[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[August 3, 1993]
[Pages 1315-1321]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With the Nevada Media
August 3, 1993

    The President. Thank you, Gary, and thank you, Paula. First of all, 
let me thank all of you for giving me a few moments of your time today 
in order that we might together communicate directly with the citizens 
of Nevada about a whole range of issues, but especially about the 
economic program that the United States Congress will be voting on in 
the next few days.
    I've worked hard to put together a program that would achieve the 
very important principles I outlined when I became President. We want to 
reduce the deficit by $500 billion. We want to do it in a way that 
focuses on specific spending cuts, over 200 of them, and has at least as 
many cuts as new taxes. We want the new tax burden to be fair. And in 
this program, now over 80 percent of the burden will be borne by people 
with incomes above $200,000. The average cost for a middle class family 
with an income of about $60,000 a year will be $33 a year in the 4.3 
percent fuel tax. Working families with incomes of under $30,000 will be 
held harmless. The fourth thing we want to do is to make sure that this 
program promotes jobs and growth. After all, that's the objective. If we 
pass the program, we'll keep interest rates down and that will make it 
possible for people to refinance their homes and businesses and invest 
at low interest rates for high growth.
    We also have incentives in this program that I think are very 
important. Number one, over 90 percent of the small businesses in 
America will be eligible for tax reductions if they invest in their 
businesses and in new jobs and growth and opportunity. Number two, we 
support research and development. Number three, we support new firms, 
especially new high-tech firms, and their attempts to get new capital by 
giving a capital gains break of 50 percent for people who invest in 
these new and small firms for 5 years or more. And finally, this program 
lifts up work and family, supporting most importantly the working poor. 
For the first time ever if this program passes, through the tax system,

[[Page 1316]]

people who work hard, have children in their homes, and are still below 
the poverty line will be lifted above poverty, not by a Government 
program but by reductions in the tax system. This is a program that will 
get America on the move.
    Finally, I want to say that if we do what others ask and just delay, 
we might run the risk of what happened in 1990, fooling around for 3 
months, wasting valuable time when we ought to be dealing with the 
health care crisis, with welfare reform, with a new crime bill, with 
urgent matters that will bring more jobs into this economy, and winding 
up with a program as in the 1990's that doesn't work. This is a good, 
fair bill. It will make a good difference to America. And I hope that 
the Senators and the Congressman from Nevada will support it. I hope, 
most importantly, that the people of Nevada will support it.
    I'll be glad to answer your questions.

