[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[April 17, 1993]
[Pages 446-447]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's Radio Address
April 17, 1993

    Good morning. My voice is coming to you this morning through the 
facilities of the oldest radio station in America, KDKA in Pittsburgh. 
I'm visiting the city to meet personally with citizens here to discuss 
my plans for jobs, health care, and the economy. But I wanted first to 
do my weekly broadcast with the American people.
    I'm told this station first broadcast in 1920 when it reported that 
year's Presidential elections. Over the past seven decades Presidents 
have found ways to keep in touch with the people, from whistle-stop 
tours to fireside chats to the bus tour that I adopted, along with Vice 
President Gore, in last year's campaign.
    Every Saturday morning I take this time to talk with you, my fellow 
Americans, about the problems on your minds and what I'm doing to try 
and solve them. It's my way of reporting to you and of giving you a way 
to hold me accountable. You sent me to Washington to get our Government 
and economy moving after years of paralysis in policy and a bad 
experiment with trickle-down economics. You know how important it is for 
us to make bold, comprehensive changes in the way we do business.
    We live in a competitive global economy. Nations rise and fall on 
the skills of their workers, the competitiveness of their companies, the 
imagination of their industries, and the cooperative experience and 
spirit that exists between business, labor, and government. Although 
many of the economies of the industrialized world are now suffering from 
slow growth, they've made many of the smart investments and the tough 
choices which our Government has for too long ignored. That's why many 
of them have been moving ahead and too many of our people have been 
falling behind.
    We have an economy today that even when it grows is not producing 
new jobs. We've increased the debt of our Nation by 4 times over the 
last 12 years, and we don't have much to show for it. We know that wages 
of most working people have stopped rising, that most people are working 
longer work weeks, and that too many families can no longer afford the 
escalating cost of health care.
    But we also know that, given the right tools, the right incentives, 
and the right encouragement, our workers and businesses can make the 
kinds of products and profits our economy needs to expand opportunity 
and to make our communities better places to live.
    In many critical products today Americans are the low cost, high 
quality producers. Our task is to make sure that we create more of those 
kinds of jobs.
    Just 2 months ago I gave Congress my plan for long-term jobs and 
economic growth. It changes the old priorities in Washington and puts 
our emphasis where it needs to be: on people's real needs, on increasing 
investments and jobs and education, on cutting the Federal deficit, on 
stopping the waste which pays no dividends, and redirecting our precious 
re-


[[Page 447]]

sources toward investment that creates jobs now and lays the groundwork 
for robust economic growth in the future.
    These new directions passed the Congress in record time and created 
a new sense of hope and opportunity in our country. Then the jobs plan I 
presented to Congress, which would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, 
most of them in the private sector in 1993 and 1994, passed the House of 
Representatives. It now has the support of a majority of the United 
States Senate. But it's been held up by a filibuster of a minority in 
the Senate, just 43 Senators. They blocked a vote that they know would 
result in the passage of our bill and the creation of jobs.
    The issue isn't politics. The issue is people. Millions of Americans 
are waiting for this legislation and counting on it, counting on us in 
Washington. But the jobs bill has been grounded by gridlock.
    I know the American people are tired of business as usual and 
politics as usual. I know they don't want us to spin our wheels. They 
want the recovery to get moving. So I have taken a first step to break 
this gridlock and gone the extra mile. Yesterday I offered to cut the 
size of this plan by 25 percent, from $16 billion to $12 billion.
    It's not what I'd hoped for. With 16 million Americans looking for 
full-time work, I simply can't let the bill languish when I know that 
even a compromise bill will mean hundreds of thousands of jobs for our 
people. The mandate is to act to achieve change and move the country 
forward. By taking this initiative in the face of an unrelenting Senate 
talkathon, I think we can respond to your mandate and achieve a 
significant portion of our original goals.
    First, we want to keep the programs as much as possible that are 
needed to generate jobs and meet human needs, including highway and road 
construction, summer jobs for young people, immunization for children, 
construction of waste water sites, and aid to small businesses. We also 
want to keep funding for extended unemployment compensation benefits for 
people who have been unemployed for a long time because the economy 
isn't creating jobs.
    Second, I've recommended that all the other programs in the bill be 
cut across-the-board by a little more than 40 percent.
    And third, I've recommended a new element in this program to help us 
immediately start our attempt to fight against crime by providing $200 
million for cities and towns to rehire police officers who lost their 
jobs during the recession and put them back to work protecting our 
people. I'm also going to fight for a tough crime bill because the 
people of this country need it and deserve it.
    Now the people who are filibustering this bill, the Republican 
Senators, say they won't vote for it because it increases deficit 
spending, because there's extra spending this year that hasn't already 
been approved. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Here's what they 
don't say. This program is more than paid for by budget cuts over my 5-
year budget, and this program is well within the spending limits already 
approved by the Congress this year.
    It's amazing to me that many of these same Senators who are 
filibustering the bill voted during the previous administration for 
billions of dollars of the same kind of emergency spending, and much of 
it was not designed to put the American people to work.
    This is not about deficit spending. We have offered a plan to cut 
the deficit. This is about where your priorities are, on people or on 
politics.
    Keep in mind that our jobs bill is paid for dollar-for-dollar. It is 
paid for by budget cuts. And it's the soundest investment we can now 
make for ourselves and our children. I urge all Americans to take 
another look at this jobs and investment program, to consider again the 
benefits for all of us when we've helped make more American partners 
working to ensure the future of our Nation and the strength of our 
economy.
    You know, if every American who wanted a job had one, we wouldn't 
have a lot of the other problems we have in this country today. This 
bill is not a miracle; it's a modest first step to try to set off a job 
creation explosion in this country again. But it's a step we ought to 
take. And it is fully paid for over the life of our budget.
    Tell your lawmakers what you think. Tell them how important the bill 
is. If it passes, we'll all be winners.
    Good morning, and thank you for listening.

Note: The President spoke at 10:06 a.m. in the USAir terminal at 
Pittsburgh International Airport.