[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[May 12, 1993]
[Pages 628-634]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With Don Imus of WFAN Radio, New York City
May 12, 1993

    Mr. Imus. Good morning, Mr. President.
    The President. Good morning. How are you?
    Mr. Imus. I'm fine. How are you?
    The President. I'm all right.

The First 100 Days

    Mr. Imus. Let me ask you something. What the hell is going on down 
there in that White House? What do you mean, you've lost your focus? 
[Laughter]
    The President. I haven't lost my focus. You've just been seeing me 
through the foggy lens of television instead of the direct one of radio. 
[Laughter] There's a big headline in the Washington Post today, 
``Clinton Wins Third Major Victory In Congress.'' I think we're doing 
fine. You know, we lost one bill, and a lot of people think it's like 
the last days of Pompeii. I mean, if you're going to fight for change, 
you've got to be prepared to lose a few as well as win some. But I think 
we're well on track.

[[Page 629]]

    Let me just point out that when the Congress adopted my budget 
outline, it was the first time in 17 years that they'd adopted it within 
the legal time limit, faster than they've moved in 17 years. Everybody 
complained about the appointments process. When 100 days went by, it 
turned out I'd made more appointments during the period than my two 
predecessors did. We just passed the motor voter bill yesterday, a big 
issue for younger voters, making it easier for them to register to vote. 
We've got the economic program on track. I feel good about the way 
things are. But you know, change is not easy and people--if you want to 
keep score after 100 days, where we had 4,500 days of trickle-down 
economics, you know, I haven't done everything I meant to do in 100 
days, but I never promised to do it in 100 days. I think we're doing 
fine.
    Mr. Imus. I think that looked good last night, breaking that 
Republican filibuster, because it looks like Bob Dole--it's like the 
``Friday the 13th'' movies, you know, where you think you've finished 
him off and then next thing you know that hand comes popping up out of 
the lake there and, of course, in this case there was a pen in it. 
[Laughter] But this is an indication that it doesn't look like the 
Republicans are going to be able to waylay everything you're trying to 
do, does it?
    The President. Well, I don't think so. You know, the filibuster on 
the jobs bill was an unusual thing, I think, not that they tried to do 
it but that they never let the majority vote. And I think the American 
people have got that figured out. And there are always going to be 
Republicans, or most always, that agree with some aspect of what we're 
doing. And when you reach out to them and you try to work out 
compromises, there are, almost always, there are some who want to go for 
the national interest over the partisanship, and that's what happened 
here. We worked out some problems with that motor voter bill, and it 
rolled right through. The same thing with family and medical leave. So I 
think if we just keep working at it, we'll have some success.
    We've had 12 cloture votes--that's the attempt to get 60 percent of 
the Senate just so a majority can vote their will--12 already in the 
first 3\1/2\ months. So I imagine they'll make us do this a lot, but I 
think there are always going to be some Republicans who want to be part 
of a bipartisan movement for change, and I'm encouraged by it.
    Mr. Imus. Or Republicans who want to be President.
    The President. There are always going to be people who want to be 
President, and some days I like to give it to them. But if I did that, 
at least I'd have a telephone conversation with you before I give it up 
so you can call me President Bubba. [Laughter] See, I've been waiting 
for this all this time.

The Economy

    Mr. Imus. Well, Mr. President, I don't know what you've heard about 
what's been going on in this program, but it's always been very 
respectful. And anything you've heard to the contrary would just be 
further evidence of the collapse of the intelligence community in this 
country. [Laughter] And I mean, these guys didn't even know that the 
Berlin Wall went down until they saw it on CNN. So you can't trust what 
you hear from them.
    I was talking to my friend Jeff Greenfield over at ABC, and he had a 
good observation. He said, is this economic program of yours tougher to 
sell now, you think, because for whatever circumstances you weren't able 
to run on it?
    The President. No, I don't think so. The difference in the program 
that we're advocating and the one I ran on over a 5-year period is not 
very great, but what happened was after the election--I want to 
emphasize this--after the election the Government came out--the previous 
administration--and said that the deficit was going to be $50 billion a 
year bigger than they had said before in 3 of the 4 years of the term 
that I now occupy. So I had to do more to cut the deficit, and we had to 
put that up front. And it's worked pretty well so far.
    You know, ever since we announced serious intentions to cut the 
deficit and were specific about it, interest rates began dropping very 
steeply, mortgage rates were at a 20 year low. You're going to have a 
$100 billion--that's a lot of money--in refinancing of home mortgages 
and business debt and other things which I think will really help the 
economy.
    But that meant we had to put off some of the plans or scale them 
back in the early going and put them back into the later years of my 
term to invest money in things that I think are also important. But 
we've got to get control

