[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[February 25, 1993]
[Pages 202-205]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to Business and Labor Leaders and an Exchange With Reporters on 
the Economic Program
February 25, 1993

    The President. Thank you very much. To all the business and the 
labor leaders who are here, and to Representative Clayton and the many 
Members of the House whom she represents so ably. Let me begin with a 
simple thank you to all of you for your support of our common efforts to 
turn our country around and put our Nation on the right track.

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    For too long we have seen business and labor divided over more 
issues than we see them united on. Part of that has been occasioned by 
the incredible difficulties of our economy. When people believe there is 
a shrinking pie, they're more likely to be fighting over that. Part of 
that has been occasioned by the fact that we have not been on a great 
national journey together in which we could all feel that we were a 
part, making our equal contributions, reaping our equal rewards.
    I'm very encouraged by the business-labor partnership that we see 
manifested here today, by the fact that it represents a commitment to 
ending gridlock and to beginning change, and deeply impressed by the 
letter which Representative Clayton has brought here today by the people 
whom I think in many ways are most representatives of the American 
people: this new big class of freshmen Congress men and women who are 
out there, just as Vice President Gore and I were last year, criss-
crossing the country in a beginning effort, listening to people and 
their concerns and their hopes. So I'm very, very happy about that.
    If I might, I'd like to close just by emphasizing three or four of 
the critical elements of this economic plan and why I think they are 
worthy of the support of this distinguished group of Americans. Everyone 
knows we have to bring the deficit down; it has become the dominant fact 
of all the budgeting of the Federal Government. But there are those who 
say, ``Well, how can you do that. You're just coming out of a recession, 
and traditional economic theory holds that the last thing you want to do 
is to slow down a recovery by closing a deficit.''
    That is, ever since the Depression, our country has operated on an 
economic theory that said when times were slow, there should be more 
Government spending; when times were great, then you could bring our 
accounts into balance. The problem is that for more than 20 years we 
have been building in a structural deficit into our Government, one that 
robbed the National Government of that flexibility, the flexibility to 
tighten up in good times to slow down inflation, and to invest more in 
bad times to put people back to work.
    And our strategy now, I think, is actually supporting an economic 
recovery in bringing this deficit down because you can see the decline 
in long-term interest rates which means that borrowing is cheaper and 
which means that millions of Americans in their personal capacities and 
as business persons are going to refinance their debt which will free up 
cash to be reinvested in economic growth. So I believe this strategy is 
expansionary.
    I also would make a couple of other points if I might. We are 
changing fundamentally the direction of Government spending itself, 
moving away from spending for consumption towards spending a higher 
percentage of the people's tax dollars on investment. It is simply not 
true that all Government spending is equal. Some investment will have a 
much bigger reward in terms of jobs and incomes than spending more money 
on the same program.
    Finally, we are looking at ways to basically make the Government 
itself work in a very different and more efficient way. One of them has 
already been alluded to by Kathryn Thompson. We will be announcing in 
the near future some efforts by this administration to ease the credit 
crunch on small business. We are also trying to change the way the 
Government itself operates and the regulatory framework to do things 
that will achieve objectives in a better way.
    We believe we can promote a clean environment and economic growth 
with the right kind of regulatory and investment climate. We believe by 
changing the way the Government itself does business, we can give the 
American people a much leaner Government. We think that the White House 
staff cuts and the reorganization are simply an example of what we can 
do throughout the Government, given time.
    So I appreciate the support for this program. And let me reiterate, 
I am not simply interested in raising more revenues. I don't want new 
taxes unless we're going to have spending cuts, unless we are going to 
change the nature of Government spending toward more investment, and 
unless we're going to change the way the Government itself operates.
    This is a whole program that will fundamentally give us an end to 
gridlock and the change we need. And I thank these people who are here. 
They are reflective of the kind of unity we need in America to move this 
country forward. Thank you very much.
    Q. How committed, sir, are you to the stimulus part of your package? 
It's now been delayed another month, perhaps; your budget is not even 
going up until April 5th. A lot of economists say that if it gets 
delayed much longer, it won't

