    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [October 4, 1993]
    [Pages 1667-1676]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the AFL-CIO Convention in San Francisco, California
    October 4, 1993

        Thank you very much. President Kirkland, distinguished platform
    guests, and to the men and women of the American labor movement, let me
    tell you first I am glad to be here. I feel like I'm home, and I hope
    you feel like you have a home in Washington.
        For most of the 20th century the union movement in America has
    represented the effort to make sure that people who worked hard and
    played by the rules were treated fairly, had a chance to become middle
    class citizens, raise middle class kids, and give their children a
    chance to have a better life than they did. You have worked for that.
    You have done that.
        For too long, in the face of deep and profound problems engulfing
    all the world's advanced nations, you have been subjected to a political
    climate in which you were asked to bear the blame for forces you did not
    create, many times when you were trying to make the situation better. I
    became President in part because I wanted a new partnership for the
    labor movement in America.
        Before I get into the remarks that I came here to make about all of
    our challenges at home and the economic challenges facing us, I have to
    make a few remarks this morning about developments in the world in the
    last 48 hours.
        The labor movement has been active, particularly in the last few
    years with the end of the cold war, in the effort to promote democracy
    abroad, to guarantee the right of people freely to join their own
    unions, and to work for freedom within their own countries. In that
    context most of you, I know, have strongly supported

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    and looked with great favor on the movement toward democracy in Russia.
        The United States continues to stand firm in its support of
    President Yeltsin because he is Russia's democratically elected leader.
    We very much regret the loss of life in Moscow, but it is clear that the
    opposition forces started the conflict and that President Yeltsin had no
    other alternative than to try to restore order. It appears as of this
    moment that that has been done. I have as of this moment absolutely no
    reason to doubt the personal commitment that Boris Yeltsin made to let
    the Russian people decide their own future, to secure a new Constitution
    with democratic values and democratic processes, to have a new
    legislative branch elected with democratic elections, and to subject
    himself, yet again, to a democratic vote of the people. That is all that
    we can ask.
        I think also, most of you know that in a military action yesterday,
    the United States sustained the loss of some young American soldiers in
    Somalia. I deeply regret the loss of their lives. They are working to
    ensure that anarchy and starvation do not return to a nation in which
    over 300,000 people have lost their lives, many of them children, before
    the United States led the U.N. mission there, starting late last year. I
    want to offer my profound condolences to the families of the United
    States Army personnel who died there. They were acting in the best
    spirit of America.
        As you know, the United States has long had plans to withdraw from
    Somalia and leave it to others in the United Nations to pursue the
    common objectives. I urged the United Nations and the Secretary-General
    in my speech at the United Nations a few days ago to start a political
    process so that the country could be turned back over to Somalis who
    would not permit the kind of horrible bloodshed and devastation to
    reoccur. And I hope and pray that that will happen. In the meanwhile,
    you may be sure that we will do whatever is necessary to protect our own
    forces in Somalia and to complete our mission there.
        From the struggle against communism in Eastern Europe to the
    struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the union movement in
    America has always answered the challenges of our time. It must be a
    source of great pride to you to see these elections unfold, to see the
    remarkable movement toward a genuine multiracial society within a
    democratic framework in South Africa. It must, likewise, be a source of
    continuing frustration to you to see that even as the ideas and the
    values that you have espoused now for decades are being embraced around
    the world, here in our country and in virtually every other wealthy
    country in the world, middle class workers are under assault from global
    economic forces that seem beyond the reach of virtually any government
    policy.
        We now know that every wealthy country in the world is having
    trouble creating jobs. We now know that in the last several years,
    inequality of income got worse in every major country. We know that we
    had more growing inequality in America than anyplace else because we
    actually embraced it. I mean, the whole idea of trickle-down economics
    was to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, raise taxes on the middle
    class, let the deficit balloon, and hope that the investment from the
    wealthy would somehow expand opportunity to everybody else.
        We know that didn't work, and it made the situation worse. It left
    us with a $4 trillion debt. It left us with a deficit of over $300
    billion a year. It left us with a legacy of weakened opportunities for
    workers in the workplace, too little investment, a paralyzed budget, and
    no strategy to compete and win in the global economy, and more
    inequality in America than any of the other wealthy countries. But we
    also know that the same problems we have are now being found in Germany,
    in Japan, in all of Europe, in the other advanced nations.
