    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [November 5, 1993]
    [Pages 1904-1906]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Establishing the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement Reform
    and an Exchange With Reporters
    November 5, 1993

        The President. First of all, I want to thank the leaders of Congress
    who are here and make a couple of comments, if I might. I am delighted
    that now both Houses have acted on the crime legislation. I congratulate
    the House and the Senate, and I look forward to working with them on
    getting the strongest possible crime bill out we can and hopefully
    meeting that goal that I have had for a long time now of putting another
    100,000 police officers on the street, which I am convinced will do more
    in less time to lower the crime rate than anything else. I also hope
    that we can now move forward to a debate in the Senate and the House on
    the Brady bill. I hope that it will pass before the Senate goes home and
    the House goes home.
        Finally, let me make one other preliminary comment. During all the
    debates on the budget, many of which were acrimonious and partisan,
    there was virtually 100 percent understanding on the part of every
    Member of Congress that, over the long run, our ability to bring our
    budget closer to balance and to free up money for needed investments
    required us to take a hard look at the entitlements part of our budget.
        The budget that we have just adopted has been very successful in
    many ways. It's helped to bring interest rates to historically low
    levels. We've got investment coming back into the country. We have more
    jobs coming back in. But we don't have the money to invest in new
    ventures that might be important to our national defense or to our
    economic growth and that's because we had to adopt steep defense cuts
    and a hard freeze on domestic spending for 5 years while the entitlement
    growth continued unchecked.
        As a result of that, today I am establishing by Executive order a
    bipartisan commission to look into the issue of entitlements of our
    Government, how it works and what's the impact on the budget long-term,
    as well as into the general tax structure of the Federal Government. I
    want to acknowledge and thank the

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    leaders, Republican and Democrat, of the House and the Senate for
    agreeing to support this Commission and name members to it. Two-thirds
    of the members will be appointed by the congressional leadership on a
    strictly bipartisan basis. I will appoint a third.

        And then I want to give special attention to two Members of the
    Congress who have worked on this very hard. One is Senator Kerrey, who
    had the idea for this Commission, and I intend to name him the Chair.
    The other is Senator Danforth of Missouri, who is in his last term but
    has been interested in the entitlement issue for a very long time, and I
    have asked him to serve as the Vice Chair. We will be naming the rest of
    the Commission in the fairly near future. But I'm hopeful that this
    Commission, by next spring, will be able to do some work which will
    chart a future for the Congress and for the country, which will enable
    us to do the people's business up here and keep the country moving
    forward into the 21st century.

        So I thank all the leadership for their willingness to support this.
    And I'm going to sign the Executive order and then we'll answer a few
    questions and get on with our meeting, because there's a vote in the
    Senate.

    [At this point, the President signed the Executive order.]

    NAFTA Television Debate

        Q. Mr. President, why are you putting the Vice President up against
    the king of the one-liners? Aren't you sacrificing a political career
    here?

        The President. Let me say this, I certainly appreciate the way you
    characterized it. If we get an honest discussion of the issues, the Vice
    President will do just fine because he's an accomplished debater and,
    more importantly, because he's got the evidence on his side. I
    understand why Mr. Perot wanted to have a rally packed with people that
    he could get there who already had their minds made up against NAFTA.
    But I think the Vice President's issued the challenge to show up in
    Florida and have Larry King moderate the debate. And if we get a genuine
    discussion of the issues, I'm very confident that he'll do fine. It was
    his idea; I've got to compliment him. It wasn't mine. Wasn't it?

        The Vice President. Absolutely----

        Q. Why do you feel it's necessary to take on Ross Perot to do what
    many people would consider sinking to his level?

        The President. Why are you sinking to his level, Mr. Vice President?
    [Laughter] Why did you want to do that?

        The Vice President. I think the country does this from a discussion
    of the facts about NAFTA. What we're finding is that a whole lot of
    people in the Congress say, ``We agree with you on the facts, but we're
    getting a lot of political pressure on the other side. Is there any way
    that you can get the facts out to a wider audience?'' And I think the
    discussion of what NAFTA really does--it creates new jobs in America.
    The volume of our products being shipped to Mexico has been increasing
    twice as fast as the volume of their goods being shipped here. The more
    discussion of the facts, the better.

        Q. Are you going to do one debate or three, Mr. Vice President?

        The Vice President. Well, I've contacted Larry King and said that--
    first of all, I issued this challenge; he accepted and proposed Florida.
    I said I'll be there on Sunday. I contacted Larry King. And we want a
    neutral format and a neutral place. I don't want to go to a rally filled
    with 20,000 people on one side of the issue. He was generous to say that
    he would buy the television time. Well, let's let Larry King provide the
    television time.

        Senator Mitchell. Why don't you pay for the television time?

        The Vice President. I considered that--[laughter]--I considered just
    picking up the tab.

        Q. Mr. President, aren't you the slightest bit concerned, not the
    least bit worried?

        The President. No. We're making progress on NAFTA. I feel good about
    it. And what we find is that if people--I went yesterday, when he was
    having a press conference saying I wouldn't answer questions from
    ordinary workers. I was with a thousand ordinary working people in
    Kentucky answering their questions. They were good questions, good,
    firm, hard questions. But I just believe that this is one of those
    issues where the truth will set you free. I think the more people know,
    the more they'll be for it.

        We have confidence. The Vice President, actually, when he went on
    David Letterman, I

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    knew that he could stick up Ross Perot on one-liners, right? So, that's
    it.

        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:44 a.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White
    House. The Executive order is listed in Appendix D at the end of this
    volume.