[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[July 30, 1994]
[Pages 1342-1345]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1342]]


Remarks to Health Security Express Participants in Independence, 
Missouri
July 30, 1994

    Thank you, Governor Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Vice President and 
Tipper and Hillary. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming. 
And let me especially thank those two fine women, mother and daughter, 
that stood up here and spoke for the nearly 40 million Americans who 
deserve health care.
    I have to tell you, a lot of things have been said here today; maybe 
everything that needs to be said has been said. But I would like to 
offer one mildly dissenting view. I believe that most of the people here 
who disagree with me today about national health reform do admire Harry 
Truman. They probably think he ought to be on Mount Rushmore. And it 
must be surprising to them to know that they had the same arguments that 
are being made against us made against him 50 years ago. That is always 
the case when you try to change things and why it's so important to use 
the Presidency to fight to help the ordinary American to live a better 
life.
    You've already heard it. You've heard it in what the other people 
have said. Harry Truman had to say, ``No, this is not socialized 
medicine, this is private insurance. No, this is not a Government 
takeover, we're preserving the choice and the private medical system. 
No, we're not going to waste more money covering everybody, we'll 
actually save money.'' And what did they say? ``Harry Truman's a radical 
liberal. He's for socialized medicine. He's for big Government. He's 
going to take this country down.''
    Well, the truth is Harry Truman had Independence, Missouri, values. 
He had this old-fashioned notion that we value work and family and 
faith. And people who work hard and play by the rules ought to help one 
another when they need it, ought to join together to help themselves and 
to help their children have a better life.
    And that is really what is at stake here. All this screaming and 
yelling, what's really hurting America today is that we're shouting too 
much and listening too little and speaking in a respectful tone too 
little.
    Two years ago, on Labor Day when we all came here to kick off our 
general election campaign, what a wet day it was. Do you remember how 
wet it was? And we stood here in the rain because we believed we were on 
a mission to restore the American dream. We were tired of the screaming, 
yelling, anti-Government crowd that told us one thing and did another, 
that exploded the deficit, reduced investment in the American people, 
drove our economy into the ground. We were tired of seeing our country 
come apart and be divided by this rhetoric of hatred and division when 
we need to be coming together, to pull together for the 21st century. 
And we knew that at the end of the cold war we had a great test before 
us: Would we move into the next century with confidence, hope, united, 
so that we can compete and win and every one of our children can live up 
to the fullest of their God-given abilities, or would we give in to the 
same old dark fears and divisions that have been dredged up over and 
over and over again in this country's history?
    My fellow Americans, that is the real truth of what your President, 
Harry Truman, had to face. At the end of World War II, when he was the 
victor in the war, 80 percent of the people thought he was just great. 
But then a new world had to be created. And the question was would the 
President just tell people what they wanted to hear, or would he set 
about creating that new world?
    And what did we get: the GI bill, a way to educate our families, a 
way to build houses, a way to build the middle class, bringing down the 
deficit, stabilizing the economy; rebuilding Europe with the Marshall 
plan; rebuilding Japan; standing up against Soviet expansionism so we 
could eventually win the cold war. That's what he did. And every step 
along the way the American people were subject to the most vicious and 
brutal attacks. Why? Because when people leave one era, when everybody 
can look at the future through the same set of glasses and they have to 
pick up another set of glasses to figure out how to understand things, 
we are always vulnerable.
    You think about your own life. Every time you've been asked to 
change you may have a mixture of hope and fear. And the real test