        So we have to face the honest fact that we are facing unprecedented
    challenges in our own midst to the very way of life that the labor
    movement has fought so hard to guarantee for others around the world for
    decades. And therefore, it is important that we think through these
    issues, that we take positions on them, that we agree and that we
    disagree in the spirit of honest searching for what the real nature of
    this world is we're living in and where we are going.
        The most important thing to me today is that you know that this
    administration shares your values and your hopes and your dreams and the
    interest of your children, and that together--[applause]--and that I
    believe together we can work our way through this very difficult and
    challenging time, recognizing that no one fully understands the
    dimensions of the age in which we live and exactly how we are going to
    recreate opportunity for all Americans who are willing to do what it
    takes to be worthy

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    of it.
        The labor movement, historically, has always been on the cutting
    edge of change and the drive to empower workers and give them more
    dignity on the job and in their lives. Almost a half a century ago, at
    the end of World War II, labor helped to change America and the world.
    At home and abroad, labor helped to create a generation of prosperity
    and to create the broad middle class that we all cherish so much today.
        Now we have to do it again. We're at a time of change that I am
    convinced is as dramatic as the dawning of the Industrial Age. We can no
    longer tell our sons and daughters--we know this now--that they will
    enter a job at the age of 18 or 21, enjoy secure paychecks and health
    benefits and retirement benefits for the rest of their working lives and
    retire from the same job with the same company at the age of 65 or 62.
        Our changing economy tells us now that the average 18-year-old will
    change work seven times in a lifetime even if they stay with the same
    company and certainly if they change; that when people lose their jobs
    now, they really aren't on unemployment, they're looking for
    reemployment; that most unemployment today is not like it used to be:
    When people got unemployed for decades, it was because there was a
    temporary downturn in the economy, and when the economy turned up again,
    most people who were unemployed were hired back by their old employer.
    Today, most people who are unemployed eventually get hired back usually
    by a different employer for a different job and unless we are very good
    at what we do for them, often at lower wages and less benefits. So it is
    clear that what we need is not an unemployment system but a reemployment
    system in recognition of the way the world works today.
        We know, too, that most American working people are working harder
    than they ever have in their lives; that the average work week is longer
    today than it was 20 years ago; that real hourly wages adjusted for
    inflation peaked in 1973, and so most people are working harder for the
    same or lower real wages than they were making 20 years ago.
        We know that in the eighties there was a dramatic restructuring of
    manufacturing; that being followed in the nineties with a dramatic
    restructuring of the service industries. We know that for the last 12
    years, in every single year, the Fortune 500 companies lowered
    employment in the United States in six figures, and that in the years
    where we have gained jobs, they've come primarily from starting new
    businesses and from companies with between, say, 500 and 1,000 workers
    expanding, as the whole nature of this economy changes.
        We know that the cost of health care has increased so much that
    millions of American workers who kept their jobs never got a pay raise
    because all the increased money went to pay more for the same health
    care. We know that some of our most powerful industrial engines,
    especially in industries like autos and steel have shown breathtaking
    increases in productivity with deep changes in the work force supported
    by the labor movement, and still are having trouble competing in the
    world, in part, because their health costs may be as much as a dime on
    the dollar more than all of their competitors.
        We know, as I said at the beginning, that all the wealthy countries
    in the world are now having trouble creating jobs. If you look at
    France, for example, in the late 1980's, they actually had an economy
    that grew more rapidly than Germany's, and yet their unemployment rate
    never went below 9.5 percent.
        So what are we to do? It seems to me that we clearly have to make
    some changes in the way we look at the world and the way we approach the
    world. And in order to make those changes, we have to ask ourselves,
    what do we have to do to make the American people secure enough to make
    the changes? One of the things that has really bothered me in the late,
    latter stages of this era that we're moving out of is that so few people
    have been so little concerned about rampant insecurity among ordinary
    American middle class citizens. It is impossible for people in their
    personal lives to make necessary changes if they are wildly insecure.
        You think about that in your own life. You think about a personal
    challenge you faced, a challenge your family has faced. The same thing
    is true in the workplace. The same thing is true of a community. The
    same thing is true of a team. The same thing is true of our country. We
    have to struggle to redefine a new balance between security and change
    in this country because if we're not secure, we won't change, and if we
    don't change, we'll get more insecure, because the circumstances of the
    world will continue to grind us down.