Economic Program

    Q. Mr. President?
    The President. Yes.
    Q. Hi, Mr. President. Greetings from Nevada.
    The President. Thank you.
    Q. First of all, many Nevadans appear to be losing some trust in 
Washington. At the same time, too, Nevada has been a State that has 
created quite a few jobs over the past few years. But now you offer a 
budget package that seems to hurt our big business, in other words, 
tourism, with the gas hike. Why should Nevadans buy into this gas hike?
    The President. Well, for several reasons. First of all, it is a 
modest one, and gasoline is at its lowest real price in 30 years. In 
other words, if you adjust for inflation, gas is cheaper now than it has 
been for 30 years. This fuel tax increase is quite modest and, for 
example, will be a much lower burden on fuel than the Btu tax which the 
House of Representative originally passed.
    Secondly, there are offsetting benefits to the job-generating engine 
that Nevada has become. As I said, over 90 percent of the small 
businesses are eligible for an actual tax reduction. Bigger businesses 
will be able to get incentives to invest in new plant and equipment. 
There are all kinds of other things that really help the business 
community. That's why the Home Builders, the Realtor Association, the 
American Electronics Association, any number of business groups have 
endorsed this program, because it will create jobs. And keeping interest 
rates down while there's so much building going on in Nevada is very 
important because you have to borrow money to finance construction. So 
that also will have a big boon to the Nevada economy. You will get a lot 
more out of it than the 4.3 cent gas tax will cost.
    Q. Mr. President, we've been taking phone calls from our viewers for 
the past 24 hours, and the overwhelming percentage have been asking, why 
not cut spending more first before raising these taxes?
    The President. Well, first of all, we do cut spending at the same 
time. There are $255 billion in spending cuts over a 5-year period and 
about $241 billion in taxes over a 5-year period. They are going into a 
trust fund so the money can't be spent on anything else. And if we miss 
the reduction targets, every year I will be bound by the system we're 
now following to come in and correct this. Secondly, there will be more 
spending cuts. We are going to have a report in September from the Vice 
President's Commission on Reinventing Government, which will recommend 
some substantial increases in spending cuts. And finally, as we deal 
with health care, we'll be able to deal with the exploding costs of 
entitlement spending on health care to our Federal budget. But the only 
fair way to do that is to provide health security and to reform the 
health care system. So I assure you, there will be more spending cuts 
coming up.
    But let me finally say that no person who's studied this believes 
that we can bring this deficit down and eventually get it down to zero 
unless we also ask primarily those people who got most of the income 
gains in the 1980's, that is, the top 1\1/2\ percent of our income 
earners; they got most of the benefits of the eighties, and they got the 
tax cuts of the eighties. All we're trying to do here is to restore some 
fairness and ask those who can pay to do so. Together these things will 
make a balanced package. We can't get there with just spending cuts. If 
I were, for example, to take all the revenue increases out, just have 
the spending cuts, and wait for the others to trigger in, I believe what 
would happen is that you'd have a substantial increase in interest rates 
as all these people who thought we were serious about reducing the 
deficit will say, well, there they go again. So we are going to cut 
spending more and more and more, but we need the revenues, too.

[[Page 1317]]

    Q. Mr. President, are you disappointed that a moderate Democrat like 
Dick Bryan is not supporting your budget? And what message does that 
send?
    The President. Well, I'm always disappointed if we don't get 100 
percent of the votes. But I think that Senator Bryan had some questions 
about the bill that was in the Senate last time that I hope that this 
conference report will answer. And let me just mention a few things that 
I think will make the bill more attractive to him, and I hope may still 
secure his vote.
    For one thing, there are clearly more spending cuts and tax 
increases in this bill. For another, there is a provision in this bill 
that--it does something that many of the people in the hotel business, 
the restaurant business have wanted for some time, which gives them a 
credit against the Social Security taxes they have to pay on their 
waiters' tip income, which is an important thing that's been passed by 
the Congress before but never actually written into law because it was 
vetoed previously. Thirdly, the economic incentives that were in the 
House of Representatives bill that were not in the Senate bill have now 
been put back in, for research and development, for high-tech industry, 
new business capital gains. We almost double the expensing for 94 
percent of the small businesses in America.
    A lot of things that are in this final bill in much greater degree 
than they were in the bill that Senator Bryan voted against. So I'm 
hopeful that these things plus the fact that we are going to have this 
trust fund, which was not in the Senate bill, to guarantee that the 
money goes to deficit reduction, will be enough for him to say that the 
bill has improved to the point where he can join Senator Reid and 
Congressman Bilbray in supporting it.

Reaganomics

    Q. Mr. President, can you respond to former President Reagan, who 
wrote in today's New York Times that he felt your budget plan was unwise 
and would plunge the economy into the deep doldrums?
    The President. Sure. When President Reagan became President, we had 
a $1 trillion debt. We now have a $4 trillion debt. For the last 10 
years under Presidents Reagan and Bush, we have pleaded with our allies 
to work with us to support a higher rate of growth to create more jobs 
in all the rich countries of the world, and they have said publicly for 
10 years the biggest problem is the American deficit: ``You won't do 
anything to get your own house in order; don't tell us what to do.'' 
This year, the allies, Germany, Japan, all these other countries, for 
the first time in 10 years when I met with them complimented the United 
States for finally doing something about our deficit and said now we're 
going to be able to work together to grow the economy and create jobs.
    And finally, we saw the end of Reaganomics in the last 3 or 4 years, 
where we had 4 years with only a million new jobs coming into the 
economy. And the record came in on the eighties, where 60 percent of the 
economic growth went to the top one percent of the people. And we didn't 
grow very many jobs compared to previous decades.
    So my answer is that President Reagan's program, which was to cut 
taxes and increase spending and have a huge deficit and try to borrow 
and spend our way out of our economic problems worked pretty well in 
1983 and 1984, but after that, it began to have serious problems. And 
for 6 or 7 years, it's now apparent that we can no longer borrow and 
spend our way to prosperity. We have to have some more discipline in our 
national life.

