[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[June 4, 1994]
[Pages 1028-1029]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1028]]


The President's Radio Address
June 4, 1994

    Good morning. Today I am speaking to you from Aylesbury, England, 
just outside of London. Hillary and I are in the middle of a journey of 
remembrance and discovery as we honor the sacrifices of the remarkable 
Americans who helped to liberate Europe in World War II.
    The generation of heroes who defeated fascism left a safer world for 
the generations after them, and we are grateful. Our country led the 
forces of freedom during the World War, and our economy led the world in 
the decades that followed.
    This morning I want to talk about some very good news that shows how 
much we can still accomplish together when we as a nation act 
decisively.
    In 1993, I took office determined to renew our economy so that we 
could pass on prosperity and opportunity to our own children. Remember, 
our economy had suffered from a decade or more of deficits and drift, 
slow growth or no growth. Then we made some tough choices, to bring down 
the deficit, to provide more incentives to invest, and to invest more in 
the education and training of our people on new technologies, and on 
helping to convert from a defense to a domestic economy.
    Well, now we're beginning to see the results. Our economy is back. 
It's expanding steadily. Most important, it's creating jobs, millions of 
good-paying jobs. Yesterday, the Government released new statistics 
showing the success of our efforts. Since this administration took 
office in January 1993, the United States has created over 3 million 
jobs, most of them good-paying jobs, nearly all of them in the private 
sector. We're creating new private sector jobs at 7 times the rate that 
occurred during the previous administration. During the 1992 campaign we 
said we'd create 8 million jobs in 4 years. We're running way ahead of 
schedule now. America is on the way to creating 2 million more in '94.
    But mere statistics tend to be abstract. Everywhere, all around us, 
we see signs of steady economic renewal. The Big Three in Detroit are 
back, adding shifts, and once again making the best cars in the world. 
New businesses are being incorporated at a record pace. Consumer 
confidence is up. Inflation is in check. Business failures are down. And 
core economic conditions, to quote the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 
are ``the best they've been in two decades.''
    As I meet with our allies and visit historic places in Europe, I'm 
constantly reminded our economy is now the strongest in the world. Let's 
remember how this came about. These 3 million new jobs are the product 
of the ingenuity, the entrepreneurial energy, and the willingness to 
change of the American people. They are the result of an economic plan 
that has seen to it that Government has been shrinking in the first 
quarter of this year, while the private sector grows for the first time 
in a decade.
    We've cut the deficit by $500 billion. By 1995, if we stick to this 
plan, the deficit will have declined for 3 years in a row for the first 
time since Harry Truman was in the White House. In fact, our deficit is 
now smaller, as a fraction of our national income, than all but one of 
our major trading partners.
    We've made our cuts fairly. We've sought cuts in more than 300 
programs in each of the first 2 years of the budget. We've sought to 
eliminate over a hundred Government programs. Only the wealthiest 1.2 
percent of our people were asked to pay higher income taxes. Working 
families didn't pay a cent more in income taxes because of higher rates. 
In fact, for every person who had taxes increase, at least 10 working 
families had their taxes cut. We are protecting the middle class.
    Now we have an obligation to keep going to make sure that every 
citizen benefits from a changing world. Too many Americans haven't yet 
been touched by the economic renewal. This year we want to build on our 
success by taking concrete steps to keep the economy growing and to give 
our people the tools they need to succeed.
    A good start is to increase our exports to other countries. Trade 
means jobs. Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement we may 
soon sell more to Mexico than we do to Japan. This year I'll present to 
Congress a worldwide trade agreement that will create hundreds of 
thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars of exports for America. 
That's good for

[[Page 1029]]

America. And that's why Congress must and will ratify the world trade 
agreement soon.
    When we create these good export jobs, we must make sure our people 
are ready to fill them. These days, what you earn depends on what you 
learn. Skills and knowledge are the most important asset of all. That's 
why we're working on a lifetime learning system to train every citizen 
from the first day of preschool to the last day before retirement.
    Now we have to fix our broken unemployment system to replace it with 
a reemployment system so that when someone loses a job, he or she can 
find a good new job as quickly as possible. I am fighting for Congress 
to pass this reemployment act this year, too.
    Finally, our deficit will grow and our expansion will sputter if we 
don't reform our health care system. Health care costs are going up more 
and more and more than any other part of our budget, not for new health 
care but to pay more for the same health care. As you know, I am 
fighting hard to guarantee health care for every American in a way that 
can never be taken away but that will bring costs in line with 
inflation.
    So there's still a lot more to do. But let's be proud of what 
Americans have done. America is going back to work. Unemployment is 
down. Jobs are up. Inflation is down. Growth and new business is up. Our 
economy is clearly leading the world. We've made this world better by 
making the tough choices. That's what we've got to keep doing.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The President spoke at 3:06 p.m. from Hartwell House in Aylesbury, 
England.