[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[June 26, 1993]
[Pages 936-938]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's Radio Address
June 26, 1993

    Good morning. I want to talk to you about the battle that I've been 
waging to fulfill the central commitment of my campaign for President: 
to make the economy grow, create jobs, and make our Government in 
Washington work again for all the American people.
    But first, let me take just a moment to congratulate the FBI, the 
New York Police Department, and the United States attorney in New York 
for breaking up the terrorist ring. The American people need to be 
reassured by the effectiveness and the determination of our Federal 
authorities at the national and at the local level to combat terrorism. 
And the people who would engage in these kinds of acts in this country 
need to know that we're going to be tough on anyone, anywhere in the 
world, who threatens or carries out terrorist actions against any 
American citizen.
    Back to the economy. For years, your Government in Washington 
refused to make the hard decisions necessary for America to compete and 
win in a global economy. Very often, political leaders told you exactly 
what you wanted to hear, but they didn't hear your real problems or 
honor your values. For more than a decade, the National Government 
borrowed and spent, raised taxes on the middle class, reduced the burden 
on the privileged, ran up the huge national debt we now have, and 
discouraged the creation of jobs by reducing our investment. Meanwhile, 
we ignored problems like health care and the cost and availability of 
that service and many others.
    Now, if we want to preserve the American dream, opportunity for 
those who work hard and play by the rules, we have to change. And change 
is hard. For the last 5 months, I've been fighting for a plan to create 
economic growth, one that reduces the deficit and brings down interest 
rates and increases investment in education, technology, and jobs. It 
requires deep spending cuts and some tax increases, asking by far the 
most from those who have the most to pay.
    Congress is rising to the occasion. Last month the House voted for a 
new direction, and just this week the Senate acted courageously in doing 
the same. In the next few weeks, representatives from both the House and 
the Senate will be meeting to reconcile the differences between the two 
bills. The negotiations will be difficult, but I'm going to work hard to 
keep the essential characteristics of the economic plan that I believe 
so deeply in: at least $500 billion of deficit reduction in a trust fund 
so that the

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cuts and the taxes can't go to anything else, cuts at least as big as 
tax increases, if not larger; over three-quarters of the tax increases 
coming from the top 6 percent of income earners; and real incentives to 
create new jobs and to encourage the working poor, to move people from 
welfare to work. We're finally getting our house in order, delivering 
the changes that America needs.
    This program, as I said, reduces the deficit by $500 billion, and 
you should know again that there are $250 billion of spending cuts in 
the program, over 100 cuts of over $100 million or more. The revenues 
that are raised are raised from those who can most afford to pay. This 
program protects the middle class, something that would not have 
happened in the 1980's when Washington reduced taxes on the wealthiest 
Americans and raised them on the middle class. For every $10 in deficit 
reduction in my plan, $5 comes from spending cuts, $5 comes from new 
revenues. Of those revenues, $3.75 comes from the wealthiest 6 percent 
of Americans, almost 80 percent from people with incomes above $200,000 
in the Senate plan; and $1.25 comes from the middle class.
    All this money is locked up now in a deficit reduction trust fund, 
which protects the money for the next 5 years for bringing down our 
deficit. The plan is bold and fair; it'll work. It's a sharp departure 
from the tax-and-spend policies of the seventies and the trickle-down 
economics of the eighties. It reduces the deficit; it invests and grows 
the economy. It's a new direction.
    Still, there are some in Washington who use the same old tired 
rhetoric they used in the eighties to attack this kind of direction, 
while they followed borrow-and-spend, trickle-down policies. Last week, 
the only other plan offered to the American people was offered by my 
Senate opponents. Well, the plan fell more than $100 billion short of 
the $500 billion deficit reduction bill. And most regrettably, it asks 
even more of the middle class, of veterans, and millions of elderly 
people just above the poverty line. It asks those people to do with less 
in terms of benefits, especially in health care, so that the top one 
percent of the American people whose incomes went up and whose taxes 
went down in the eighties could go scot-free in the battle to reduce the 
deficit, bring down interest rates, and get investment back in the 
American economy. The plan was defeated and for good reason. Instead of 
protecting one group at the expense of others, it's time that everyone 
made a contribution to help everyone by reducing spending fairly and by 
investing in the future wisely and by growing the economy.
    When the Senate and the House meet to write the final plan, we're 
all going to work together to set a new course for economic growth. When 
Congress finalizes the details, I'm going to work as hard as I can to 
insist that the principles I have talked about repeatedly for 5 months, 
and indeed during all of 1992 as well, will be followed in shaping this 
law. We need $500 billion in deficit reduction, in spending cuts, and in 
taxes which fall almost completely on the wealthiest Americans. We 
absolutely must put all the net savings from cuts and taxes in a deficit 
trust fund so the Government can't touch it over the next 5 years. We 
ought to keep the incentives in my plan for business growth, especially 
small businesses which create most of the new jobs in America. And 
finally, we ought to keep our commitment to the 18 percent of the 
American people who work but are still below the poverty line. Under our 
plan, if you work full-time and you're still below the poverty line, we 
will lift you out of poverty by not taxing you and keeping you in 
poverty.
    People who have the courage to change should be rewarded. I know the 
economy is still struggling, and most Americans are still working too 
hard for too little. But at least there are some very important economic 
trends that have begun to move in the right direction. The best news is, 
new jobs are finally coming back into the American economy. In the last 
5 months, as interest rates have dropped to 20-year lows in response to 
our efforts to bring the deficit down, more than 755,000 new jobs, 90 
percent of them in the private sector, have been created. In the first 4 
months of this year, more jobs in the construction industry were created 
than in any similar period in the last 9 years.
    These are good and hopeful trends. Our plan builds on this progress. 
I know we've got a long way to go. But as always, if we'll just act in a 
way that's consistent with our values and if we'll all pull together, we 
can move our country in the right direction, meet the challenges of the 
global economy, and create jobs and opportunity for all Americans again.
    Thanks for listening.

[[Page 938]]

Note: This address was recorded at 3:50 p.m. on June 25 in the Roosevelt 
Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on June 26.