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        And that's what makes this such a difficult time, because we have to
    rethink so many things at once. I ran for President because I was tired
    of 20 years of declining living standards, of 12 years of trickle-down
    economics and antiworker policies, and rhetoric that blamed people who
    are working harder for the problems that others did not respond to, and
    because I believe that we needed a new partnership in America, a new
    sense of community, not just business and labor and government but also
    people without regard to their color or their region or anything else. I
    thought we didn't have anybody to waste, and it looks to me like we were
    wasting a lot of people and that we needed to put together. I thought
    the country was going in the wrong direction, and we should turn it
    around. But I was then and am now under no illusions that we could do it
    overnight or that I could do it, unless we did it together.
        The beginning of the security necessary to change, I think, is in
    having a Government that is plainly on the side of working Americans. I
    believe that any of your leaders who work with this administration will
    tell you that we are replacing a Government that for years worked labor
    over, with a Government that works with labor. We have a Secretary of
    Labor in Bob Reich who understands that, at a time when money and
    management can travel across the globe in a microsecond, our prosperity
    depends more than anything else on the skills and the strengths of our
    working people. No one can take that away from us. And our people are
    still our most important asset, even more than they were 20 years ago.
        We have nominated a Chair of the National Labor Relations Board in
    Bill Gould, and a new member, Peggy Browning, who believe in collective
    bargaining. We have a Director of the Occupational Safety and Health
    Administration in Joseph Dear who comes from the labor movement and
    believes that workers should be protected in the workplace. We have two
    people in executive positions in the Labor Department in Joyce Miller
    and Jack Otero who were on your executive council. We have two people in
    the SEIU in executive positions in Karen Nussbaum and Jerry Polas who
    are leading us to make progress.
        This administration rescinded President Reagan's order banning all
    reemployment of PATCO workers forever. And we rescinded President Bush's
    orders with regard to Government-funded contracting and one-sided
    information given to workers in the workplace. And this week I will sign
    the Hatch Act Reform Act to give Government employees political rights
    they have been denied for too long.
        One week ago yesterday, on a Sunday morning, I came in from my early
    morning run, and I turned to my right as I walked into the White House,
    and I saw a family standing there, a father, a mother, and three
    daughters, one of whom was in a wheelchair. And the person who was with
    them who worked for me said, ``Mr. President, this little girl has got
    terminal cancer, and she was asked by the Make-A-Wish Foundation what
    she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to come to the White House and
    visit you. So we're giving her a special tour.''
        So I went over, and I shook hands with them and apologized for my
    condition and told them I'd get cleaned up and come back and we'd take a
    picture. And a few minutes later I showed up looking more like my job,
    and I visited with this wonderful child, desperately ill, for a while.
    And then I talked to her sisters, and then I talked to her mother, and I
    talked to her father. And as I turned around to go off, the father
    grabbed me by the arm and he said, he said, ``Let me tell you something.
    If you ever get to wondering whether it makes a difference who's the
    President,'' he said, ``look at my child. She's probably not going to
    make it, and the weeks I've spent with her have been the most precious
    time of my life. And if you hadn't been elected, we wouldn't have had a
    family and medical leave law that made it possible for me to be with my
    child in this time.''
        Now, I believe, in short, that it ought to be possible to be a good
    parent and a good worker. I believe that it ought to be possible for
    people to make their own judgments about whether they want to be
    organized at work or not and how they're going to--[inaudible]. And I
    believe if we're really going to preserve the American workplace as a
    model of global productivity, we have to let people who know how to do
    their jobs better than other people do have more empowerment to do those
    jobs and to make those changes in the workplace.
        That's why, as we work on the Vice President's reinventing
    Government initiative, we've worked so closely with Federal employees
    and their unions. When the Vice President spoke with business leaders
    and workers who had changed their companies, they all said the same

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    thing: You've got to have the workers; you have to let them do it, tell
    you how to do it, tell you how to make the companies more productive.
        Now, that's why yesterday I signed an Executive order--on Friday--
    creating a National Partnership Council. For the next several months the
    leaders of Federal employee unions, including John Sturdivant, the
    president of the American Federation of Government Employees, who is
    here today, will work with the leaders of our administration to make our
    Government more effective, cost less, and more importantly, to make the
    jobs of the rank and file Federal employees more interesting, more
    stimulating, more customer-oriented, by doing things that they have been
    telling us they should be able to do but that the system has not
    permitted them to do in the past. I applaud John and the other people in
    the unions representing Federal employees for what they have done. This
    is an unprecedented partnership that I think will benefit every
    American.