[[Page 630]]

of this deficit. It's been spinning out of control now, getting worse 
and worse for a dozen years, and we don't have the funds we need to 
invest in jobs to grow the economy, and I think it's very important.
    Mr. Imus. I think William Greider pointed it out in Rolling Stone--
and you either agree with it obviously or don't--that during the 
campaign that the focus was on and the debate was on jobs. And it seemed 
that because of Bush ``cooking the books'' and not realizing that the 
deficit was going to be a little bit bigger than it was, that then the 
agenda switched to this 5-year plan to reduce the deficit. Let me ask 
you----
    The President. But wait, let me make one point. I think they're two 
sides of the same thing. That is, if I didn't think that reducing the 
deficit over the long run would help us to create more jobs and if I 
didn't think we could also get some increased investment in new 
technologies and education and training and to rebuild our cities and to 
do these things that have to be done, I wouldn't be doing this.
    I think they're two sides of the same coin. I think until we show we 
can get control over the Government's budget and we can make some 
spending cuts, as well as restore some of the tax loses that we had in 
the early years of the trickle-down revolution, I don't think we can get 
a job program going in the country. So I think this getting the deficit 
down is part of a long-term job growth strategy. Jobs are the issue; 
reducing the deficit is a means to get control of our economic future. 
The whole purpose of it is to put people to work.
    Mr. Imus. To talk about it just a second, this economic plan and 
some of these numbers that we see now suggest that the public is--about 
half, 50 percent of them don't think it's going to work. And let me tell 
you what filters down to people like me, you know, aside from the 
esoteric proposals and figures and stuff that many of us don't 
understand, but what we hear is that the numbers we hear is that, for 
every $3 and so in new taxes, we're looking at about a dollar or so in 
spending cuts. And there are some people that think the ratio's even 
higher than that. Is that accurate?
    The President. No, no. But I'll tell you, if you look at this thing 
over a 5-year period we have more spending cuts than we do tax 
increases. And that's true even though we have some targeted increases 
in investment, in education and training, and new technologies. Now, the 
people who argue this the other way, they play clever games. For 
example, if you're going to cut a program that's in place, you may have 
to phase in the cuts over a 5-year period; if you raise a tax, you can 
raise a tax immediately. You've got to look at this whole budget.
    In this budget we have more spending cuts than tax increases. We do 
have some spending increases, but if you don't believe that there are 
differences in different kinds of spending, I don't know what we can do. 
We have some spending increases to give a nationwide apprenticeship 
program to help retrain the work force. We have some spending increases 
to get into new technologies to make up for defense cuts because we're 
losing a lot of high-tech, high-wage jobs.
    You know, up in Connecticut we've had a lot of employment 
dislocation because of defense cutbacks, but you've got a whole high-
wage work force that needs to have something else to do. And every other 
government in the world is investing in new technologies to try to 
create those jobs for their people. If we don't do it, we're going to be 
left behind. So we have to target some investments. But this budget has 
over 200 very specific budget cuts over the last budget adopted in the 
previous administration. And if you look--it's 5-year budget, that's 
what the law requires us to do, to adopt 5-year budgets--we've got more 
spending cuts than tax increases, and we should.
    Mr. Imus.  Is it important what the ratio is? And if it is, what 
should it be, do you think? I mean, because that's the--you know, that's 
kind of the way we relate to it.
    The President. Well, the issue is how many cuts can you get without 
pulling the economy into a recession. What do you have to cut, how many 
cuts can you get without unfairly cutting the elderly? The same people 
who say we don't have enough cuts are also often saying we shouldn't cut 
what we're cutting. And the truth is, if you want to get to a balanced 
budget through spending reductions, the only way to do it now is to get 
control of health care costs, and that, basically, in the later part of 
this decade, if we can adopt a national health system and--you know, 
Hillary has been working on that with hundreds of others--and we can 
bring the Government's deficit down to zero, but you can't do that 
overnight. And the biggest part of our deficit growth now is in health 
care costs

