie
    joins the ``CBS Evening News'' next Tuesday night; we hope you'll be
    watching. She'll accept that challenge and meet what you said.
        The President. I think you two will be great together. I'm excited
    about it.
        Mr. Rather. Thank you, Mr. President, thank you.
        The President. Bye-bye. Thank you.
        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, if we could be

    [[Page 761]]

    one one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been
    together in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away
    winners.
        As you know, Mr. President, I pride myself on trying to ask the
    tough questions. So I'm not going to apologize in advance for this
    question, but I do want to put you on tough question alert.
        The President. Go ahead, I'm bleeding already. Go ahead. [Laughter]

    President's Television Habits

        Mr. Rather. You've been through 2 hours of questioning this morning
    with two of the most insightful questioners on television, Harry Smith
    and Paula Zahn. Connie came at you there with a substantive question. So
    here's my question: When you're able to take a deep breath, when you're
    able to watch television, besides news and sports, what do you like to
    watch? What do you watch on television?
        The President. Besides news and sports? I did watch the NBA playoff
    game last night while I was calling Congress, asking them to help me in
    our playoff. I like to watch old movies. After news and sports, my
    favorite thing to watch are old movies.
        Mr. Rather. Could you name two or three that you particularly like?
        The President. Yes, I saw ``The Maltese Falcon'' again on television
    the other night. I thought that was great. My two favorite movies of all
    time are ``Casablanca'' and ``High Noon.'' ``High Noon'' is my favorite
    movie. It's a movie about courage in the face of fear and the guy doing
    what he thought was right in spite of the fact that it could cost him
    everything. And Gary Cooper is terrified the whole way through. So he
    doesn't pretend to be some macho guy. He's just doing what he thinks is
    right. It's a great movie.
        Ms. Chung. Are you a channel surfer?
        The President. I surf the channels. I do. A lot of times when I come
    in late at night, I punch that button frenetically just to sort of see
    what's on. And I like Washington because there are a lot of cable
    stations here. And I get frustrated, particularly on the weekends if I
    have a little time, when there's not a single good movie on. But I do
    like to bump through the channels.

    Economic Program

        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, we all recognize that you have a kind of
    ``high noon'' today with the vote in the House of Representatives. And
    with that in mind, let's go to our first questioner from among our
    affiliates, Virgil Dominic from Cleveland.
        Q. Good morning, Mr. President.
        The President. Hi, Virgil.
        Q. Thank you very much for being with us today. We appreciate it so
    very much. Mr. President, could you please give us more details on the
    agreement that you and the House leadership and the conservatives worked
    out early this morning on your economic package that will be going to a
    vote in the House sometime later today? And specifically, sir, does it
    include an increase in spending cuts or a lesser increase in taxes or
    both?
        The President. The short answer to your question, or second
    question, is no. But the agreement that was worked out late last night
    is an enforcement mechanism to make sure that what happened to the '90
    budget agreement doesn't happen this time. That is, this is a mechanism
    to guarantee that if there's a 5-year deficit reduction target, we meet
    the targets every year. Because under previous budgets, you could adopt
    a 5-year budget, but it's hard for CBS or your affiliate or the
    businesses of anybody represented in this audience today to do 5-year
    budgets. So this says, after every year, if we miss that deficit
    reduction target, the President is bound to come in and offer a plan to
    correct it, and the Congress must vote on it. They don't have to take
    his ideas, but if they don't do that, they must do something else. This
    will give the American people the assurance that each year we are going
    to meet these targets. I think that is very, very important.
        Now, let me say one other thing. Most everybody believes that to
    whatever extent we can, we should have more cuts and less taxes. That's
    a good thing to do. But when you get to the specifics--if you look at,
    for example, Senator Boren's plan, which reduces taxes on the wealthy
    and imposes more burdens on working people and elderly people just above
    the poverty line, you see how hard the details are.
        The Congress will have three more chances to vote to reduce
    spending. All the appropriation bills are also going through the
    Congress now, as soon as this is voted on. We're going to

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    have a health care program which will produce savings in the health care
    area for Congress, the entitlements. And Vice President Gore is going to
    present a program to reform the way the Federal Government works in
    September that will give a third chance to cut spending this year. So
    this is not over. We're going to keep doing things that will reduce
    unnecessary spending in the Federal Government whatever happens on this
    bill today.
        Mr. Rather. Thank you, Mr. President, and we have another questioner
    who will identify himself and his station and town.
        Q. Good morning, Mr. President. My name is Bill Sullivan from
    Missoula, Montana.
        The President. That's a great town.
        Q. Thank you very much. First of all, on behalf of all the CBS
    affiliates, I want to thank you, and for free broadcasters all over
    America, for your support of free broadcasting, and also want to say
    thank you for participating in this town meeting this morning. We were
    proud to have you on our network.
        The President. Thank you.