        We want to make worker empowerment and labor-management cooperation
    a way of life in this country, from the factory floor to the board room.
    We've created a commission on the future of labor and management
    relations, with leaders from labor, business, and the academy, chaired
    by former Labor Secretary John Dunlap. And I've asked Secretary Reich to
    create a commission to study and improve relationships in government
    workplaces at every level, at the State and county and local level, as
    well as at the Federal level.
        I believe this is something that a person like Bob Reich is uniquely
    situated to do. And it's the kind of thing that we ought to be promoting
    because we have to use this opportunity we have to try to take what has
    worked for workers and their businesses and spread it around the
    country.
        For the last 12 years we've had a lot of finger-pointing and blame-
    placing, and we've got these stirring examples of success that we could
    be trying to replicate. That's what we ought to be doing, taking what
    works. And it always is a workplace in which workers have more say. And
    we're going to do what we can to get that done.
        Now, on the security issue, let me just mention some other things.
    In addition to the family leave act, the budget bill which passed by
    such a landslide in the Congress contained what may well be the most
    important piece of economic reform for working people in 20 years, by
    expanding the earned-income tax credit so that you can say to people, if
    you work 40 hours a week and you have children in your home, you will
    not be poor. We are bringing new hope and new dignity into the lives of
    15 million working families that make $27,000 a year or less. They'll no
    longer be taxed into poverty. There won't be a Government program to try
    to lift them out of poverty. Their own efforts will lift them out of
    poverty because the tax system will be changed to reward them. And there
    will never again be an incentive for people to be on welfare instead of
    work because the tax system will say, if you're willing to go to work
    and work 40 hours a week, no matter how tough it is, we will lift you
    out of poverty. That is the kind of pro-work, pro-family policy this
    country ought to have.
        Something else that was in that bill that most Americans don't even
    know about yet that will benefit many, many of you in this room and the
    people you represent is a dramatic reform of the student loan system
    that will eliminate waste, lower the interest rates on student loans,
    make the repayment terms easier so that young people can repay their
    loans no matter how much they borrow as a percentage of their income,
    limited so they can repay it. Even though we'll have tougher repayment
    terms, they'll be able to do it. We'll collect the money, but people
    will be able to borrow money and pay it back at lower interest rates, at
    better repayment terms. And therefore, no one will ever be denied access
    to a college education because of the cost.
        When you put that with our Goals 2000 program, the education reform
    program for the public schools, and the work that the Education
    Secretary Dick Riley is doing with Secretary Reich to redo the worker
    training programs in the country, you have a commitment to raise
    standards in education and open opportunities to our young people.
        We need higher standards in our public schools. Al Shanker has long
    been a voice for that. He now has allies in the NEA and other places in
    the country who are saying, ``Let's have national standards and evaluate
    what our kids are learning and how our schools are doing.''
        I believe we need to give our young people more choices within the
    public school system, and I have advocated letting States try a lot

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    of things within districts. Let kids choose which schools they attend.
    Let school districts decide how they want to set up and organize
    schools. I think that a lot of changes need to be made in a lot of
    school districts. But let me say that we don't want to throw out the
    baby with the bath water. There are also a lot of school districts that
    are doing a great job under difficult circumstances. There are a lot of
    schools within school districts that are performing well under difficult
    circumstances.
        And if we've learned anything, we've learned that the best way to
    increase the quality of education is to find better principals, get
    better leaders among the teachers, let them have more say over how
    school is run, and evaluate them based on their results rather than
    telling them how to do every last jot and tittle of their job every day.
        We have learned these things--and if I might, since we're in
    California, say a special word--therefore, I believe that having worked
    for 12 years for higher standards, more choices and greater changes in
    public education, I'm in a little bit of a position to say that if I
    were a citizen of the State of California, I would not vote for
    Proposition 174, the private voucher initiative.
        Now, and let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. First of all,
    keep in mind a lot of the schools out here are doing a good job. I can
    say this, you know, I never was part of the California education system.
    I have studied this system out here for more than a decade. They have
    undertaken a lot of very impressive reforms and many of their schools
    are doing a good job. I was interviewed last night by two people from a
    newspaper in Sacramento, and one of them just volunteered that he had
    two children in the public schools there, and they were getting a
    terrific education.
