[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[February 7, 1994]
[Pages 192-199]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Greater Houston Partnership in Houston
February 7, 1994

    Thank you very much. Secretary Bentsen, you said if I had been in 
any danger, I would have sent you to give this speech. You notice how 
quickly he got off the stage when it came my turn to talk? [Laughter]
    I want to thank all those who preceded me: Ken Lay for his kind 
remarks. He and I had an unusual and, for would-be golfers, a lifetime 
opportunity. We got to play golf with Jack Nicklaus in Colorado last 
summer. Nicklaus won. [Laughter] It was good for both of our humility 
quotients.
    I'm glad to see Mayor Lanier again. You know, I'll tell you a story 
about Mayor Lanier. He's the only person I know who actually turned down 
a personal tour of the Oval Office. It's a true story. He was up there 
one night, he and Mrs. Lanier were there, and we watched a movie, as I 
remember, in the White House movie theater. And I said, ``If you want to 
go see the Office before you leave, I'll take you over there.'' And it 
was about midnight, and he said, ``I don't do tours at midnight.'' And 
he went on to bed. [Laughter] And I thought, that was the kind of common 
sense that carried him to the mayoralty, wasn't it? People ought to be 
safe in Houston. I believe we ought to have more police officers and put 
them in the right places. And I didn't take it personally. I'm going to 
invite him back in 1997. [Laughter] I thought it was great.
    And let me say about Lloyd Bentsen that I believe he'll go down in 
the history books as one of the great Treasury Secretaries in this

[[Page 193]]

century, not only because of his iron will in steering through the 
biggest deficit reduction package in history last year but because of 
the way he has worked with the private sector, with the Federal Reserve, 
with the other power centers in our country and the influence that he's 
exerted overseas from Russia to China to Latin America. It's a real 
source of comfort and reassurance to me to know that whenever I'm in a 
kind of a tough bind, I can call him on the phone and ask him for his 
advice. Sometimes I call him on the phone and ask him for advice about 
problems that have nothing to do with the Treasury Department. And 
sometimes he smiles, and he says, ``Gosh, I'm glad I don't have to make 
that decision.'' [Laughter] But most of the time he gives me good 
advice, and most of the time I follow it.
    Let me also say, I know there are several Members of Congress here 
today, and I may miss some of them, but I see in the audience Gene 
Green, Craig Washington, Mike Andrews, and Jack Brooks. I don't know if 
I missed anybody else, but I thank you all for being here. They have to 
listen to me talk all the time. It's remarkable that they have the 
forbearance to come all the way home and listen to it again.
    We're a little bit late today because I spent a good part of the 
morning dealing with the crisis in Bosnia. And I am sorry we're a little 
bit late, but I do want to just tell you what has happened before I go 
into my remarks, just briefly.
    As you know, there was an outrageous attack on innocent civilians in 
Sarajevo on Saturday. And our Government is talking with our allies 
about what steps ought to be taken in response not only to this outrage 
but to the possibility of future attacks on innocent civilians in the 
future. We're also talking about whether there's something more we can 
do to help the parties agree to solve the conflict. Until those folks 
get tired of killing each other over there, bad things will continue to 
happen. And sooner or later they're going to have to decide that it's in 
their interest to let their children grow up in a world free of war.
    The United Nations Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali has asked the 
North Atlantic Council to take the necessary decisions which would 
enable NATO's military forces to respond to requests for air strikes 
directed against artillery and mortar positions around the city of 
Sarajevo that can do the kind of horrible things you saw on Saturday. If 
the United Nations mission there determines who is responsible for the 
attacks--in other words, the Secretary-General has now asked that 
authority be given to our commanders there on the ground to take 
appropriate action. I very much welcome that request. I have hoped that 
that would be the case for some time. I have directed our 
representatives at NATO to support the Secretary-General's request when 
it is discussed there in the next couple of days.
    That is all I have to report at this time except to say that, once 
again, I hope very much that the horror of all these innocent people 
dying will sober all those who are responsible and lead to a renewed 
effort to get a peace agreement there.
    Now, having said that, I'd like to go back a little bit to talking 
about what I hoped to come to Houston to discuss today, which is how our 
Nation reconciles the need to bring the deficit down and be tough on the 
budget with our responsibilities to invest in the future and to work 
with you to grow the economy. If you take the position that Mayor Lanier 
took in 1991, you see a microcosm of what I think I should be trying to 
do as your President. He came here on a promise to put 655 more police 
officers on the street either by hiring new ones or working the present 
force overtime and to deploy them in the appropriate places with the 
goal of lowering the crime rate and making the people here feel more 
secure.
    Since that time, the crime rate's dropped 22 percent, murders are 
down by 27 percent, and he's given America its best reason to have 
Congress pass a crime bill this year--[applause]--thank you--because we 
know that this is an issue without a party or a racial or an economic 
label and we know that the more vulnerable you are to other forces in 
society, the more vulnerable you also are to being a victim of crime.
    So we're going to have a debate over the next couple of months, and 
these Members of Congress here will be a part of it, about what that 
crime bill ought to be. But one thing we know is if you have more police 
on the street and they are properly trained and they're properly 
deployed and they know the neighbors and they know the kids, they will 
not only catch criminals quicker, they will actually deter crime, which 
is, after all, what we ought to be trying to do, to reduce crime in the 
first place. Why?