[[Page 631]]

and interest on the debt.
    We're not spending a bigger percentage of our income on Social 
Security--our national income--than we were 10 years ago. We're spending 
a smaller percentage of our income on Federal aid in education than we 
were 10, 12 years ago. What's happened now is we started cutting 
defense, but health care increases overcame the defense cuts. So what 
I'm trying to do is to cut everything I can now, get health care costs 
under control and look toward not only cutting the deficit but bringing 
it down to zero over a multi-year period. You just can't do this 
overnight.
    You know, we took the national debt from $1 trillion to $4 trillion 
in 12 years with a $300-plus billion a year deficit when I took office. 
You can't just eliminate that overnight without having serious economic 
dislocations. You've got to do it in a disciplined way and take it down.
    Mr. Imus. There's already been some compromise with some members of 
your own party in Congress. Do you anticipate any more of that, or is 
it----
    The President. Well, I think there have been some changes that make 
it better. After all, we put this plan on the table only 30 days after I 
had taken office, and I invited people to comment on it but to keep its 
essential features intact. That is, we had to have the spending cuts 
before I would agree to tax increases. The tax increases had to be 
largely progressive; that is, they ought to be on people at higher 
income levels whose tax rates went down in the 1980's while their 
incomes went up, that we ought to have a earned-income tax credit. 
That's taxpayer jargon for giving a tax break to working class people 
with children, particularly who would be especially hard hit by the 
energy tax, and that affects people with incomes up to about $29,000 a 
year, where they'll get an offset on their income tax to make up for the 
energy tax. And there ought to be some incentives for investment in the 
American economy, either mine or some others. And we emphasize small 
business, and we emphasize new plant and equipment for big business. And 
those things are all going to be in the ultimate tax package. So I feel 
good about it. I think that, you know, the changes that are being made 
basically, at least so far the ones that have been discussed with me, 
don't in any way undermine the fundamental principles of the tax program 
and the spending cut program I laid out.

Bosnia

    Mr. Imus. There is a dramatic picture of you and an agonizing Lyndon 
Johnson on the cover of the current issue of Time magazine asking the 
question if Bosnia is going to be your Vietnam. One, let me ask you, do 
you think it has that potential? And two, what is the United States 
policy in Bosnia?
    The President. Well, let me answer the first question. There are 
similarities to Vietnam in the sense that there is a civil war and there 
is a national dividing line, that is, between Bosnia and Serbia, which 
doesn't fully coincide with the ethnic cohesion of the Serbs in Bosnia 
and Serbia; same thing on the other end of the country with Croatia and 
Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a very complicated thing. Those folks have been 
fighting with each other for a long time.
    There are also some differences, however. You have the continuation 
of a principle of ethnic cleansing that you didn't have in Vietnam, 
people getting killed or raped just because of their religion, just 
because they're Muslims and because of their historic conflict in that 
area. And you have a United Nations resolution which has, in effect, 
given a military victory to the Serbians. That is, the U.N. imposed an 
arms embargo which had the effect of opening up for the Serbs the entire 
arms cache of the Yugoslav Army and denying weapons to the Bosnian 
Muslims and to a lesser extent, the Croatians. So the international 
community has been involved. The third and the big difference from the 
point of view of the average American is, I've made it very clear that 
the United States, unlike Vietnam, is not about to act alone. It should 
not act alone. This is a European issue. It's an issue for the world 
community to address.
    We have worked very carefully with our allies to make the sanctions 
tougher and to keep the pressure on to try to do two things: to try to 
contain the conflict and to try to put an end to the slaughter. And our 
policy is that it is in the United States national interest to keep this 
conflict from spilling over into a lot of other countries which could 
drag the United States into something with NATO that we don't want and 
to do everything we can with our allies to stop the slaughter and to end 
the fighting. And that's our policy. Our policy is not to do what we did 
in Vietnam, which was to get in and fight with one side in a civil war 
to assure

