[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[August 4, 1993]
[Pages 1328-1333]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the National Urban League
August 4, 1993

    Thank you very much. Reg Brock, John Jacob, distinguished dais 
guests, and ladies and gentlemen. It was just about a year ago that we 
were together at the Urban League convention in San Diego. What a 
difference a year makes.
    Many of you in this audience have been friends of mine for a very 
long time. Those of you from my home State of Arkansas have worked with 
me in partnership there for many years. I know what the Urban League can 
do to make a difference in the lives of people and in the minds and 
hearts of people.
    I want to say at the outset today that while I came here to talk 
about what we're trying to do in Washington, what we can do in 
Washington is in no small measure determined by what lives in the hearts 
and minds and visions of Americans throughout this land. I know that the 
Urban League, for more years than I have by far, has struggled to remind 
Americans that, without regard to our race or creed or station in life, 
we must go forward together; that there is no place for hatred or 
division.
    And yet we know today that we are challenged by that on every hand. 
When people would bomb the NAACP headquarters in Tacoma or in 
Sacramento, when people would threaten your own John Mack in Los 
Angeles, when people would seek again to divide us by race instead of to 
take the hard and difficult path of making the changes we all need to 
make together as a country, we need the Urban League. America needs it. 
The President, the Congress, the politicians alone cannot do nearly as 
much as you can do to reach to the truth of the human heart and stand up 
against bigotry. But there are things that we can do. I know the 
Attorney General appeared before you in this conference, along with at 
least four other members of my Cabinet. No wonder I couldn't find any of 
them this week. They were over here. [Laughter]
    But I tell you, one of the reasons that we picked Judge Louis Freeh 
from New York to head the FBI is that he was not only committed to 
continuing the long overdue work of opening the FBI to women and 
minorities but also because he had successfully, heroically, and 
determinedly prosecuted the criminals who murdered a Federal judge and a 
civil rights leader in the South when others had given up and thought it 
could not be done.
    I am especially in debt to the Urban League because the Urban League 
not only gave to the Nation such great leaders as Whitney Young, but you 
gave to me a lifelong friendship and the service in this administration 
of Vernon Jordan and Ron Brown. I would have never met either one of 
them if it hadn't been for the Urban League.
    I also want to say to all of you that it is terribly important as we 
seek to bring America together that we continue our struggle to remind 
the doubters and the naysayers that we can go forward together.
    There was an especially reassuring article, at least to me, in the 
Washington Post a few days ago by the distinguished columnist William 
Raspberry in which he pointed out that when I said I wanted a Cabinet 
that looked like Amer-


[[Page 1329]]

