[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[August 10, 1993]
[Pages 1355-1358]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Signing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993
August 10, 1993

    Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice 
President has given me a very generous introduction and has fairly 
characterized the struggle in which we have been engaged. I might say 
also, for all of you sports fans, he's given a whole new meaning to the 
term ``tie-breaker.'' [Laughter]
    But I think it would really be unfortunate if this event were to 
come and go without recognizing the fact that the people in Congress who 
voted for this plan had to labor under historically difficult 
circumstances. They had to reverse a plan of trickle-down economics in 
which it was the accepted path always to say the right thing but never 
to do it, and in which, if you tried to do the right thing, people would 
say the wrong things about you and cloud the debate with a fog of 
misinformation.
    In this incredible series of events that have unfolded, there were 
many Members of Congress who never appeared on the evening news, whose 
names never appeared in the newspapers simply because of their quiet 
courage and determination to do what they thought was right and to see 
this process through to the end. And I think I would be remiss, 
therefore, if on this occasion I did not ask at least all the sitting 
Members of the United States Congress who are here to stand and to 
receive a round of applause. Would you all please stand? I also want to 
explicitly thank all the many members of the Cabinet and the 
administration who are here who worked so hard on this program, as well 
as the many citizens throughout the country who helped us to lobby it 
through.
    Today we come here for more than a bill signing. We come here to 
begin a new direction for our Nation. We are taking steps necessary and 
long overdue to revive our economy, to renew our American dream, to 
restore con-


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fidence in our own ability to take charge of our own affairs. This was 
clearly not an easy fight. When I presented this program to Congress, I 
had hoped for something quite different: I had hoped that it would spark 
a genuine, open, honest, bipartisan national debate about the serious 
choices before us, about the world economy we face as we move toward the 
21st century, about the problems we have here at home and all the people 
whose lives and potential we lose and what economic consequence that has 
for all the rest of Americans. I had hoped that we could discuss whether 
and to what extent the revival of the competitive skills of our work 
force could raise incomes and generate jobs; how we could both reduce 
the deficit and increase investment in our future; whether we could 
escape the trap that has afflicted so many wealthy countries, that even 
when their economies are growing now they don't seem to be creating 
jobs; how we could escape the policies of the seventies and the eighties 
which led middle class Americans to work longer work weeks for lower pay 
while they paid more for the essentials of life; whether we could bring 
the power of free enterprise to bear in the poor inner cities and rural 
areas of this country and lift people up with the force of the American 
dream; whether the short-term consequences of bringing the deficit down 
would be more than overweighed by the short-term benefits of lower 
interest rates and the long-term benefits of being in control of our 
economic destiny.
    These are the kinds of things that I wanted to see debated. And to 
be sure, to some extent, we did debate them. But for 5 months the 
American people heard too little about the real debate and too much from 
those who oversimplified and often downright misrepresented the 
questions of tax increases and spending cuts because they had narrow 
economic or political or personal reasons to do so.
    So today, as we sign this landmark legislation, I say again, now we 
can talk about the national interests, how this plan will begin to bring 
the change we need in America, how we can have economic revival and hope 
if this is a beginning and we move forward from here. After all, after 
12 years of the most rapid increase in deficits in our country's 
history, when the national debt went from $1 to $4 trillion in only 12 
years, this is the largest deficit reduction plan in history, with $255 
billion in real enforceable spending cuts in very specific areas, not 
generalized hot air and tomorrow's promises but specific cuts. After 12 
years of trickle-down economics where taxes were lowered on the 
wealthiest Americans, raised on the middle class, hoping that 
investments would be made which would reverse the trends of the last 20 
years, we now have real fairness in the Tax Code with over 80 percent of 
the new tax burden being borne by those who make over $200,000 a year, 
with the middle class asked to pay only $3 a month, and with a tax cut 
to working families with children who make under $27,000 a year. By 
expanding this earned-income tax credit to working families and 
especially to the working poor, this Congress has made history by 
enabling us to say for the first time now, if you work hard and you have 
children in your home and you spend 40 hours a week at work, you can be 
a successful worker and a successful parent, and you will be lifted out 
of poverty.
    Every elected public official in America sometime in the last 10 
years has given someplace between one and a thousand speeches decrying 
the welfare system, extolling the values of work and family. But 
finally, the people who voted yes on this plan put a down payment toward 
ending welfare as we know it by finally doing something to reward work 
and family instead of just talking about it.
    Everybody in this debate talked about small business, and the people 
who opposed this plan said it was bad for small business. But in truth, 
the opposition plan actually increased the burden on small business 
people who took out their own health insurance by taking away their 
deduction for it, while this plan increases by 75 percent the expensing 
allowance for small businesses in ways that will give over 90 percent of 
the small businesses in America a tax cut if they do what they ought to 
do, invest more money in their business. Others talked about it; we did 
it. And we should be proud of it, and we should tell the small business 
community about it.
    Others talked about the importance of small business as a job 
generator. This plan passed a pro-jobs capital gains tax that reduces 
tax rates by 50 percent for people who invest their money in new and 
small businesses and hold those investments for 5 years or more, the 
most dramatic incentive we have ever had to encourage people to take 
money out of their savings and take a chance on the free enterprise 
sector in America in the places where the jobs are being