[[Page 194]]

By taking a practical approach to a human problem and asking what is 
best for the people involved.
    I want to thank the Greater Houston Partnership for your leadership 
on the NAFTA battle. And I want to say some things about that that I 
think I'm entitled to say since I fought so hard for its ratification, 
some of which not all of you may agree with. But to me, the way that 
battle took shape is the way this country ought to work. And let me 
explain why. First of all, to pass it there was really a partnership 
required between Government and people in private business and a not 
insignificant number of working people who knew it was in their personal 
interest for it to pass. Secondly, to pass it there was a partnership 
between Democrats and Republicans, something which unfortunately is all 
too rare in Washington, even though it's more common in Houston, I would 
imagine. Thirdly, there was an honest debate about important issues. And 
even though I strongly disagreed with those who voted against it, there 
was a real core of legitimate concern. I thought the remedy, that is, 
beating NAFTA, was the wrong remedy. But the core of concern was real; 
that is, that in a global economy, people who control the flow of money 
and technology and production may or may not have interests that are 
always identical to the working people who live where they are located.
    So there were honest debates that led to the first environmental 
side agreement in the history of any trade agreement--a good one--a 
labor standards agreement, a commitment that the Congress had to do more 
to retrain the American work force, dislocated not only by trade with 
our neighbors to the south but generally dislocated by the changing of 
the economy; an agreement to establish a North American development bank 
to try to help finance new businesses and small businesses in places 
where they need to grow in order to participate in what we hope will be 
a vibrant and growing two-way trade not only with Mexico but with all of 
our neighbors to the south. So the debate was about real issues and 
produced, in my view, the right result, the trade agreement that I 
believe so strongly in and a lot of other things that point the way 
toward making sure that it benefits all the people of the country.
    And finally, I liked it because it was focused on the future. It 
required us all to imagine what we wanted Houston, Texas, and the United 
States to look like in the 21st century, what things are inevitable that 
we need to--these changes that are happening that we need to make our 
friends instead of our enemies. How could we shape the future?
    Now to me, that's what public life ought to be about. Whoever you 
vote for and whatever you say, people get together like this and they 
argue and talk about real issues in the spirit of partnership, thinking 
about the future, focusing on how it affects ordinary people. And I 
liked it a lot. In the environment in which I operate now, as opposed to 
the one in which I operated when I was a Governor, there tends to be too 
little partnership and too much partisanship. There tends to be too 
little focus on the future and an absolute obsession about the past. 
There tends to be too little action and a world of talk.
    Now, we have some big challenges as a country. Make no mistake about 
it, we have enormous strengths. A lot of things are going well in 
America. We have underlying strengths which are beginning to benefit us 
now that have always been there. But the way we continue to move into 
the future is to cherish our strengths, but to honestly face our 
problems and our challenges.
    Now, for the 4 years before I became President, for all kinds of 
reasons, we had the slowest economic growth in half a century and very 
low job growth. For the 12 years before I took office, the national debt 
quadrupled in only 12 years after 200 years of history in which it was 
more or less constant, except during wartime when it went up. In those 
12 years, the cost of health care exploded at 2 and 3 times, sometimes 
more, the rate of inflation. And yet every year a smaller percentage of 
our people were covered with health insurance, with consequences, I 
might add, that were dramatically, I thought, put forward by a very 
articulate letter to the editor in one of your newspapers today by a 
local physician, which I commend to you.
    For 20 years, for 20 years, since about 1974, after the last big 
energy crisis then and globalization of our financial system, the wages 
of most American hourly wage earners have been stagnant. It's not a 
partisan issue, this is something that's happened through 20 years. And 
for about 30 years, the American family unit has been under great 
stress, particularly in areas of economic distress, so that now millions 
and millions of young Americans are being