ica, I was subject to ridicule in many quarters who claimed that I was 
about to diminish the quality of the Government by imposing some sort of 
quota system on the Cabinet. Well, it turned out that I produced a 
Cabinet with more women and more minorities than had ever served in a 
President's Cabinet. And most people think it's one of the best Cabinets 
that ever served the United States of America.
    And as Mr. Raspberry pointed out, when Janet Reno speaks as Attorney 
General now, people don't think of her as the first woman Attorney 
General. When Mike Espy's out there up to his ears in mud in the middle 
of the Mississippi River Valley flooding, and people are saying we've 
got the best response to a national emergency they've ever seen, nobody 
says he's the first black Secretary of Agriculture; he's somebody out 
there helping the farmers to put their lives back together.
    In the last 6 months, a great deal has happened in this town. The 
pace of change has been dizzying. And with all change, there has been 
strong opposition, and it's been a little ragged around the edges from 
time to time. But let me ask you this: If on Inauguration Day someone 
had told you that this administration, with the most diverse Cabinet in 
history, would work with the Congress and with our allies in the country 
and around the world to produce the Family and Medical Leave Act, twice 
vetoed by the previous administration, which became effective this week, 
to guarantee that working people can take a little time off when a 
baby's born, a child's sick, or a parent's ill, won't lose their jobs; 
would produce the motor voter bill, which is a significant advance in 
voting rights for the young, the poor, and the dispossessed; would 
produce a bill with the National Institutes of Health which would take 
the politics out of medical research and finally do what ought to be 
done in medical research with regard to women and their health care 
problems; would produce a dramatic change in environmental policy which 
would be applauded all around the world for putting the United States 
back in the forefront of energy conservation, of responsible efforts to 
deal with the population explosion, of all kinds of efforts to reconcile 
the conflicts between the environment and the economy; if someone had 
told you that we would take the lead in trying to keep democracy alive 
in Russia in ways that would be good for ordinary Americans by 
continuing to reduce the threat that nuclear weapons will ever be used 
and by opening up future markets there; that the United States would be 
able to go to a meeting of the great industrial nations of the world in 
Tokyo and for the first time in a decade not be attacked because we are 
a drag on world growth because of our deficit, and instead, we would be 
complimented and they would agree with us to lower tariffs on goods in a 
way that every American analyst concedes will add hundreds of thousands 
of jobs, good, high-paying manufacturing jobs, to the world economy if 
we can get all the other nations to agree with it; and that in the 
middle of this budget debate we would pass the program for national 
service which will give Americans a chance to bridge the gaps of race 
and income and earn credit against their college education by dealing 
with the human problems of Americans at the grassroots level--I'd say 
that's a pretty good record for 6 months, and I think the American 
people ought to be proud of it.
    But let me say to you that there is much, much more to be done. And 
whether we can get about the business of doing it will be determined in 
the next 48 hours or 72 hours or so by how the Congress of the United 
States responds to the challenge presented by the economic plan.
    I thank the Urban League for its early endorsement and support of 
this plan, and I would remind you here briefly why you did it, what is 
in it, how it makes a difference to ordinary Americans. Remember that 
for 20 years now, literally 20 years in 1993, most working Americans 
have seen the power of their incomes eroded. Wages for wage earners have 
been virtually stagnant for 20 years as the cost of health care, 
housing, and education has exploded.
    In 1980, we had a Presidential election which said that this problem 
that the American people were having paying their bills and dealing with 
global economic forces was a problem of too much Government in America 
and what we needed to do was to cut taxes, get Government out of the 
way, and everything would be wonderful. What that rhetoric masked was an 
old-fashioned attempt to cut taxes and increase spending, except it was 
done in a different way. We cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, 
increased primarily defense spending, and got out of the way.
    And for a couple of years it worked. We had a couple of years in 
which jobs came into the

[[Page 1330]]

economy because we were spending a lot more than we were taking in and 
putting a lot of people to work in defense industries. But after that, 
the patterns imposed on the United States by the realities of the global 
economy returned with a vengeance and were made worse by the decisions 
made in the early eighties where we cut taxes on the wealthy, ran the 
deficit up.
    What happened later? When the Congress and the President started 
going back at it, we had a decade in which taxes were cut on the 
wealthy, and the top one percent got more than half of the income gains 
on the 1980's. Taxes were raised on the middle class whose incomes were 
going down. We reduced our investment in our children, their education, 
our economy, and our future. We cut defense spending without reinvesting 
in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the other States that 
were hurt. And all of the money went to pay more for the same health 
care, to pay more interest on the massive debt, and to deal with the 
fact that we were creating a whole new class of poor people. It reached 
the point that by 1992, 1 in 10 Americans was on food stamps.
    So I say to you, that path didn't work very well. We now have 
evidence that it didn't work. In the last 4 years, only a million new 
jobs came into the economy. We are 3.5 million jobs behind where we 
would have been in a normal economic recovery.
    And so I presented a plan to the Congress--and I have asked them to 
adopt it, and I asked the American people to support it last night--
which brings down the deficit by $500 billion over the next 5 years. Why 
should liberals be for that? Why should people in urban constituencies 
be for that? I'll tell you why. Because as long as that deficit keeps 
getting bigger, we'll spend more and more of your tax money, hard-
working middle class people's tax money, paying bond payments to wealthy 
bond holders instead of investing in reinvigorating the American 
economy. Interest rates will go back up, and we won't be able to provide 
the things that people need.
    If we pay the deficit down--look what happened again yesterday: It 
looks like we're going to pass the plan; the interest rates dropped to 
an all-time low. I'm telling you, folks, we need to have a consensus in 
America without regard to race or political philosophy that we have to 
gain control over our economic destiny again and stop being paralyzed. 
If we don't do something about this, within 5 years we'll be spending 
all of our money paying more for the same health care and interest on 
the debt. And there will be nothing to grow America and grow our people 
and bring us together. That is the first issue.
    The second thing is that this plan is fair. This plan is fair: 
Eighty percent of the new revenues will come from people with incomes 
above $200,000--80 percent, 80 percent; no income tax increases on 
couples with incomes below $200,000, actually $180,000 in adjusted gross 
income. The 4.3-cent gas tax that is in this plan amounts to about $35 
per year for a family of four with an income of $50,000. Working 
families with incomes of under $30,000 are held harmless. This is a fair 
plan. In 1990 when there was virtually no burden on the wealthiest 
Americans in the budget plan, the burden on the middle class was 2\1/2\ 
times as great as this.
    The third point I want to make is, unlike 1990 and unlike the other 
plans which have been offered to the Congress this year, this plan has 
real incentives for economic growth that will affect a lot of you in 
this room. Every small business in America will be eligible to increase 
their expensing provision by almost double. What does that mean in plain 
terms? It means that over 90 percent of the small businesses in this 
country are going to get a tax cut out of this bill if they reinvest 
more money in their business. Now, that's something the Republicans 
haven't told you in the last few weeks: Over 90 percent will get a tax 
cut.
    For those of you who live in California and are worried about the 
economy out there, this plan increases the incentives for companies out 
there to invest in research and experimentation. That's where a lot of 
it is going on. That will create more jobs. For those of you who live in 
Michigan, Ohio, other States with heavy industry, this plan gives those 
big companies some relief from the minimum tax provisions if, but only 
if, they invest in new plant, new equipment, and they do things that 
will make them more competitive and able to hire more people and create 
new jobs.
    This plan gives a sweeping new investment incentive for people with 
the courage to invest in new and small businesses. It says if you do it 
and hold the investment for 5 years, you get a 50 percent cut in the tax 
you'd otherwise have to pay to get people into that. This plan