        This bill would start by taking $1.3 billion right off the top to
    send a check to people who already have their kids in private schools,
    and who didn't need any Government money to do it, and taking it right
    off the top away from a school system that doesn't have enough money to
    educate the kids it's got in it in the first place.
        Second thing it would do is to impose no real standards on the
    quality of the programs which could be funded: who could set up a
    school; what standards they'd have to meet; what tests the kids would
    have to pass. Just take your voucher, and who cares whether a private
    school is a legitimate school or not. That is a significant issue. And
    all you have to do is to work in this field for a few years to
    understand that that is a significant issue.
        Wouldn't it be ironic that at the very moment we're finally trying
    to find a way to measure the performance and raise the standards of the
    public schools, we turn around and start sending tax money to private
    schools that didn't have to meet any standards at all. When we're trying
    to get one part of our business, we're going to make the other part
    worse.
        And finally, let me just say, I have always supported the notion
    that American schools ought to have competition and the fact that we
    have a vibrant tradition of pluralistic education and private schools
    and religious private schools was a good thing, not a bad thing for
    America. But all the years when I grew up, and all the times I saw that,
    and for a couple years of my life when I was a little boy, when I went
    to a Catholic school, when my folks moved from one place to another, and
    we lived way out in the country and didn't know much about the schools
    in the new area where we were, no one ever thought that the church would
    want any money from the taxpayers to run their schools. In fact, they
    said just the opposite, ``We don't want to be involved in that.'' That's
    what the First Amendment is all about.
        So I think we have to really think through--I have spent 12 years
    before I became President overwhelmingly obsessed with reform of the
    public school system, wanting more choices in the system, wanting more
    accountability, wanting more flexibility about how schools were
    organized and established and operated. But I can tell you that this is
    not the way to get it done, and the people will regret this if they pass
    it. I hope the people of California don't do that.
        Now, you can educate people all you want--and I wanted to say a
    little more about that. The Labor Secretary and I are working on trying
    to take all these 150 different Government training programs and give
    local communities and States the power to consolidate them, working with
    you, and just fund the things that work on a State-by-State basis, and
    to set up a system of lifetime education and training.
        I don't know how many of you saw the television program I did last
    night in California, but one man, looked to be in his early fifties,
    saying, ``We need a training program that gives

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    my company some incentives to retrain me, not just people who are 25,
    but people who are 55.'' And we are trying to do that. We're trying to
    set up a lifetime education and training program that starts when young
    people are in high school, so if they want to work and learn in high
    school they can work and learn in high school, so that we can have the
    kind of school-to-work transition that many of our competitors have for
    all those kids that won't go to college and won't get 4-year educations.
    We've got to do that.
        But if you do all that, you still have to have someplace for people
    to work. We can educate and train people all we want, but we have to be
    able to create more jobs. How are we going to do that at a time when the
    Government is not directly funding the defense jobs that have kept
    America's job base up for so long?
        Well, the first thing we've got to do is make up our mind we're
    going to be serious about defense conversion. Last year when I was a
    candidate for President--[applause]--last year when I was a candidate
    for President, I went all over the country--and I wasn't in the Congress
    and didn't have a vote--pleading with the Congress to pass the defense
    conversion bill. They did it, and the previous administration absolutely
    refused to spend $500 million to help convert from a defense to a high-
    tech domestic economy. So we have released the money. And we're going to
    try to get up to $20 billion spent on defense conversion and
    reinvestment in the jobs of tomorrow over the next 5 years. It is very
    important.
        We have got over 2,800 proposals in this country for technology-
    reinvestment initiatives, to match with what will soon be about a
    billion dollars in Government money that can create hundreds of
    thousands of jobs in America. People are brimming with ideas out there
    to create new jobs.
        I was at McClellan Air Force Base yesterday, and the airbase is
    working with people in the local community and the local universities
    and with the Federal defense labs. They have made new electric cars.
    They have made new manufacturing component parts to try to come up with
    economical ways to do it and allow those parts to be made in America.
    And they are targeting things that are now made overseas and imported
    here. That's the sort of thing that we can use our high-tech defense
    base to do, and we should be doing it. It's going to make for more jobs
    for America.