[[Page 195]]

born into families where there was never a marriage; in a community 
where the local community institutions that used to shore up kids in 
trouble, the churches, the businesses, and the other things, are weaker 
than ever before; and where there is no business investment to give 
people economic hope and where very often only the churches and a few 
nonprofit organizations are like the proverbial kid with their thumb in 
the dike holding back the deluge. And often they come in contact with 
the rest of us when we catch them breaking the law and we're telling 
them not to do something, instead of earlier in their lives when we 
could have given them a chance to be a part of this partnership 
represented in this room today. Now, those are the challenges we face in 
a world that is changing very rapidly, where the economy is increasingly 
globalized.
    I ran for this job because I wanted this country to roar into the 
21st century still the greatest nation on Earth, with the kids in this 
country looking forward to the brightest future any generation of young 
Americans ever had, and because I believed that to do that we had to 
restore the economy, rebuild a sense of community in an increasingly 
diverse America--look around this room--and make the Government work for 
ordinary people again. Make it make sense instead of having people so 
alienated from it.
    Now to do that, it seems to me that we have to stop focusing so much 
on yesterday's labels and focus more on tomorrow's goals. The issue 
isn't whether we go left or right, it's whether we can go forward. And 
if we don't go forward, it doesn't matter whether we're stuck left or 
right.
    Historically, if you look at the whole history of this country, we 
have done well because we had strong shared values and we were 
increasingly, when we needed to be, pragmatic and progressive at the 
same time. We were philosophically conservative in the sense that we 
never thought we ought to change our values and operationally 
progressive in the sense that we were always ready to look at a changed 
set of circumstances and move into the breach. And I would argue to you 
that that's what we face today.
    Our administration took office with a clear economic strategy that 
was first premised on getting the deficit down, to get lower interest 
rates, lower inflation, higher investments, and more jobs.
    Second, on increasing trade, because it's perfectly obvious if you 
look at the stagnant employment situation in Europe, in Japan, or in the 
United States, that no great wealthy nation can grow wealthier and 
create jobs unless you have more customers for your goods and services. 
That's what NAFTA was about. That's what the GATT agreement was about. 
That's what meeting with the Asian leaders was about. That's what this 
hemispheric summit next year with all the leaders--or this year--with 
all the leaders of Latin America is about. That's what lifting billions 
of dollars of controls on exports of high technology goods, so that we 
can now sell them in the aftermath of the cold war, is about. We've got 
to have more customers for our goods and services.
    Third, on trying to stake out an American position in the new 
technologies of the 21st century, that means maintaining the 
technologies we have to have to keep our defense the strongest in the 
world, some of them being maintained by work being done in this State. 
It means as we downsize defense, having an aggressive defense conversion 
strategy so we can make the most of all the work that has been done and 
all we've already paid for, through the development of dual-use 
technologies. It means keeping our undisputed leadership in space, which 
is what the fight for the space station was all about. It means doing 
more in areas that are critically important where we have an undisputed 
lead like medical research, something you know more about here in 
Houston then virtually any other place in the country. It means building 
the information superhighway that the Vice President is so strongly 
advocating. It means making the environment a job creator instead of job 
loser. And it means having a sensible energy policy. The 
administration's oil and gas initiative was complimented recently by 
Dennis Hendricks, one of your distinguished leaders in this 
organization. And I thanked him before I came in for saying that it was 
a positive direction, nonintrusive but seeking to improve the 
environment in which we operate. That's the way we're trying to approach 
this.
    The next thing we've got to do is to focus on specific things we can 
afford to do to help generate new business and small business. The 
Secretary of the Treasury and I were talking while Mayor Lanier was 
giving his speech. In