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will grow the economy.
    Finally, let me say this plan is fair to people who deserve our 
support. There is some more money in this plan for Head Start, to help 
pregnant mothers, to start people off well, to invest in the 
apprenticeship training of our young people, to help to pay for national 
service, and for more access to college education. And the most 
important thing of all, which has received very little attention until 
the last few days, this plan arguably has the most important piece of 
social reform in the last 20 years because it puts $21 billion into the 
earned-income tax credit program, which means we can say to the working 
poor, if you have children in your house and you work 40 hours a week, 
you will be lifted out of poverty. We are tired of seeing people work 
their heads off and work their fingers to the bone and be in poverty.
    That is something that every conservative in this country who's 
talked about how bad the welfare system is for years ought to embrace 
with tears of joy. Think about it. For the first time in the history of 
the country we can say, ``If you go out and work hard and play by the 
rules and you're still living in poverty''--and almost one in five, 18 
percent of the workers in this country work for a wage that will not 
support a family of four above the poverty line--this says ``the tax 
system, not a Government bureaucracy, not a program, the tax system will 
lift you out. You will be rewarded for your work.''
    That is a dramatic advance. It will change the lives of millions of 
Americans who are out there just killing themselves to raise their kids 
and to obey the law and to do what is right. And that, too, is in this 
program.
    But when they say, our opponents, ``This thing doesn't do anything 
for jobs. It doesn't do anything to cut the deficit. It taxes the middle 
class, not any different from what we've done before,'' it is just not 
so. And I ask you in these closing hours, if you have a Senator or a 
Representative who is potentially a vote for this, call them and tell 
them you'll be with them.
    I've spent a lot of time talking to the Members of Congress. I hear 
two arguments from people who say they may not or they won't vote for 
the program. Argument number one is a terrible indictment of democracy, 
but a lot of them have said it: ``This is a good program; it's good for 
America; it's good for my district, but our people don't believe it. So 
much misinformation has been put out. They don't believe there's any 
deficit reduction. They don't believe there's any spending cuts. They 
believe the middle class is paying the taxes. They don't think there's 
any incentives for growth. And we'll never convince them of that. So 
even though it's good for America, I can't vote for it because my people 
are not capable of hearing the truth.'' I think that is wrong.
    As soon as this bill passes, we will clear away the murky fog of 
misinformation and reality will take over. And we've been doing a better 
job of that in the last month. But you need to give courage to those 
people.
    There are others who say, quite rightly, that ``This bill doesn't 
solve every problem America has, and therefore, I won't vote for it.'' 
Well, we'll never vote for any bill if that's the test.
    It is true, this bill brings the deficit down for 5 years, and then 
it will start going up again unless we do something about health care 
costs. But the time to do that is when we reform the health care system 
and provide affordable health care to all Americans and control health 
care costs in the private sector as well as the public sector. It is not 
fair to say we're going to control health care costs and doing it by 
slashing Medicare benefits to middle class elderly people or by simply 
shifting the costs onto the private sectors.
    Now, I want to say this again. This is something we all have a 
common interest in. We do spend too much on health care. We spend it in 
the private sector and in the public sector. We spend over 14 percent of 
our income on health care. Only Canada, of all the other countries in 
the world, spends as much as 9 percent of their income on health care. 
Everybody else is less. And we spend it partly because the whole system 
costs too much to administer--it is a bureaucratic nightmare--and 
because we are the only advanced country that doesn't provide some 
quality coverage to all of our citizens and security of people so that 
they'll have health care coverage even if they lose their jobs or if 
they move jobs or if somebody in their family has been sick before. We 
have to deal with this.
    But if we did what these folks are saying and tried to solve the 
health care problem now by slashing what we spend on Medicare and 
Medicaid without reforming the system, you know what would happen? We'd 
either hurt the