        They have developed a prototype car that gets 80 miles per gallon at
    55 miles per hour on the highway, goes to 60 miles per hour in 12
    seconds, has a maximum speed of 100 miles an hour. That's not bad. If we
    can just figure out how people can afford it, we can put people to work
    making them. But it's a good beginning.
        We announced last week that ground-breaking project with the UAW and
    Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors are working with the defense labs and
    all the Government labs on a project to triple the average mileage of
    American autos within the next 10 years. If they do that, that will
    create untold numbers of new jobs here, and we'll be selling cars to
    people overseas who want that instead of the reverse.
        And by the way, I want to compliment the UAW. You know, this year we
    have regained a lot of our market share in America. People are buying
    more American cars in America, and we should compliment them for it.
        So we have to find ways to create these new jobs. Now, I want to
    talk a little about health care, but before I do, I want to mention
    something we disagree on in the context of the trade issue. And listen
    to this. Since 1986, a significant portion of America's net new jobs
    have come from trade growth. That's something we can all find from the
    figures. In California, where we now are, a lot of that has come from
    Asia, which is the fastest growing part of the world. Asia's growing
    faster than any other part of the world; Latin America the second
    fastest growing part of the world. Everybody knows that is true.
        Now, that's why, when I went to Tokyo and met with the leaders of
    the G-7, the seven big industrial countries, we made an agreement that
    we should dramatically reduce tariffs on manufactured products around
    the world in ways that all analysts agree would generate a lot of new
    manufacturing jobs here in America. There was virtually no dispute about
    that, because we were largely in competition with other countries that
    were paying the same or higher wages with the same or better benefits,
    with high-tech and other manufacturing products that we wanted to sell
    everywhere. And we're working like crazy to get that done between now
    and the end of the year.
        What is the difference between that and the trade agreement with
    Mexico? And let's talk about that just a minute, because it's very
    important, not so you'll agree with me but so you

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    will know what I want you to know, which is that I would never knowingly
    do anything to cost an American a job. That's not the business I'm in.
        I was a Governor during the last 12 years, when the maquilladora
    system was in place. What did it do? It created a border zone on the
    other side of the border in Mexico in which people were free to set up
    plants, operate them by the standards that were enforced there--or not
    enforced, as the case may be--on labor and environmental issues, and
    then send their products back into this country, produced at much lower
    labor costs with no tariffs. That was the system set up to try to foster
    growth there.
        But in the 1980's, because of all the economic problems we had, and
    because of the climate that was promoted in this country that the most
    important thing you could do was slash your labor costs and who cared
    about your working people anyway, you had the movement of hundreds of
    plants down there. And you didn't like it worth a flip. And you were
    right to be upset about what happened.
        Now, I was a Governor of a State that lost plants to Mexico. And my
    State was so small that when people lost their jobs I was likely to know
    who they were. This was a big deal to me. I'm also proud of the fact we
    got one of them to come back before I left office. I'm proud of that,
    too. But I understand this.
        Now, that is the system we have. You also saw this system,
    ironically, accelerating illegal immigration. Why? For the same reason
    that a lot of the Chinese boat people were coming over here after they
    moved to the coastal towns in China, got a job where they made a little
    more money than they did before, but didn't much like their life, but
    they got enough money to try to come here. That's what was happening
    along the maquilladora area. A lot of people would come up there, work
    for a while, then come on up here.
        So I understand what the American working people don't like about
    the present system. The real issue: Will the trade agreement make it
    worse or better? You think it will make it worse. I think it will make
    it better. And I'll tell you, I think you're entitled to know why I
    think that. Because there is no question that, no matter what you think
    about the adequacy of the side agreements, they will raise the cost of
    labor and environmental investments above the point where they are now.
    There is no question that the agreement lowers domestic content
    requirements in Mexico, so that we'll go from selling say 1,000 to
    50,000 or 60,000 American cars down there next year. There's no question
    that their tariffs are 2\1/2\ times higher than ours. And there's no
    question that we have a trade surplus there, as compared with a $49
    billion trade deficit with Japan, an $18 billion trade deficit with
    China, a $9 billion trade deficit with Taiwan.
        We've got a trade problem, all right. It is that the Asian economies
    are not as open to us as we are to them. That's our huge trade problem.
    And we're going to have to do better there, because that's where a lot
    of the money is. So my reasoning is that if their tariffs are higher
    than ours and their costs go up faster than they're otherwise going to
    go up, and they're already buying $350-a-person worth of American goods,
    second only to Canada--replaced Japan as the number two purchaser of
    manufacturing products this year--and we got a $5.8 billion trade
    surplus, it will get better, not worse.