[[Page 196]]

our economic plan last year, one of the things that wasn't noticed is 
the huge increase in the expensing provision for small business, which 
made 90 percent of the small businesses in this country eligible for a 
tax cut on April 15th if they invested more in their businesses, a new 
small business capital gains tax that Ventura Capital Association had 
asked for for years, and an extension of the research and development 
tax credit. This last year, we had a record increase in venture 
capitalizations of small companies in this country. That's what's going 
to generate the jobs of the 21st century and keep us ahead. We have to 
continue to focus on it.
    Finally, the economic strategy has a strong education and training 
component. And I'll talk a little more about that in a moment. But the 
first thing we had to do was to cut the deficit, to reduce spending, to 
increase some taxes, to put the money in a rigorous system which would 
bring the deficit down over 5 years, and to reduce the size of the 
Federal Government.
    Now, before this plan took effect last year, the 1995 deficit was 
projected to be $302 billion. Now, it's expected to be $176 billion, a 
40 percent reduction. That's why interest rates are down and inflation 
is low and investment is up. And if we keep doing it, we'll have 3 
straight years in a row where the deficit has gone down for the first 
time since Harry Truman was President. I was stunned, by the way, when 
my researchers gave me that. I made them go back and check three times. 
I said, that can't be true. It turns out it is.
    Now, if you look what's happened, we've had millions of Americans 
refinance their homes and businesses. You've got core inflation at its 
lowest rate in 20 years. You've got long-term interest rates at historic 
lows. If we can keep this going, you will bring the economy back, the 
private sector will. And it is the most important thing.
    Last year, this country created almost 2 million new jobs; 90 
percent of them were in the private sector. For years we've had an 
enormous percentage of our jobs created primarily by State and local 
government. Last year 90 percent of the new jobs came in the private 
sector. This country is enjoying strong economic growth in spite of the 
continuing problems in Europe and Japan. And we can continue to do it if 
we have the discipline to keep the deficit coming down.
    And I want to say something in defense of the people who voted for 
that economic program last year. Any Member of the Congress will tell 
you that if that budget had not passed when it did, NAFTA would never 
have passed, because we would have spent all of August, all of 
September, and all of October wallowing around Washington, fighting with 
each other about the nickels and dimes around the edges of the budget 
instead of focusing on NAFTA. We were about 100 votes down when the 
NAFTA fight started. It would not have passed if the budget hadn't 
passed first. The two things went together, and if that would have 
happened, we'd never had the GATT agreement. So it is very important, it 
seems to me, to recognize now that what we have to say is the thing 
worked, and we have to build on it.
    Today, our second budget is being presented in Washington, and the 
Budget Director Leon Panetta will deliver it to Congress and talk about 
its details. I just want you to know what the second budget does. It 
continues to cut spending because these budget caps are very tight. It's 
the toughest budget on spending cuts the Congress has yet seen.
    Listen to this: More than 60 percent of the major accounts in the 
Federal budget are cut. That means more than 350 specific nondefense 
programs are being cut, and over 100 of them are being eliminated 
outright. It's been a long time since that's been done. If the Congress 
adopts it, it will keep the deficit coming down, it will keep interest 
rates down, it will send a clear signal to the Fed and to the rest of 
the world that we mean business and that the investment climate will 
continue.
    These lower interest rates, if they can be maintained, will save 
over $20 billion in deficit in next year's budget alone and over $150 
billion in the next 5 years. Seven of the 14 major Cabinet departments 
are taking budget cuts. The Federal bureaucracy is slashed by 118,000 
under this plan. That puts us ahead of the goals set by the Vice 
President's reinventing Government task force, which had us at 100,000 
this year. And by the way, when we go through this thing in 5 years, we 
will have reduced Federal Government by attrition and management by 
252,000 so that by 1998 the Federal Government will be smaller than it 
has been in over 30 years. Why? Because if we don't do it, we can't keep 
the economy going in the right direction, and we won't have any money to 
spend on the things that 90 percent of you think we should spend more 
money on.

[[Page 197]]