[[Page 632]]

a military victory. That is not what we're involved in. We are trying to 
promote a settlement, and we have signed on to a plan--two of the three 
political factions in that area have signed on to it, and we have 
committed ourselves to working with our allies. So the policy is very, 
very different than the policy the United States pursued in Vietnam.
    Mr. Imus. Any scenario, anyplace down the road--this may be a dumb 
question, but I ask a few--that you see ground troops somehow getting 
involved there? Does it ever reach that point? Say all the allies get on 
board and----
    The President. We believe that there could be a United Nations force 
which we could take part in that could help to enforce the peace 
agreement or keep the peace. We've been involved in peacekeeping 
operations of this kind in many places. But the United States is not 
going to unilaterally enter the conflict on the side of one of the 
combatants and do what we did in Vietnam. That is not our policy, and 
that's not what we're going to do.
    Mr. Imus. You know, I agreed with you when you said during the 
campaign that history has shown that you can't allow the mass 
extermination of people and just sit by and watch it happen, and that 
really is driving this, isn't it?
    The President. Yes. It is a difficult issue. Let me say that when we 
have people here who've been involved in many previous administrations 
that are involved in national security including, obviously, a lot of 
people who were involved in the two previous ones--everybody I talk to 
believes that this is the toughest foreign policy problem our country 
has faced in a long time. And I'm trying to proceed in a very deliberate 
way to try to make sure there isn't a Vietnam problem here. But also to 
try to make sure that the United States keeps pushing to save lives and 
to confine the conflict. I don't think we can just turn away from this. 
Just because we don't want to make the mistake we did in Vietnam doesn't 
mean we shouldn't be doing anything. There are things that we can do, 
and we're trying to do more to try to push this thing toward a 
settlement.
    I also think that in terms of our clear self-interest, in addition 
to the humanitarian issue, if we can stop this conflict from spreading, 
and it has powder-keg potential, that that is clearly in our interest.

Media Criticism and President's Agenda

    Mr. Imus. You know what I've always wondered, Mr. President, you 
read the editorials in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the 
Wall Street Journal and you read these op-ed pieces--do you ever read 
one of those and then call Al and say, ``Man, that's a good idea. Why 
don't we do that?''
    The President. Often. [Laughter] Actually, I do.
    Mr. Imus. Do you?
    The President. Absolutely, I do. I also often read editorials that 
question our policies or op-ed pieces that question our policy, and I 
send it to the Vice President and to other people in the administration, 
and I say, ``If we don't have an answer to this we shouldn't go on. This 
is the best case against our policy. What's our answer to it?'' I think 
that's important.
    You know I don't mind, frankly, I don't mind criticism. In fact, I 
welcome it when it's rooted in ideas, when people are questioning 
whether a policy is right or wrong. But what I try to do is to have a 
new spirit of possibility here. I want a sense that, you know, we stop 
all this sort of political give-and-take and real harsh partisanship and 
calculating personal advantage and just talk about the ideas and the 
issues at stake and try to keep our focus on what's best for the 
American people. We're really in a new and unchartered time in many 
ways. It's very exciting. There are all kinds of economic opportunities 
out there for the United States, but there are also a lot of very, very 
stiff challenges that we have to meet. And I think in order to do the 
right thing, we're going to have to keep our minds open and our ears 
open and be willing to experiment and to try some things until we find a 
course that will clearly work, that helps to support the security of the 
American people.
    Mr. Imus. You know, I was talking at the beginning of our 
conversation, Mr. President--I was actually just kidding about this 
focus issue--but you know, what looked great was when you and Hillary 
went up to Capitol Hill and when you had that first town meeting in 
Michigan, and now you are--in Cleveland and Chicago and this telephone 
call. You know, it began to look for a time--I remember I was watching 
Willie Nelson and Neil Young out there at Farm Aid, and they were 
talking about you and Al Gore, and they said, ``What change?''