[[Page 1357]]

created, in the small business sector. That's what this plan does. 
Instead of talking about doing something for small business, this plan 
actually did it. And all of you need to be proud of that.
    The plan offers incentives to Americans to invest to revive the 
homebuilding market; to invest in research and development, something 
that especially helps high-tech companies; to invest in new plant and 
equipment. Even the biggest companies in America now will be able to 
have tax incentives if they are willing to invest in growing more jobs 
here at home. These are the right ways to cut taxes, my fellow 
Americans, cutting taxes for people because they spent their money in 
growing this economy and putting their fellow Americans to work. And 
that's what this plan does.
    This plan was criticized in some quarters because it did spend some 
new money on some new things. I would argue to you that anybody who 
thinks that all Government spending is the same might just as well say 
all kinds of bread taste the same. We did not come here to leave our 
judgment and our knowledge about the global economy at the city borders 
of Washington, DC.
    So yes, I plead guilty: We reformed the student loan program to 
lower the interest rates on student loans and make it easier for people 
to take out college loans and to repay them. We did, finally, after 6 
long years of reducing defense spending at rapid rates, at throwing 
people in the street from California to Connecticut, we finally did put 
some more money in here for defense conversion to give those people a 
chance to go back to work in a peacetime economy, to contribute to the 
American dream. We did spend some more money on Head Start and on poor 
pregnant mothers to try to get their children into the world in good 
shape, to try to lower the tax burden on other people and increase their 
productivity. We did spend some money to try to give 6 million more 
children inoculations, because no one can explain to me why the United 
States of America has the third worst immunization record in the Western 
Hemisphere and we're paying a fortune for it.
    This plan has already begun to work. Ever since it was clear that we 
were working to bring down the deficit and every time we made progress 
along the way, long-term interest rates dropped, enabling millions of 
Americans to refinance their home either to lower their monthly payments 
or to build up their own savings, enabling businesses to refinance their 
loans and, over the long run, lowering the cost of new investment in new 
jobs.
    Because of the leadership of the Speaker of the House, Senator 
Mitchell, Congressman Gephardt, the hard work of the committee chairs, 
Senator Moynihan, Congressman Rostenkowski, Senator Sasser, Congressman 
Sabo, the committee chairs in all the other committees in the Congress, 
and as I said earlier, the simple courage of millions of Americans in 
supporting this plan and the quiet courage of so many Members of 
Congress who literally put their careers on the line, this country has 
begun to take responsibility for itself.
    I say to those Members who took a big chance in voting for this, 
with all the rhetoric that was thrown against them, if you go home and 
look your people in the eye and tell them you were willing to put your 
job on the line so that they can keep their jobs, I think they will 
understand and reward you with reelection.
    This plan is only the beginning. As I said on February 17th and 
would like to say again today as we close, this administration views job 
creation and deficit reduction, expanding international trade and 
providing health care at affordable rates to all Americans, training and 
educating our work force, making our families healthier and our streets 
safer, reforming our welfare system and reinventing our Government not 
as different challenges requiring disparate solutions in different 
coalitions but part of the fabric of reviving the dream that we were all 
raised with.
    We cannot simply say, ``This is a complicated time, and we're 
unequal to the challenge. So we'll do this, and 4 or 5 years from now 
we'll worry about that.'' We have to think about what it takes to build 
the fabric of community, to rebuild the fabric of our families, to give 
our children a good shot, and to have sensible economic policies at home 
and with our allies around the world. Toward this end let me say again, 
in the long run we cannot succeed in an endless season of partisan 
bitterness and rancor and bickering. If some of us have to make hard 
choices while others stand aside and hope that the house collapses, 
nothing will in the end get done.
    And so I ask today of the American people and the American people's 
representatives, with-


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out regard to your party or philosophy, when the August recess is over, 
let us join again in the common work of American renewal. There is so 
much to be done that can only be done if we're all willing to carry our 
share of the load. Clearly, that is what the American people want us to 
do.
    In the very first week when the Congress comes back, the Senate will 
have a chance to demonstrate that bipartisan spirit by passing the 
national service plan that the House has already passed and opening up 
the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of young Americans to pay 
their college way by serving their communities and rebuilding a sense of 
community in this country. And then we will move on to the other great 
issues of the day. And move on we must. We cannot stand still.
    I remember every time I do something like this who we're really 
working for: I remember the people that Senator Moynihan and I saw lined 
along the long way from the airport to Hyde Park in New York; the people 
who stood out in 3-degree weather in Chillicothe, Ohio, to visit with me 
about their hopes for America; the young people I saw at Rutgers in New 
Jersey, in New Orleans, and in Boston, so deeply committed to the idea 
of national service because they want to be in a position to give 
something back to their country and to believe that their country can 
work for them again; high school students in Chicago who for the first 
time are dreaming of an affordable college education; and inner-city 
youths I saw at the playground in Los Angeles who believe that there's 
no reason they can't live in a neighborhood that is free of crime and 
full of opportunity. These are the people that we all came here to work 
for. These are the people that we celebrate for today.
    This is a beginning. Let us resolve when this recess is over to come 
back with a new determination to finish the work. And let us again hold 
our hands out to those who were not part of this process and say, 
``America needs us all. Let us go forward together.''
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:33 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House. H.R. 2264, approved August 10, was assigned Public Law No. 103-
66.