    So most people read mysteries and not budgets. Most people think the 
budget is a mystery. [Laughter] But I hope that you will encourage the 
members of your delegation, especially this year when we're not having 
this contentious fight over the tax issue, to vote for this budget. 
Because if we don't do it, we cannot keep the economic recovery going. 
And if we do it, we can keep the recovery going.
    We can also find the money we need to invest in some things that I 
think are important. If we didn't reduce spending, if we don't reduce 
spending in some of yesterday's programs, we won't have the money to 
spend on the crime bill. Those things cost money, too. That crime bill 
has 100,000 more police officers, has more money to help the States 
build penitentiary beds, which you know a lot about in Texas, has funds 
for boot camps for first-time nonviolent offenders, and funds for drug 
treatment so that a lot of these young people who get out don't come 
back.
    If we don't do it, we won't have money for what's called the 
technology reinvestment project. Texas has gotten $25 million in it so 
far, to help develop dual uses, commercial uses for defense technology. 
If we don't do it, we can't do the information superhighway. If we don't 
do it, we'll have a very tough time holding on to the space station, 
because we have to slash other things to keep the space program going. 
If we don't do it, we won't be able to fully fund the highway program. 
And if we don't do it, I'm afraid some people will come back at defense, 
and I am unalterably opposed to cutting the defense budget any more. We 
have cut it a great deal, and I don't believe we can responsibly cut it 
more. I mean, we're cutting it, but I don't want deeper cuts in it.
    If we don't do it, we can't pay to redesign the unemployment system 
in the country. It's a big deal. A lot of you work a lot of people. This 
unemployment system that you're paying taxes into was designed for a 
time in the 1950's and sixties when the average person lost a job, was 
laid off, and eventually was called back to his or her old job. Now, 
most people who are laid off never get called back to their old job. The 
average person will change work seven or eight times in a lifetime, and 
the only cure for the fear of being unemployable is to be able to 
constantly learn new skills.
    Therefore, we believe that the present crazy-quilt patch of 150 
Government training programs and an unemployment system that is 
essentially passive until the benefits run out is wrong. We think when 
people lose work they should immediately start training for the next job 
and that your tax money shouldn't be squandered, essentially, paying 
people to live while they pursue a vain hope at a lower standard of 
living. And instead, we ought to have a reemployment system where people 
really can immediately and always be retraining if they lose the job 
they have. But we can't do it, if we don't cut the rest of the budget.
    This budget provides for the beginning of a national apprenticeship 
program for kids that don't go to college. Most of the new jobs won't 
require a college education. But you've got a chance of doubling your 
income when you get out of high school if you just get 2 years of 
further training. Our school-to-work initiative makes a big start on 
that. This budget will pay to implement the Goals 2000 program, which 
started back in 1989 when President Bush and the Governors negotiated 
some national education goals that I helped to draft then in my former 
life. This bill gives us a chance to achieve those goals by having 
national standards that are world-class and supporting local reforms of 
all kinds around the country. We can't fund this bill if we don't cut 
the rest of the budget. This budget dramatically increases the Head 
Start program. A young lady said to me today, if we could start all 
these kids in Head Start we'd have fewer of them getting in trouble 
later on. It dramatically increases Head Start. If we don't cut the 
budget, we can't increase Head Start.
    So I say to all of you, I hope you will support this process. It is 
not easy to eliminate 100 Government programs, because somebody likes 
them. It's not easy to cut 350; somebody likes them. Henry Cisneros has 
done a brilliant job at HUD. His budget increases funding for 
homelessness in a way that actually gets people off of the homeless 
rolls permanently. His budget gives more housing vouchers to people who 
are eligible, to let them go out into the private sector and make their 
own decisions about where to live and let the markets work.
    Do we cut some other programs? You bet we do. Why? There's $8 
billion in the HUD pipeline that should have been spent 2 or 3 years ago 
that can't be spent because of Government redtape. So Secretary Cisneros 
says we've got a homeless problem in this country. We

[[Page 198]]

