[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

[[Page 762]]

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.