Taxes

    Q. Good afternoon, Mr. President. You've said that your plan will 
create 8 million jobs, but half of the proposed deficit reduction 
package comes in the way of new taxes. How do you plan to reconcile 
those two, when history has proven that increased taxes does not create 
new jobs?
    The President. I don't know that history has proven that. Under 
President Bush's administration, where he railed against taxes and 
finally signed a program in 1990 which was basically a middle class tax 
increase that had 2\1/2\ times the burden on the middle class that this 
program does, we didn't have new jobs. There were times in American 
history when we had much higher tax rates than we will have under this 
program, much, much higher, where we were creating any number of jobs.
    I think what has killed this economy is that so much of our money is 
going to deficit financing that that has kept interest rates high. 
People have not been able to afford money to borrow and to invest, and 
we have seen ourselves losing control of our financial future. So I 
don't think

[[Page 1318]]

all taxes are by definition bad for the economy. Do I think you can 
overtax the economy? Sure I do. But we still are going to have, on the 
whole, lower taxes than our major competitors and much lower taxes than 
we've had at times past when we created more jobs. I think we will lose 
more if we do nothing now and let this deficit get out of hand and run 
the interest rates back up. I think that will be much worse. If I 
didn't, I wouldn't recommend this.
    Let me just make one point here by way of just kind of trying to 
establish my credibility on this issue. Before I became President, I was 
Governor of a State for 12 years where we never had to raise taxes to 
balance the books, where I routinely cut spending--I ran a tight 
balanced budget--and where, in every year I was Governor, our State was 
in the bottom five in the country in the percentage of our people's 
income taken up by State and local taxes. The only time we ever raised 
any new taxes was when we had heavy majority support for dedicated 
support for either schools or roads. That's it.
    Now, what we're facing now in this country is a situation not of my 
own making. I wasn't in Washington the last 12 years, in either party, 
voting to run the debt from $1 trillion to $4 trillion. But I have to 
face the fact that that's where it is. And we're either going to do 
something to regain control of our own destiny, or we're going to let 
the economy continue to spin out of control and we'll be helpless to 
influence it. So it's just a question of whether we're going to do this 
for the long run or not.
    And let me just make one final comment, because it relates to the 
last two questions. If you go back and look at Japan in the mid-1970's, 
they had a deficit about as big as ours now, a big part of their income. 
They decided they would balance their budget over a 10-year period. They 
brought it down with a disciplined balance of tax increases and spending 
cuts. It did not hurt their economy; it strengthened their economy. And 
I think if we take the long view, we will see we've got to get ourselves 
out of debt and invest in job growth and our future.
    And keep in mind, most new businesses and most existing businesses 
can have their taxes reduced under this program. Only the top 4 or 5 
percent of the businesses and the top 1\1/2\ percent to 2 percent of the 
income earners are going to pay any substantial income tax increases 
under this program. There are no income tax increases for businesses 
earning under $180,000 or for couples earning less than that.