[[Page 1343]]

every time is are your fears going to overtake you, and are you going to 
give in? Or are you going to live by your hopes and your courage and 
charge forward and grow and become better? That is the test for the 
United States today.
    This health care fight is far from the first one in which we have 
been engaged. When I became President, I told the American people I was 
tired of hearing people say they were conservative and they hated 
Government and they didn't like the deficit, and presiding over the 
biggest deficits in history, and I would do something about it. And we 
passed, against the solid opposition of every member of the other party 
in the United States Congress, an economic program. And what did it do? 
Two hundred fifty-five billion dollars worth of spending cuts; tax cuts 
for 15 million working Americans, including 295,000 Missouri families; a 
tax increase for the wealthiest 1.5 percent of our people; a reduction 
in the Federal work force, something the conservatives say they want, a 
reduction in the Federal work force of 250,000. And what did we produce? 
Three years of deficit reduction for the first time since Harry Truman 
was the President of the United States and 3.8 million new jobs, more 
than in the previous 4 years put together by far and a 1.5-percent drop 
in the unemployment rate and the largest number of new business starts 
since World War II. They said we would wreck the economy. Instead we 
brought it back, because we wouldn't give in to this hatred and rhetoric 
of division and destruction, and we moved forward.
    And then we moved on to try to make sure all of you could compete 
and win in this global economy, expanding trade against opposition, 
providing for lifetime training, more for Head Start, world-class 
standards for our public schools for the first time, apprenticeship 
programs for our young people who do not go to 4-year colleges but need 
more training and a reduction in interest rates and better repayment 
terms for student loans, so that 20 million Americans are immediately 
eligible for lower interest on their student loans.
    My fellow Americans, this is not about hot air and hot signs. This 
is about what we talked about here in the rain, what Al Gore and I wrote 
about in ``Putting People First,'' and most of all, it's about what 
counts in your life as you move forward with your families and your 
hopes. And we are going to continue doing that.
    Just look at the last week in America. What a great week America 
had. Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel. Now, with our strong 
help, Israel and Jordan have agreed to end the state of war between them 
and to work for peace and to make us more secure.
    Harry Truman set up a system that enabled us to win the cold war. 
Now, after the cold war, after much hard work by the United States, 
Russia has announced that by the end of August, for the first time since 
Harry Truman was President, there will be no Russian soldiers in Central 
and Eastern Europe, making the world more secure.
    After 6 years of tough talk and anticrime rhetoric by previous 
administrations, at long last, at long last, this week the House and the 
Senate agreed to send the toughest, smartest crime bill in the history 
of the United States to a vote on the floor of the United States 
Congress this coming week.
    And as has been said, your majority leader, Dick Gephardt, and the 
Speaker of the House have, for the first time in American history, voted 
out a bill to the floor of the Congress that would provide for 
affordable health care for all of the American people. It has been a 
good week for the United States.
    But the only way we can go forward is if we go beyond the slogans to 
the facts, go beyond all the posturing to the people. Look at this crime 
bill, folks. Children are 5 times more likely to be the victims of 
violent crime. Violent crime has gone up by 300 percent in the last 30 
years, the police forces by only 10 percent. This crime bill will add 
100,000 police to our streets. It will make ``three strikes and you're 
out'' the law of the land. It will take the assault weapons out of the 
hands of the gangs that make them better armed than the police forces. 
It will make handgun possession and ownership by juveniles illegal 
unless they're under the supervision of an adult. It will make our 
schools safer. And it ought to pass next week, not because of all the 
rhetoric against it but because our families deserve a better and a 
safer and a more secure future.
    But if we had to wait 6 long years for a crime bill, isn't 60 years 
way too long to wait for all the American people to have health care 
security? That's how long we've been waiting. President Roosevelt wanted 
it. President Truman proposed it three times. Seven Presidents of both 
parties have tried to achieve it.

[[Page 1344]]