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even help the economy. Only one of the preceding speakers even mentioned 
this stimulus package. Just how important is this?
    The President. Yes, that's not true. At least one of them did 
mention it first. And secondly, I think it is quite important. I think 
it would be a big mistake--let me just give you--it will do what it's 
designed to do later in time for everything except those things that 
have to be in place this summer. And I'm hoping that we can get the kind 
of--a lot of the Members of Congress are looking for a way to 
demonstrate to the country that they don't want to raise more taxes 
without cutting spending. And we're working on giving them an 
opportunity to do that. I agree with that. I think that's fine.
    But there are some things that are time-sensitive in this stimulus 
package. The most obvious and apparent one is the summer jobs program. 
Nearly every person I know, including an enormous number of business 
people who are in and around cities like Los Angeles or Chicago or New 
York or other cities, believe that the prospect of being able to provide 
nearly 700,000 summer jobs in a framework in which we can then get 
business people together to work to provide more jobs--and one of the 
people here on this platform today has already told me that he wanted to 
get involved in that--could be a major statement this summer that we are 
trying to turn some things around in the more depressed areas of our 
country.
    There are some other things that are somewhat time sensitive, but 
the main thing is we need to be investing more money at the same time 
that we are bringing down this deficit so that we'll be creating some 
jobs. The traditional economic theory is that if you reduce the deficit, 
you're going to slow down the economy and undermine the ability to 
create jobs. I just can convince--that's wrong now because of the vast 
accumulated debt. If you can keep interest rates down, you're going to 
speed up the economy by putting more money out there.
    But I think the stimulus is important, and I intend to continue to 
support it.
    Q. Mr. President, I was struck by the fact that of all your speakers 
here, they all said, ``We support the package, but we'd like changes in 
the area that affects us.'' Isn't that what you've been warning against? 
That the tax increase----
    The President. That's not what they said. That's not what--only one 
of them said that, I think. And I think that, for one thing, the very 
fact that they're here supporting it, knowing that they'd all like 
changes in something that affects them, is the very point I've been 
trying to make to the American people.
    If you look at this, if you look at this, if every person looks at 
this through the mirror of what is best for you today, there will always 
be something in here that doesn't quite work. The thing that makes this 
work is that it is a package in which everybody forgoes something they 
would like and gets something that they would like, but that in the main 
it moves the country in the right direction.
    The Vice President. Could I add something to that?
    The President. Yes.
    The Vice President. You know, Lod Cook started off by singling out 
the two provisions which you would expect him to oppose in the old 
model. And he singled those out as things that he supported. And many of 
the others have said, privately and publicly, that they strongly support 
the package in spite of the fact that it contains elements that they 
would not like to necessarily single out by themselves but as part of a 
package it makes sense for the country.
    Q. Would you be willing to put forth more spending cuts before your 
budget goes up? I know you called for the Republicans----
    The President. Like what? Like what? I mean, unlike a lot of these 
other people, I worked for weeks and weeks and weeks on this budget. 
What I said was, if they had more spending cuts they thought were good 
ideas, I'd be happy to embrace them, that I intended for the entire 
duration of my term here to continue to look for more spending cuts. If 
I find more that I think are worthy, I'll be glad to incorporate them.
    But let me just say, I have a difficult time taking these people 
seriously, who say we should have more spending cuts, who were here for 
the last 12 years. Where were they? I don't mind; anybody can say 
whatever they want about more spending cuts, but why are you asking me? 
Why don't you ask them? They're going around saying, ``I have the list 
of spending cuts that I will discuss with somebody at some later date.''
    Q. They're saying that you're suggesting many spending cuts which 
have been up on the Hill for years and that these aren't any new cuts 
and these are----

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    The President. If we pass them, it will be new. [Laughter] They've 
been up there. If we pass them, they will be new.
    Q. You said earlier you obviously don't like to raise taxes. Are you 
ready to acknowledge at this point that you will have to go back to 
Congress and ask for more tax increases for the health care reform 
package? And would you also comment on a report that you've dropped the 
idea of taxing benefits?
    The President. I haven't picked any tax up, so how could I drop--you 
can't drop something you didn't pick up. So I won't comment on 
something--if I pick something, I'll tell you.
    I can say this: I'm not ready to admit that I think that the people 
who have paid the bill for health care in the 1980's should turn around 
and pay more right now. We're spending 14 percent of gross national 
product. You do have to find some way to recover some revenues to cover 
people who now don't have coverage, if the Government pays for the 
coverage. And that's an important part of stopping the cost shifting, 
which has led to so much increase in private insurance.
    But there are lots of options we are looking at now which wouldn't 
necessarily increase middle class tax burdens. There are a whole range 
of options for dealing with this, which is why I asked you to let us 
finish this process of review before we try to pick it apart.
    There was a huge transfer of wealth in America in the 1980's away 
from everything else to health care, to pay more for the same health 
care. Most of it went into paperwork, insurance costs, extra procedures 
by providers, and duplication of expensive equipment, and emergency 
care, partly due to the absence of primary and preventive care. If you 
correct all those things and you don't change the present spending 
patterns, that will create a huge windfall to people whose pricing 
structures have all that built in. There are all kinds of things that we 
might be able to do to solve this problem, short of having health care 
become even more expensive for people who are paying 30 percent more for 
it than anybody else on Earth.
    Q. [Inaudible]--that burden middle class. Does that rule out sin 
taxes then?
    The President. I think health-related taxes are different. I think 
cigarette taxes, for example, are different.
    Q. Why?
    The President. Why? Because I think that we are spending a ton of 
money in private insurance and in Government tax payments to deal with 
the health care problems occasioned by bad health habits, and 
particularly smoking, which is costing us a lot of money.
    Q. [Inaudible]--you stand on the cuts? What kind of cuts would be 
considered? I know you're hearing a lot of input. You stressed the 
importance of input. In that input----
    The President. I haven't really been getting a lot of input. That's 
the thing. A lot of people keep talking about it; I haven't been getting 
a lot of specific input. A lot of folks say they want overall caps. 
Overall caps are another way of saying, let's take Social Security 
benefits away from people even though Social Security is producing a $70 
billion--$60 billion-plus surplus in taxes. Or let's take Medicare 
benefits away from middle class Medicare beneficiaries instead of 
reforming the health care system.
    That's basically the only things I've heard since then. If somebody 
wants to come forward with something else specific--now, there are some 
people who--let me just be also fair. Some of the people in my party 
have been somewhat more specific about some of the cuts they want that I 
honestly disagree with, and there ought to be a debate on that in 
Congress. Some of them want me to cut defense more. I've already had to 
cut defense more than I pledged to do in the campaign because it appears 
that the last budget which was adopted by Congress had defense cuts in 
it which weren't real. So I don't think I can cut any more right now. 
The Congress will be free to debate that.
    Some people think that we should abolish the superconducting super 
collider or end the space station program, but I honestly don't agree 
with that. I thought about those programs and I debated them, but at 
least those are specific, and they can be debated on the floor of 
Congress. But these general ``cap this, blanket that,'' I think people 
ought to say what the cut is and who will be affected by it and be very 
specific.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:02 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Eva M. 
Clayton, who represented the newly elected Democratic Representatives, 
and Kathryn G. Thompson, chairman and chief executive officer, Kathryn 
G. Thompson Development Co.