Environmental and Economic Policy

    Q. Good afternoon, Mr. President. Nevada poses some interesting 
possibilities here in terms of the jobs and growth that you've talked 
about. But there are also a number of environmental concerns. We have it 
at Yucca Mountain and also at the Nevada test site in nuclear terms. 
Then in northeast Nevada, there is a mine whose reopening has been 
delayed because of environmental concerns. What can Nevadans expect from 
the White House in terms of any overall policy whenever the environment 
clashes with the economy?
    The President. You can expect an honest attempt to do what the 
Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, and the EPA Director, Carol 
Browner, are doing all over the country, to try to do our best to 
reconcile the two in ways that are good for the economy, in that if the 
environment has to foreclose some economic activity, we believe the 
Federal Government has a responsibility to try to help open another 
avenue of activity.
    You mentioned those three things, so let me run through them 
quickly. With regard to the magna site, I have asked the EPA to 
accelerate review of that. It's in an economically depressed area. If we 
can find a way to permit that in an environmentally responsible way, I 
think we ought to do it sooner rather than later. And if we can't do it, 
we ought to tell the people sooner rather than later. So I've asked the 
Government to expedite review of that.
    With regard to the nuclear testing site, as you know, I have called 
upon the other nuclear powers of the world to observe a moratorium on 
nuclear testing. If that holds up, I think we have an obligation to work 
with you to try to find ways for the resources there and the people 
there to find other forms of economic activity. And with regard to Yucca 
Mountain, we've already ordered an independent financial management 
review. We're working on an independent management review. And the 
Governor and your congressional delegation have also talked to me very 
often about the question of the scientific basis on which Yucca Mountain 
was selected, and we have under review what we ought to do about that.
    So I think we're on top of all three of those issues. And I believe 
ultimately, sound environ-


[[Page 1319]]

mental policy is good for the economy, and I think we'll find a way to 
create more jobs than we lose out of it if we do it right.
    Next question.

Nuclear Testing Sites

    Q. Mr. President, you just mentioned the Nevada test site. And as 
you know, the Nevada congressional delegation has several suggestions 
for different types of activity that would go on there. There's 8,000 
jobs at stake. They have all kinds of ideas, from solar energy research 
facility to plutonium storage. Could you be more specific about what 
plan you have for the test site?
    The President. No, I can't, because I didn't know until just a few 
weeks ago, as you know, that we would not be resuming nuclear testing. I 
had not made a final decision on that, and I had not had a chance to 
consult with our allies.
    I can tell you this--let me say this again as clearly as I can. I 
think that your congressional delegation and your Governor will come up 
with some very good ideas. I believe we have a strong obligation to work 
with them to develop alternative economic activities for the site. First 
of all, the United States has a great investment there. And secondly, we 
have an obligation to the people of Nevada.
    And let me say, for 2 or 3 years now, long before I even started 
running for President, I was complaining that the Federal Government 
started cutting defense spending way back in 1987 with no plan for 
helping the people affected to convert and succeed in a domestic 
economy. We are now trying to deal with that and play catch up on 
defense cuts. I don't want the same thing to happen in Nevada at the 
nuclear testing sites. So I'll do what I can to help and to be there and 
work with your local leadership.
    Next question.

