[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[July 17, 1993]
[Pages 1093-1095]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's Radio Address
July 17, 1993

    Good morning. These past 2 weeks as I've traveled across our Nation 
and our world, I've been reminded that Americans can rise to any 
challenge. The Vice President and I have visited communities in the 
Midwest where floodwaters have destroyed farms and businesses and homes, 
reaching historic levels. We've seen much that is heartbreaking but also 
a lot that is heartlifting.
    The natural disaster is bringing out the best in our people. I saw 
that when I visited Des Moines on Wednesday. People there have been 
going without tapwater, but they still remember what it means to be 
Americans. Volunteers from all over the State and around the country are 
there distributing food and water, filling sandbags, and helping older 
people, the sick, and neighbors whose livelihoods have been washed away.
    Already I've declared disaster areas in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, 
Wisconsin, and Minnesota. And Federal officials are now in South Dakota, 
North Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska, reviewing the extensive flood damage 
in those States. I've directed all the appropriate Federal agencies to 
work together as a team to help the victims of these floods. And I've 
been especially pleased with the work of Secretary Espy and the 
Agriculture Department and the sterling efforts of the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency and its Director, James Lee Witt.
    Now I'm asking Congress to approve emergency assistance to help the 
families, farmers, businesses, and communities who've been hurt. And 
today I'll be heading back to St. Louis to meet with Governors from the 
Midwest and several Members of the Congress to plan short-term disaster 
relief and long-term economic recovery. At a time like this, people who 
have worked hard all of their lives deserve a helping hand. With that 
helping hand, the people of the Midwest will get back on their feet. 
After all, they're Americans. They're facing this crisis with grit and 
courage and generosity.
    That indomitable American spirit is recognized as far away as Tokyo 
and Korea. In Tokyo, I attended a summit of the world's seven leading 
industrial nations. In Korea, I visited our service men and women 
serving along the Demilitarized Zone and standing up to the nuclear 
threats that the North Koreans have presented to us in the last several 
weeks.
    In Tokyo, at the economic summit, my hand was strengthened because 
of everything the American people have been doing, working to change our 
economic policies and pushing to cut our deficit and increase investment 
in American jobs. For the first time in more than a dozen years, an 
American President was able to go to one of these summits and look at 
the leaders of the other great economic powers and say, ``We are putting 
our own house in order.'' Your commitment to change has helped me to 
come home with job-creating agreements to lower trade barriers worldwide 
and to reduce our trade deficit with Japan. These agreements will make 
life better for America's workers,

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America's businesses, and our families.
    After years of deadlocked talks with the world's leading trading 
powers, we negotiated a plan that will dramatically reduce tariffs on 
manufactured products, from chemicals to electronics, from 
pharmaceuticals to farm equipment. When other countries lower their 
tariffs, more consumers all across the world will buy our products. That 
means more manufacturing jobs here in America, high-skill, high-wage 
jobs with a future, and jobs that create other jobs back home.
    I could not have persuaded our trading partners to reach these 
agreements without having made the progress we've made at home on our 
economic plan. For years other nations have come to these meetings and 
said the same things to an American President: We can't have a healthy 
economy in the United States or the world until America cuts the 
deficit, invests in education and technology, and is able to compete and 
win again.
    Well, from the bargaining table at Tokyo to our factory floors here 
at home, we are on the move again, stepping up to the plate, taking 
responsibility, making the tough choices, and building our economic 
strength, not borrowing from it. America is now the high-quality, low-
cost producer of many products and services that can compete in any 
market in the world.
    And our economic plan answers the call that other world leaders have 
made for years, and now that the American people are making, for 
historic change. It has the largest deficit reduction in history, $500 
billion over 5 years. It has historic spending cuts, more than 200 
specific cuts that save more than $250 billion from this budget. And it 
makes an historic shift from trickle-down economics, where taxes were 
lowered on the wealthy and raised on the middle class, because more than 
three-quarters of the new taxes in this plan will be paid by the 
wealthiest 6 percent of Americans. In fact, for every $10 that we cut 
the deficit, $5 comes from spending cuts, $4 comes from taxes on the 
wealthiest 6 percent, and only a dollar comes from the middle class. 
Working families with incomes under $30,000 are held harmless. The 
working poor, those who work 40 hours a week, have children in the home, 
and are still in poverty, will get tax relief so that no American who's 
working full time with children in the home will live in poverty.
    A majority of our small businesses, where the jobs are mostly 
created in America these days, will actually get a tax cut because of 
the job-creating incentives in this plan. The plan is fair, it's 
balanced, and it will create new jobs, permanent, productive, private-
sector jobs. With this plan in place, the American economy can produce 8 
million jobs over the next 4 years, 8 million new jobs.
    As the economic plan has progressed through Congress, the financial 
markets where long-term interest rates are set have responded. Long-term 
interest rates have declined to historic lows; mortgage rates are at 20-
year lows. Now, if we can keep interest rates at this low level for the 
rest of the year, people refinancing their home loans or taking out new 
business loans will pump $100 billion of new capital back into the 
economy, because they'll have lower interest payments and then they'll 
have money to consume or to invest.
    On top of that, the new business incentives, especially those for 
small businesses, will create new jobs. There will be new incentives for 
people to move from welfare rolls to payrolls. That means more jobs and 
new opportunities for young people to serve their communities while they 
finance their college education and become more employable in a tough 
global economy.
    The House and the Senate have both passed versions of this plan, and 
now they're meeting to write a final proposal. With your help we can 
make sure that Congress says no to gridlock and yes to growth, yes to 
change, and yes to what is best in the American spirit.
    Throughout the natural disaster in the Midwest I've been profoundly 
impressed by how our people have pulled together as a family. From the 
Congress to the Governors, to the community leaders in our cities and 
towns, to the volunteers, and to the people who have been dispossessed, 
Americans have risen above their divisions and their personal concerns 
to help people in trouble. In times of crisis we're not Democrats or 
Republicans, we are Americans.
    Today I ask all of you to show that same spirit in responding to our 
economic problems. To those who would do nothing or slide back into the 
status quo of the last several years, I say we must go forward with a 
plan that grows the economy, reduces the deficit, creates jobs, and 
restores fairness.
    I say to my friends in the other party in Congress, just as you have 
worked with me and the people of the Midwest together to help the

[[Page 1095]]

people dig themselves out of a natural disaster, so should you join us 
in digging America out of the legacy of two decades of declining growth, 
declining productivity, growing deficits, and economic crisis. We are 
Americans; we can pull together. And together we can make the historic 
decisions to build a new generation of prosperity for ourselves, our 
children, and our children's children.
    Thank you for listening.

Note: This address was recorded at 5:27 p.m. on July 16 in the Roosevelt 
Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on July 17.