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middle class elderly or the poor, or we'd keep on doing what's been done 
in this country now for about 15 years: We'd be sending the bill to the 
private sector. All of you who are in the private sector--most of you 
are paying health insurance premiums that cost too much already. If we 
just cut what the Government pays, you'll pay more.
    So I say to those people who say we have to do something about these 
entitlement programs and health care, you are right. Let's do it right. 
Let's not use that as an excuse not to move forward with this program. 
There's too much good in it.
    Finally, let me say we have a lot more to do. We have to move on to 
health care. We have to move on to welfare reform. We have to move on to 
the crime bill, which will do a great deal to help us to put more police 
officers on the street in community policing settings where we will be 
working with people in the community to make them safer and to prevent 
crime from occurring in the first place. We need to pass the Brady bill. 
We have fooled around with this too long. It is time to pass it.
    I had a heartbreaking conversation over the weekend with a friend of 
mine who is a Member of Congress who had a friend whose son was shot in 
one of these blind, mad encounters between children over the weekend, 
where four young boys got in a fight with four others, and they didn't 
know the other guys had guns. And finally they just took out the guns 
and started shooting them. This is crazy. This is crazy.
    Our television news is filled at night with horrible incidents of 
violence in Bosnia and other places in the world that break our heart. 
Twenty-four people were killed in this town, our Nation's Capital, in 
one week last month. We have to get on with that.
    You had Hugh McColl here the other day, my friend Hugh McColl, one 
of the most enlightened bankers in America, a supporter of our community 
development banking proposal. We've got to prove we can bring free 
enterprise and investment back to distressed urban and rural areas in 
this country. That is out there waiting for action. None of this stuff 
is going to be addressed until we get this budget economic plan passed 
and get it behind us and move forward.
    The Vice President is going to present a stimulating plan to 
reorganize the Federal Government in ways that serve you better at the 
grassroots level and still save the taxpayers money. We are not done 
with trying to control the budget. But we cannot move forward unless we 
act on this now.
    And so I say to you, my fellow Americans, we have tried delay, 
denial, gridlock. We've had all this tough talk and easy action. I've 
been criticized in some quarters for not talking tough enough. My theory 
is if you do the tough things, your actions can speak louder than your 
words. We've had too many words that didn't mean a thing in this town 
for too long.
    So I ask you as Americans to continue your support of these 
endeavors. I ask you for your partnership for the future. Let's make the 
national service program work and make it an instrument of healing and 
unity and real problemsolving, just what the Urban League has always 
been about. Let's prove we can deal with the health care issue in 
America, that we don't have to be the only advanced country in the world 
that can't seem to find a way to either control health care costs or 
provide security to our families. Let's prove that we can bring our 
deficit down and grow our economy.
    In short, let us prove that together we will assume more 
responsibility, create more opportunity, and come together again in this 
great American community. I am tired of hearing about all the things we 
cannot do. I am tired of hearing about cynicism and skepticism being the 
excuse for inaction and paralysis. This is a very great country. And 
when you travel abroad and you see the problems that these other nations 
are having and you see all these other rich countries with higher 
unemployment than we have, you know that there is nothing before us that 
we cannot deal with if we simply have the vision and the will to do it.
    We are being given a chance now to demonstrate that vision and that 
will. It is consistent with everything the Urban League has ever stood 
for or done. I ask for your prayers, your support, and your memory 
that--President Kennedy once said it better than I ever could, ``Here on 
Earth, God's work must truly be our own.'' Our work is before us. I'm 
trying to do my part. I hope you will do yours.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

[[Page 1333]]

Note: The President spoke at 10:48 a.m. at the Washington Convention 
Center. In his remarks, he referred to Reginald K. Brock, Jr., chairman 
and chief executive officer, Time, Inc.; John Jacob, president and chief 
executive officer, National Urban League, Inc.; and John W. Mack, 
president, Los Angeles Urban League.