Immigration

    Q. Mr. President, I'd like to know a little bit about what you plan 
to do about illegal aliens coming into our country. There's been a big 
hue and cry about that nationwide, people settling into California, 
Arizona, and Nevada. It's becoming an increasing problem. I'd like to 
know if you have a plan for getting these people either legal or helping 
to keep them from our shores and our borders.
    The President. I do, and about 10 days ago I announced a plan and 
presented it to the Senate. And I'm very proud of the fact that this is 
one of those issues where we haven't had any gridlock. The Senate passed 
a major part of our immigration reform bill, 87 to 13, just a couple of 
days ago.
    Let me tell you essentially what we're dealing with. Basically, 
there are three substantial alien problems. There is the problem of 
access to our country by terrorists or potential terrorists or people 
who will work with terrorists. And we have enacted some reforms to 
change the way we exercise security at airports here in the United 
States and security at other airports.
    Secondly, there's the problem of all these people being smuggled in 
in, in effect, slave boats, all the folks coming in from China, for 
example. We have a plan designed to deal with that now and to impose a 
much stiffer penalty on those who do that kind of thing and also to 
process those people much more quickly than they have been in the past.
    Then the third problem is just the problem of large numbers of 
illegal aliens coming. The big States that receive them now are 
California, Texas, and Florida, but many, many other States also have a 
large number of illegal aliens. We're going to have 600 more border 
patrol operations, faster review, and expedited review and return of 
people that we find who are illegal. We will observe their 
constitutional rights. We will be as precise and fair as we can, but 
we're going to expedite the review.
    I support legal immigration. I think immigrants have made an 
enormous contribution to this country and have made us a stronger nation 
and a much better prepared nation to face the 21st century because we 
have so many different racial and ethnic groups in America. But you can 
only keep America safe for legal immigration if you do something firmer 
than we've been doing for years on illegal immigration. So that is the 
basic outline of the plan. We're proceeding with vigor to implement it. 
And we're looking at what other options we have to do more.
    Yes, sir.

Economic Program

    Q. Mr. President, if I might, sir, I'd like to revisit a question or 
perhaps broaden the scope a bit of a question a moment ago. You hold the 
distinction, sir, of being the first Democratic candidate to run for 
President who won the

[[Page 1320]]

State of Nevada in 28 years. That said, why then do you deserve the 
continued support of Nevadans when your budget package adversely affects 
tourism here by increasing fuel taxes, asking more money for resort 
companies, the engine of job growth here, and lowering deductions for 
meal expenses?
    The President. Because Nevada will also benefit from this. Every 
small business in your State has a chance to lower its tax burden by 
investing more in its business. Every person who wants to invest in a 
new business in Nevada capitalized at $50 million or less has a chance 
to cut their tax burden by 50 percent by investing for 5 years in such a 
business. There are all kinds of incentives to grow jobs in Nevada. And 
the most important thing is all Americans benefit when we reduce this 
deficit and keep our interest rates down.
    If you look at what has happened to long-term interest rates since 
I've proposed the deficit reduction plan and it started making its way 
through Congress and since Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal 
Reserve Board and a Republican, consistently said that this is what we 
need to do more than anything else to get control of our deficit. The 
cost of borrowing to all those Nevada businesses you just mentioned are 
going--by and large, for any of them that have to borrow any substantial 
amount of money or who can go out and refinance their business debt, 
they will save much more than they will be hurt by the extra burdens 
imposed by the changes here. So there are national interests at stake 
which will benefit people in Nevada, and there are specific things which 
will benefit people in Nevada. We have to decide--if we're going to do 
something about this deficit, we're all going to have to contribute.
    You know, I come from a State which has the highest, or second or 
third highest amount of gasoline usage per vehicle in the United States 
of America. But the fact remains that gasoline is at its lowest price in 
30 years and that the average person's annual bill is going to be around 
$35 for this. And I don't think that's going to keep anybody from coming 
to Nevada to vacation.