    Pacific Northwest Resource Management

        Q. My question, sir: The subject is the Northwest and development
    and use of the natural resources in the Northwest. The debates have been
    going on for many, many years. You yourself have been involved in
    hearings. When is it time to make a decision and let the folks go down
    the road?
        The President. We're going to recommend a resolution to the problems
    that we found in the timber summit that was held a few months ago, very
    shortly. We're going to make our recommendation. The Northwest now has a
    lot of difficult natural resource issues. For example, if you cut all
    the old-growth forests, you can keep people working for a while, and
    then you won't have any left at all. You will have lost a lot of not
    only the biological species there, but there will be more water
    pollution and the salmon fishermen will be hurt. A lot of these things
    are very, very complicated. We're going to try to resolve them the best
    we can and make a recommendation that will preserve as much of the old-
    growth forests as we can, recognize the importance of maintaining
    responsible logging practices, and keep the salmon fishers going, and
    doing as much of those things as we can to balance the economy and the
    environment.
        I understand a little about this because I live in a State that's
    over half timberland with a lot of national forest land. And I know that
    these are very tough issues. Probably no one will be happy with the
    recommendations that our administration will make. But we're going to do
    our best to be fair and to look at the long view. We have to think about
    people making a living not just now but also 5 years from now and 10
    years from now and how to preserve those essential parts of our
    environment that are an important part of the character of the Pacific
    Northwest.
        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, thank you very much. We have, I think,
    time--we want to keep our commitment to you, because we do appreciate
    very much your doing this. And Allen Howard from KHOU-TV in Houston has
    a question.
        Q. Good morning, Mr. President.
        The President. Good morning, Allen.

    Campaign Finance Reform

        Q. We've heard a lot of comments regarding yet another broadcast
    campaign reform; 50 percent of lowest unit rate and three commercials
    are just a couple of the things we've heard. I wonder if you might
    enlighten us on that, please.
        The President. Well, the whole issue of free campaign time from the
    broadcast networks arose, frankly, as a result of the opposition that
    some folks have in any public funding of campaigns. The position the
    administration has taken is pretty simple. I presented a campaign
    finance reform law to the Congress which lowers the cost of campaigns,
    lowers the cost of political action committees, and gives people who are
    candidates for office communications vouchers so they can have access to
    the airwaves, so the challengers as well as the incumbents, and without
    regard to party, can have access to the airwaves.
        The only discussion about requiring you to offer free air time came
    about because there are some people in the Congress who are against any
    public funding of congressional elections. Now, the United States
    Supreme Court has said that the only way we can lower the costs of
    campaigns is to tie that to getting some public funding. In other words,
    the Supreme Court says that if a billionaire wants to run for President,
    for Senator, for Congress, they can spend all the money they want, they
    can

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    try to buy the election, they can do whatever they want. We can't stop
    them, according to the Supreme Court. So the only incentive we have to
    get people to live within a lower campaign spending limit is to be able
    to give them some public funding, which I propose to do not in terms of
    direct money but for communications vouchers so you can only use it to
    overcome your disability to reach people through communications, either
    over television or radio or newspaper or mail. So that's how our plan
    would work.
        But you should know that the question you asked about mandatory air
    time would only come up again, probably, if the public funding portion
    of this fails. We've got to find a way to guarantee that voters hear an
    honest debate at an affordable cost, the election should not be bought,
    and that incumbents should not be insulated from honest debate and
    challenge. That's all we're trying to do.
        Mr. Rather. Mr. President, thank you very, very much. Our thanks to
    Virgil Dominic, Bill Sullivan, and Allen Howard. Mr. President, we
    appreciate more than we can say in a short time both being on ``CBS This
    Morning'' and taking the extra time to do this. God bless you. Thank you
    very much. And tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for
    her. Thank you very much.
        The President. Thank you very much, Dan.
        Ms. Chung. Thank you.
        The President. Thank you, Connie. And goodbye.

    Note: The interview began at 9:05 a.m. The President spoke via satellite
    from the Rose Garden at the White House. A tape was not available for
    verification of the content of this interview.