[[Page 633]]

And I think, you know, from the outside looking in, it's like we had 8 
years of watching old Reagan get on and off that helicopter, and we 
wanted to see you do stuff like this. And I think this is great, and I 
can't tell you how much I appreciate you calling.
    But I would say this: Let's not wait until these approval ratings 
get down to single digits before you call me again, because----
    The President. Let me tell you, one of the things I did, though, and 
you may think this is a mistake, but I mean--put yourself in my 
position. Partly, when I get out of focus with the people is when I'm 
not communicating directly with them, when I'm just answering other 
people's questions, and I'm at the mercy of whatever is on the evening 
news.
    But I came to this city with a determination to work with the 
Congress and to try to get some things done. In the first 3 months, I 
thought that, having been out across the country for the last year and a 
half, I should spend a great deal of time in intense efforts to develop 
the economic package, a health care package, and to get the basis of our 
national security and foreign policy down so that I would have a 
framework to proceed in. Most of the time I've been here, I've spent on 
the economy and on health care. In other words, my time has been sharply 
focused. I don't think the American people know that because I haven't 
been out here talking to you and people like you out there.
    But there's been a big difference between the way I've spent my time 
in the efforts of the administration and, I think, what the perception 
is. That's my fault, in a way, and I'm going to get out and correct it. 
But I had to spend a couple of months, I think, just going to work in 
the office, getting the details down, working through the procedures, 
making sure I understood how the thing worked. And now I can go back on 
the road and do the things that I think are important to connect the 
American people to their Government. And I recognize that that's my 
responsibility. Only the President can do that, and if I don't do it, it 
won't be done.

Sports and Physical Fitness

    Mr. Imus. I know, Mr. President, you're coming to New York this 
afternoon. Do you want to go to the Knicks game tonight, or--
[laughter]----
    The President. You're betraying you're all-sports radio. I know 
you're trying to convince your listeners that you know something about 
this. You're trying to get your approval ratings up on sports. I know 
that.
    Actually, I'd like to do it. But I'm going to speak at the Cooper 
Union this afternoon. And then I'm going to a Democratic Party event 
tonight. So I can't go to the ballgame, although I'd like to. I'm a big 
baseball fan, as you know.
    Mr. Imus. Well, of course, this would be basketball, Mr. President.
    The President. Oh, did you say Knicks? I thought you said Mets.
    Mr. Imus. No, nobody wants to see the Mets.
    The President. Are you kidding? Let me tell you something. My wife 
grew up in Chicago as a Cubs fan. Once you get for a baseball team, you 
can't quit it just because it doesn't win.
    Mr. Imus. Well----
    The President. I thought you said Mets. No, I'd love to go to the 
Knicks game, but I'm otherwise occupied. I watched two of those games 
last night on television. Do you think the American people would think 
less of me if they thought I stayed up late and watched basketball?
    Mr. Imus. No, I don't think that; in fact, I read you've been 
watching the Houston Rockets and the Clippers.
    You know, I'll let you go here. Just one final observation that I 
thought was kind of funny. Did you see any clips of Strom Thurmond 
interviewing one of those gay sailors? Here he is--I don't know if you 
saw this or not, but he was saying, ``Have you seen a psychiatrist?''--
[laughter]--and I thought, man, if I could be 90 years old and have it 
that together, there really isn't any other goal. Let's hope the same 
happens for you, Mr. President.
    The President. Since we're on an all-sports network, let me give 
Senator Thurmond a plug. He still works out for 50 minutes a day, and 
that's why he's still out there doing it. So if everybody listening to 
us will start spending 50 minutes a day taking care of themselves, a lot 
of them will be 90, 91 and still plugging away like Strom.
    Mr. Imus. May I ask you a question about your jogging?
    The President. Sure.
    Mr. Imus. What are your mile splits? We have an estimate here that's 
right around 12 minutes.

[[Page 634]]

    The President. No. When I ran with the Boston Marathon runners, we 
ran a 5k, and this is allergy time for me so I have to start out slow. 
We ran the first mile in 9 minutes, the second mile in 8 minutes, and 
the third mile in 7 minutes.
    Mr. Imus.  Man, that's a lot faster than I do it.
    The President. When I run here in town, I average probably about an 
8.5 minute mile. But I can run it faster. On Valentine's Day the Vice 
President and I did 2.5 miles in a Heart Association run at about 7.5 
minutes a mile.
    Mr. Imus. That's terrific. Mr. President, thank you very much. 
Thanks for coming on, and good luck.
    The President. Thanks. Talk to you again, I hope.

Note: The telephone interview began at 7:38 a.m. The President spoke 
from the Oval Office at the White House.