    Let me ask you something, and I want you to listen to this, it's so 
ironic. What is the real big fight here? The big fight is whether 
employers and employees should be asked to purchase private health 
insurance and whether the Government saying to the American people, 
``You must purchase private health insurance'' is either socialized 
medicine, somehow unethical, or bad for the economy. That's what all 
this boils down to, whether it would be better to keep on doing what 
we're doing.
    Well, let me ask you to consider this. Number one, in 1971, 
President Richard Nixon and the ranking member of the Senate Finance 
Committee today, the Republican Senator from Oregon, Bob Packwood, 
proposed that all employers pay for half of the health insurance costs 
of all their employees and that we do it. If it was such a hot idea in 
1971, why are the members of the other party running against it today as 
if it had the plague? It was a good idea then, and it's a good idea 
today.
    As you know, I just returned from Germany where I saw the flags of 
the Berlin Brigade cased because they're coming home, having won the 
cold war. And I met with hundreds and hundreds of our armed services 
families. All of them have health care in the military. And do you know, 
the only thing they wanted to talk to me about was health care. ``Mr. 
President,'' they said, ``when we come home to serve our country out of 
uniform, we want to know that our children are going to be covered by 
medical insurance. I hope you can pass health care this year.''
    It would be different, my fellow Americans, if we didn't have 
personal experience. Look at the State of Hawaii. In Hawaii, everything 
is more expensive than it is here on the American mainland, except one 
thing, health care. Because for 20 years in Hawaii, employers and 
employees have been required to purchase health insurance so that 
everybody is covered. And guess what? Small business insurance premiums 
are 30 percent lower, $400 a year lower for small business people in 
Hawaii than they are in the United States on the average. We know this 
works; why are we running away from it? Why don't we run toward it and 
embrace it and take care of people like that fine young woman that spoke 
to you here today?
    And what happens when we try these half measures? Insurance rates go 
up, and coverages goes down. Do you know that one of the things I just 
wish--it's not much I wish for from those who shout and scream, instead 
of talk and listen and exchange, but I do wish they had some burden to 
prove that what they're for works.
    This is the only country in the world with an advanced economy where 
we're going backward in health care. Ten years ago, 88 percent of our 
people were covered. Today, 83 percent of our people are covered. Five 
years ago there were 5 million Americans who had health insurance then 
who don't have it today. Five million Americans have lost their health 
insurance for good, just in the last 5 years, and over 80 percent of 
them are middle class working people. This is a broken system, and we 
ought to fix it without delay.
    Folks, 60 years ago this fight started. Fifty years ago Truman tried 
it three times and failed. Twenty-nine years ago, halfway between the 
beginning and now, President Johnson came to this city to sign Medicare 
into law and to give Harry and Bess Truman Medicare cards one and two. 
I'll bet there are a lot of people in this audience whose parents have 
been helped by Medicare. I bet there are a lot of people in this 
audience whose family budgets would have been severely strained if it 
hadn't been for Medicare.
    If you have ever dealt with Medicare, you know that it's the 
furthest thing in the world from socialized medicine. Senior citizens 
pick their doctors, and the doctors make the decision. And yet, the 
arguments we're hearing today against this plan are the same arguments 
the same crowd made against Medicare 29 years ago, just like they did 
against Harry Truman 50 years ago and F.D.R. 60 years ago.
    Let's do better. Let's finish Harry Truman's fight. We're halfway 
home, and we can go all the way. And let me say this. I want to be as 
good as my word to say we should talk about people, not slogans. In this 
beloved State of yours there are 700,000 Missourians without health 
care. There are 175,000 children without health care. But there are 
millions who could lose their health care. They're an injury, a 
sickness, a job loss, a job change away from losing it. I believe we can 
do better.
    I was raised in a home with a mother who was widowed when I was 
born, who left me with my grandparents to learn to be a nurse. I grew up 
around hospitals. And I buried my mother earlier this year, after a long 
and brave battle with cancer for which, thank God, she

[[Page 1345]]

received magnificent care because she had health insurance. How can we 
in good conscience say, when we know every other country's done it, when 
we know Hawaii has done it and saved money doing it and made people more 
healthy, how can we say America is not up to it? How can we give in to 
those who would play to our fear and our fears of the future instead of 
going forward? Harry Truman would say the buck stops here, the buck 
stops in Congress and the buck stops with you. Let's push it over the 
finish line this year.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:40 p.m. outside the Truman Courthouse in 
Independence Square. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Mel Carnahan of 
Missouri and Health Security Express riders Susan and Rachel Crowthers.