        Is it a perfect agreement? No. But I don't want to make the perfect
    the enemy of the better. I think it is better than the present.
        There are two other points I want to make. If the deal is not made
    with the United States, and instead it's made with Germany or Japan, we
    could lose access to an 80-million person market and cost ourselves more
    jobs. And if the deal is made, it could lead to further similar
    agreements with the emerging market economies of Latin America. And no
    one believes that anybody's going to invest in Argentina, for example,
    to export back to the American market. So all barrier dropping the
    further you get away from here because of transportation costs will lead
    to more jobs in America through greater trade.
        So that's why I think it makes it better, not worse. You're entitled
    to know that. I don't ask you to agree, but I ask you to make the same
    arguments inside your own mind, because I would never knowingly do
    anything to cost America jobs. I'm trying to create jobs in this
    country.
        Now, I'll tell you what I really think. What I really believe is
    that this is become the symbol of the legitimate grievances of the
    American working people about the way they've been worked over the last
    12 years. That's what I think. And I think those grievances are
    legitimate. And I think that people are so insecure

    [[Page 1675]]

    in their jobs, they're so uncertain that the people they work for really
    care about them, they're so uncertain about what their kids are looking
    at in the future, that people are reluctant to take any risks for
    change.
        And so let me close with what I started with. I have got to lay a
    foundation of personal security for the working people of this country
    and their families in order to succeed as your President, and you have
    to help me do it. We have got to reform the job training system of this
    country, to make it a reemployment system, not an unemployment system,
    and to give it to kids starting when they're in high school.
        We have got to have an investment strategy that will create jobs
    here. And that's why we removed all those export controls that were cold
    war relics on computers and supercomputers and telecommunications
    equipment, opening just this month $37 billion worth of American
    products to exports. That is important.
        That's why I want to pass a crime bill to put 50,000 more police
    officers on the street, pass the Brady bill and take those automatic
    weapons out of the hands of the teenagers that are vandalizing and
    brutalizing our children in this country. And, my fellow Americans, that
    is why we have got to pass a comprehensive health care bill to provide
    security to all Americans. And we've got to do it now.
        How many Americans do you know who lost their health insurance
    because they lost their jobs? Who never got a pay increase because of
    the rising cost of their health care? Who can never change jobs because
    they have a sick child? Millions of them. How many companies are
    represented in this room who could be selling more everywhere across the
    board, more abroad and more at home, if their health care costs were no
    greater than their competitors around the world?
        Let's face it folks, we're spending over 14 percent of our income on
    health care. Canada's at 10. Germany and Japan are under nine. The
    Germans went up toward 9 percent of their income on health care, they
    had a national outbreak of hysteria about how they were losing control
    of their health care system. And yet they all cover everybody and no one
    loses their health insurance. And when I say we can do that and we can
    do it without a broad-based tax increase, people look at me like I have
    slipped a gear. [Laughter]
        But I have spent over 3 years studying this system. And the First
    Lady and her task force have mobilized thousands of experts in the most
    intense effort to examine social reform in my lifetime. And they have
    recommended that we adopt a system which, first of all, builds on the
    system that you enjoy: an employer-based system where the employer
    contributes and, in some cases, the employee does and some not; a system
    that is focused on keeping what is good about American health care--
    doctors, and nurses, and medical research and technology--and fixing
    what is wrong--not covering everybody, kicking them off after they have
    a serious illness, not letting people move their jobs, having some
    people in such tiny groups of insurance that 40 percent of their premium
    goes to profit and administrative costs, and spending a dime on the
    dollar, a dime on every dollar in a $90 billion system goes to paperwork
    that wouldn't go in any other system in the world--$90 billion a year on
    that alone. Never mind the fraud and the abuse, and the incentives in
    this system to churn it, to perform unnecessary procedures just because
    the more you do the more you earn.
        We can do better than that. So I want to just say, this system will
    be a good one. Everybody will get a health care security card like this.
    I feel like that guy in the ad; I'm supposed to say, ``Don't leave home
    without it,'' when I pull it out. [Laughter] But I want everybody to
    have a health care security card like this. Just like a Social Security
    card. And I want people to have their health care access whether they're
    working or unemployed, whether they work for a little business or a big
    one.