Single Parent Families

    Q. We took calls this morning from our audience to find out what to 
ask you, and we had so many different calls about, ``Hey, ask him to 
come and play his saxophone for us in Las Vegas, the entertainment 
capital of the world.'' But----
    The President. I'd love to do that.
    Q. ----on a more serious note, we did get a lot of calls from single 
parents that wanted to know what your economic plan will do to help 
reward them; say, they are raising a child, a full time job, and you 
alluded to that earlier in the opening. Could you be more specific on 
this topic, please?
    The President. Sure, very specific.
    If I might, I'd like to answer that question, but I'd like to also 
say one other point in response to the young man who asked the previous 
question about the fuel tax. I believe that most people or at least a 
huge percentage of people who come to Nevada to vacation or to 
convention, fly there. And one of the things that Congress and the 
administration were very concerned about was the impact of this on an 
already troubled airline industry, on whether that would lead to big 
increases in fares, which really might have had an adverse impact on 
you. And as a result of that, relief was granted from airline fuel from 
this tax. So I think that was a big concession that I think will be very 
helpful to you and will avoid any adverse damage.
    Now, to go back to the other question, most working parents, single 
parents who work and have children in the home, have family incomes of 
under $30,000, all of them will be held harmless from the impact of the 
fuel tax by an offset in their income tax. Those who are at or near the 
poverty line may actually get a refund on their income tax to make sure 
that they will be lifted above the poverty line if they're working 40 
hours a week and they have children in the home.
    Interestingly enough, this expansion of the earned-income tax 
credit, which has received relatively little attention, is probably the 
most significant social reform that is pro-family and pro-work that the 
Congress has enacted in 20 years, because it will say to people like the 
very person you're talking to: We know you're out there working hard. We 
know you don't need any more taxes. We know you're doing everything you 
can to support your children. And because of the way the income tax 
system will be changed, if you're making a pretty good income, that is, 
let's say $29,000, $28,000, $27,000, something like that, you'll be held 
harmless from this. We'll give you an income tax offset for the gas tax 
increase. But if you

[[Page 1321]]

make lower wages and if you're down around the poverty line, we will 
give you a tax refund so you can be lifted above the poverty line and 
support your children in dignity. Now, this will really help us to 
encourage people to move off welfare and into work.
    One of the next things that I want to take up, along with health 
care, when this is over, is a fundamental reform of the welfare system 
that will literally end welfare as we know it. In order to do that, 
you've got to take all the incentives out of welfare and put them into 
work and enable people to be successful parents and successful workers. 
So this is a very, very important part of this provision. And that's one 
reason I would hope all the single parents in America will support it. 
Almost all of them will benefit from it.

Administration Accomplishments

    Q. Mr. President, this will be the last question. I know we're 
supposed to be Mike Wallace here and ask you all these important 
questions. But it's been a pretty rough first 6 months for you. Is it 
what you expected, and are you having fun?
    The President. I am having a great deal of fun. I'm excited by this 
job. I knew it would be rough if we came in and tried to change a bunch 
of things at once, because it's easier if you don't try to do much and 
you just kind of take it easy; then you can make sure you don't have so 
much rough sledding.
    But I feel good about it. I mean, today my appointee to the Supreme 
Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was confirmed by a 96-to-3 vote in the 
Senate. I think she will be an historically important Justice. Today the 
United States Senate on a bipartisan basis adopted one of the heart-and-
soul ideas from my 1992 campaign, the national service bill, which will 
enable hundreds of thousands of our young people, as we get it up and 
going, to earn credit against their college costs by doing service for 
their communities, enable people at the grassroots level in Nevada, for 
example, to work with their friends and neighbors to solve problems and 
earn credit against college while doing it. I am very excited about 
that. We passed the family leave law, which becomes effective this week, 
which protects the right of people to go home if their child is sick or 
their parents are ill without losing their jobs. We've gotten an awful 
lot done.
    So I think we're moving in the right direction. And we've got a 
health care bill, a crime bill, and a welfare reform bill ready to go 
when we get the budget out of the way. So change is always hard, but I 
am very excited about it, and I am having a good time. And believe it or 
not--Governor Miller will be glad to know this--I'm trying to find a way 
to play golf once a week, in spite of all this work I'm doing. And most 
weeks I get it done. And maybe I can come out there and enjoy some of 
your courses once I get a little of this work out of the way.
    Q. We have some great courses. Thank you, Mr. President. I've always 
wanted to say that.
    The President. Thank you.
    Q. Thank you, Mr. President, for spending this half hour with us. I 
think this is the best kind of television there is, and we get a little 
longer than the sound bite that we're used to.

Note: The interview began at 5:09 p.m. The President spoke via satellite 
from Room 459 of the Old Executive Office Building. In his remarks, he 
referred to Nevada journalists Gary Wadell and Paula Francis.