have people out there, working people, who are eligible for help. Give 
them the vouchers, get them out there, let the system work, and cut 
something else.
    If you want us to follow some of these energy initiatives that we're 
doing through the national labs--you've got one of your own, Bill 
White's sitting over there, is the Deputy Secretary of Energy. We've got 
to cut the rest of the budget if you want us to do the things that will 
enable us to explore the new technologies which may revive the energy 
sector in this country. So I implore you to tell the folks that 
represent you, it's okay to cut to get the deficit down and to spend 
more where we need to spend it.
    Now, let me just make this one final remark. You might say, ``Well, 
that's fine you're going to really cut the deficit, but it's still going 
to be really big in 1998.'' And you would be right. And I want you to 
know here in Houston why that is. How can you cut defense, freeze 
domestic spending, hold Social Security within inflation, have revenues 
growing, and have the deficit going up? Answer--there is only one answer 
now, especially if this budget passes, there will only be one answer. 
The answer is: When I took office the Medicaid budget, health care for 
poor folks, was supposed to increase by an annual rate of between 16 and 
11 percent a year over the next 5 years, and the Medicare budget, health 
care for the elderly, was going to increase by a rate of between 11 and 
9 percent a year over the next 5 years. And if we do not reform our 
health care system, in 10 years we will be spending all your Federal tax 
money, all your new Federal tax money, on health care and nothing else. 
And we'll be spending it for the same health care, not for new health 
care.
    Now, let me drive this home. We estimate the Medicare budget will go 
up, let's say, 10 percent this year, when the case load's going up and 
general inflation is 3.5 percent, that the Medicaid budget would go up 
12 percent with the case load going up 2 percent and inflation where I 
said.
    Now, the only thing I want to say about the health care debate today 
is this, because I know you have to go, but I want you to think about 
this. I had a doctor in my office Saturday, a Republican from another 
State who has mobilized hundreds and hundreds of doctors in a 
professional unit. He came in and said, ``I am one of the few people in 
America who has actually read your bill. And I like it.'' But he said, 
``You see, I don't understand what is going on out there.'' He said, ``I 
read all this stuff, people that are for you, the people that are 
against you, and they're saying all this that doesn't have anything to 
do with what's going on out there in the real world.'' So without going 
into the details, let me just ask you to focus on this: Every plan 
proposed by anybody is a private plan. It keeps health care providers 
private and keeps insurance private, every one, including ours.
    The issue then--let's talk about this. Which plan would give more 
choice to consumers than the others? The answer is ours would, but you 
can check that out. Consumers are rapidly losing choice in the present 
system. Only about one in three workers today insured at work has any 
choice at all over who the medical provider is. Which plan would do the 
most to keep some funding for the academic health centers, the kind of 
centers that have made Houston the medical capital of the United States? 
Of the three major plans, ours is the only one that attempts to do 
anything for these academic health centers. Now, we have representatives 
here in the audience, they'll tell you we haven't done enough. We can 
fix that. That's peanuts in the context of the larger budget if that's a 
problem. But this is a big issue that never even gets raised.
    Which plan would cover more primary and preventive services? You 
talk to anyone that runs a hospital and they'll tell you that all of us 
are paying too much for our health insurance because the people who 
don't have any coverage only get health care when they're too sick, it's 
too late, they show up in an emergency room, and it costs out the wazoo, 
and then the hospital has to pass the cost along to someone else.
    Can you achieve the real goals for the health care system and ever 
get the deficit under control--two things at once--if everybody doesn't 
have to assume some responsibility for providing health care for 
themselves and for employees? This is a tough question, not free of 
difficulty. What about all the people who have part-time workers? What 
about small businesses? The problem is 70 percent of small businesses do 
provide health insurance for their employees, and their rates are 35 to 
40 percent higher than big business and Government rates. Anybody that's 
in a Federal health care plan, let me tell you, folks, is getting a good 
deal now.

[[Page 199]]

    Now again, I say this in the context of this budget so that you can 
remember that I said it 4 years from now. There will be no ultimate 
solution to the Federal deficit until we reform the Medicare-Medicaid 
expenses and get them closer to the rate of inflation. That cannot be 
done, in my opinion, having studied this for years as a Governor who 
used to have to break our budget every year on it, until there is some 
system by which all Americans have access to basic primary and 
preventive health care. But we have to do it in a way that preserves 
what is best about health care, which is the system of private providers 
that is a shining monument here in Houston, and to do it in a way that 
overall helps the American business economy, not hurts it.
    Now, is it easy to do? No. If it was easy, somebody would have done 
it already. It's the most complicated thing in the world. How could it 
not be, it's 14.5 percent of our gross national product. But we must 
address it if you wish to solve the Federal Government's budgetary 
problems. Otherwise, you mark my words, within a couple of years, you'll 
have to give up the space program and everything else just to pay more 
for the same health care. And we cannot do that.
    So I look forward to this health care debate in the spirit of 
excitement. This is important. This is the way I felt about NAFTA. If we 
can just be honest with one another and focus on the future and work 
through this thing, this is going to be one of the most exhilarating 
experiences this country ever went through because we're facing up to 
our challenges. But first we have to keep the deficit coming down, and 
we have to pass this budget. It ought not to be a partisan issue, and I 
need your help to do it.
    Thank you, and bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:50 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Ken Lay, chairman, Greater Houston 
Partnership, and professional golfer Jack Nicklaus.