        Under the system we have proposed, if you've got a better deal now,
    you can keep it. If your employer pays 100 percent of benefits now, you
    can keep it. And we don't propose to tax any benefits that are above the
    minimum package. We told those who wanted that to give us 10 years
    before we put that provision in because within 10 years we'll have the
    minimum benefit package we start with, plus full dental benefits and
    full mental-health benefits and full preventive-care benefits, so it
    will be as good or better than any package now offered by any employer
    in America. Then, if somebody wants to buy something over and above
    that, we can talk about it. But we are not going to take anything away
    from you, you have.
        What we are going to do is two things for you if you have a good
    policy. We're going to

    [[Page 1676]]

    make it easier for your employer to keep these benefits you have now by
    slowing the rate of health care cost inflation, not by cutting health
    care spending, by slowing the rate of inflation in health care cost, and
    by removing the enormous burden of retiree benefits from our most
    productive companies. That will stabilize the health care benefits of
    working people and good plans.
        The other thing we're going to do for you is to limit what can be
    taken away from you which is worth something. So by saying that for
    people who don't have any insurance now, their employer will pay 80
    percent and the employees will pay 20, we are saying that no matter what
    happens to you, there's a limit to what can be taken away from you. So
    it will be easy for you to keep, easier for your employer to keep what
    you've got, and for you, and there will be a limit to what can be taken
    away.
        Is it fair to ask all those employers and employees who don't have
    any coverage now to contribute something? You bet it is. Why? Because
    your premium's higher than it otherwise would be because you're paying
    for them now.
        Can we do that without bankrupting small business? Of course, we
    can. We have a plan that gives a significant discount to smaller new
    businesses, and to smaller established businesses with lower wage
    employees that are operating on narrow margins.
        How are we going to pay for this? Two-thirds of it will be paid for
    by employers and employees contributing into the system that they get a
    free ride in now. One-sixth of it will be paid for with a cigarette tax
    and with a fee on very large companies who opt out of the system so they
    can pay for the cost of insuring the poor and the discounts to small
    business, and most important, for the health education and research that
    makes us all richer because we are going to pay for that and for
    expanded public health clinics. And one-sixth of it will come from
    slowing the rate of growth. When you hear people say, ``Oh, Clinton
    wants to cut Medicare and Medicaid, let me tell you something folks,
    we're cutting defense. We've held all domestic investment that's
    discretionary flat, which means if I want to spend more money on job
    training, on defense conversion, or on Head Start, I have to go cut
    something else dollar for dollar for the next 5 years. That's what we've
    done. We've cut defense as much as we possibly can right at the edge,
    held everything else flat.
        You know what Medicare and Medicaid are doing? They're going up at 3
    times the rate of inflation. What have I proposed to do? Let them go up
    at twice the rate of inflation. They say in Washington I can't do it. I
    don't talk to a single doctor who understands what we're going to do who
    doesn't think we can achieve those savings without hurting the quality
    of health care. If we can't get down to twice the rate of inflation from
    3 times the rate of inflation, there's something wrong somewhere.
        Now, that's how we propose to finance this. And I am pleading with
    you to help me pass this bill. No matter how good your health care plan
    is now, don't you believe for a minute you could never lose it, or at
    least get locked into your present job. And I am pleading with you to do
    it so that we can give to the rest of America, as well as to you and
    your families, the kind of personal security we have got to have to face
    the bewildering array of challenges that are out there before us.
        You know as well as I do that we are hurtling toward the 21st
    century into a world that none of us can fully perceive. But we have to
    imagine what we want it to be like. We want it to be a world in which
    the old rules that you grew up believing in apply in a new and more
    exciting age, in which, if you don't have job security, you at least
    have employment security; in which the Government puts the people first,
    and in which people have security in their homes, on their streets, in
    their education benefits, in their health care benefits so that they are
    capable of seizing these changes and making life richer and more
    different and more exciting than it has ever been.
        That is the great challenge before us. And if we don't adopt the
    health care reform, we won't get there. If we do, it will open the way
    to the most incredible unleashing of American energy that we have seen
    in more than a generation. Together we can do it, and I need your help.
        Thank you very much, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the San
    Francisco Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Albert Shanker,
    president, American Federation of Teachers. The Executive order of
    October 1 on labor-management partnerships is listed in Appendix D at
    the end of this volume.