[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[February 14, 1994]
[Pages 253-256]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With Michael Jackson of KABC Radio, Los Angeles, California
February 14, 1994

    Mr. Jackson. Good afternoon to you there, sir.
    The President. Hello, Michael, how are you?
    Mr. Jackson. I must tell you, Mr. President, when people heard that 
you were coming on this morning, their already broad beams grew broader. 
People are very, very delighted that you've taken the interest, sir, and 
the direct concern that you have with the suffering out here. But it's 
an inspiring morning.
    Good morning, sir.
    The President. Good morning. It must be inspiring. The courage, the 
determination demonstrated by the school's administration, faculty, and 
students to get the campus back in operation so quickly, just a month 
later, is very impressive. I want to compliment President Blenda Wilson 
and everyone else who worked on it. I think she's there along with Cal 
State University Chancellor Barry Munitz. And I just have heard so much 
about it.
    FEMA spent a lot of time out there. I think Dick Krimm's with you 
there----
    Mr. Jackson. Yes, he is. He will be on shortly.
    The President. ----and we've had so many reports from Henry Cisneros 
and Federico Pena and all the people I've had out there and all the 
people from California who work at the White House who have been out 
there.
    I couldn't believe that you sustained $300 million worth of damage. 
And all of your 53 buildings were damaged, and you're back open a month 
later. It's a real tribute to you. So I'm glad to hear the California 
spirit alive and well. I can hear it in the background from all the 
clapping and everything.
    Mr. Jackson. It's here.
    The President.  The Vice President is coming out to Northridge on 
Wednesday to inspect the damage. And I hope you'll all go see him. He's 
younger and has less gray hair than I do, so more college students 
should like seeing him. [Laughter]
    Mr. Jackson. Did he write that comment, Mr. President?
    The President. No, no, but he might have. I mean, he's got a pretty 
good sense of humor about it. We kid each other a lot. And his sense of 
humor is great, especially if the jokes are at my expense. [Laughter]

Federal Aid to California

    Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, why does it take an earthquake, a 
disaster of this magnitude to get such a generous response from 
Washington?

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I mean, shouldn't some of the Federal aid and assistance be available to 
people who are dislocated by, for example, the closure of so many cold-
war-related industries here in California?
    The President. Absolutely. Absolutely, it does. It should happen. 
Since I have been in office, we've worked very hard to dramatically 
increase the amount of assistance in terms of job training and in terms 
of alternative development of jobs for use of defense technologies, for 
commercial purposes, and in helping communities put themselves back 
together.
    I came in here with a real philosophy that we ought to be spending a 
lot of money every year on defense conversion and on other things that 
dislocated people who wanted to work. So last year we spent $500 million 
on defense conversion. This year we're going to spend much more. And we 
need to do more.
    Now, keep in mind, one of the things that constrains us now is the 
enormous Government deficit, which the Congress is normally willing to 
suspend in the case of an emergency. So that's one of the reasons these 
things happen more quickly. But we are moving toward investing more in 
communities and in workers and in new technologies. And it shouldn't 
take a natural disaster to get us to plan for and take care of the 
fundamental needs of our people.

Natural Disasters and Insurance

    Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, Mother Nature really has socked it to us 
and given most of the Nation a devastating few months. As you read and 
study the reports and you watch the news, do you have an overall comment 
that you'd care to make about the way that citizens impacted by 
hurricanes, blizzards, floods, fires, and now earthquakes have responded 
to these disasters?
    The President. Well, I'd say the American people get an A-plus for 
the way they've dealt with this. You know, there was a 500-year flood in 
the Middle West. I visited there several times--just stunned by it. Then 
in the last several months you've had the fires in California, plus the 
mudslides and the terrible problem of the earthquake, and of course, 
another earthquake and the problems in Los Angeles just a couple of 
years before that. So this is really an enormously difficult time for 
people, especially in California but in many other parts of the country. 
And then in the East Coast, you know, we had the bitterest winter in 
over 100 years and many, many people died there.
    But it seems that when these things happen, when nature reminds us 
that we're not in full control of our destiny, somehow people almost 
relax more, and they come together; they think about what's really 
important; they trust each other. I think it's fascinating in how many 
communities the crime rate dropped dramatically after this earthquake 
occurred, when presumably it might have been easier to go out and steal 
from people. People didn't want to do it as much.
    I think that sometimes we need to remember what it was like in the 
midst of one of these natural disasters and see if we can't behave more 
like that all the time and realize we need each other and we are a 
community, and when we pull together and work together, we can do 
unbelievable things in a very short time. When we fight with one 
another, when we're divided, when we're shortsighted, then none of us 
can become what we ought to be.
    Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, I know you've toured the area. It's so 
easy to assess the damage and compare the scene with a war zone, but I 
think that's where the comparison ends. But this is a campus of 25,000 
students who are hell-bent and determined to get on with life, to get on 
with their education, and they don't look like refugees from a 
battlefield. Sir, should----
    The President. Good.
    Mr. Jackson. Good. Mr. President, should there be such a thing as 
automatic sort of mandated natural disaster insurance so that no one is 
left out when the hurricanes and the earthquakes, et cetera strike?
    The President. Well, we're looking at that. Let me say, we're trying 
to do more to try to reduce the cost of people and property of natural 
disasters by doing a better job of thinking ahead, by choosing where we 
will build with an awareness of potential disasters, by constructing 
what we do build very well, by retrofitting where it's cost-effective. 
You know, a lot of the retrofitting that was done on the highway 
structures in California really worked. And if we had had another 6, 7 
months before this last earthquake, we would have retrofitted more and 
had even less damage. So these are things that we have to really invest 
a lot more time and effort in.

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    With regard to having a Federal disaster insurance fund, I think 
that you have to remember that insurance works when the risk is spread 
broadly. And that requires a lot of people to participate, including 
many who don't think they're particularly at risk and others who may not 
be particularly at risk.
    So when the taxpayers do it like this, we spread the risk very 
broadly across all of us who live in America because some of us are in 
trouble. If there were a way to use insurance mechanisms to do a better 
job so we wouldn't have to increase the deficit, that would be better 
still. But we have to ask ourselves whether that would be putting even 
more burden on people who are really not at risk.
    We're thinking about it, and we're soliciting ideas. And there are a 
lot of bright people in universities all over California and in 
businesses who may have some good ideas about this. And I assure you 
that--three or four have already been presented to us, and we're going 
to research them all very carefully and eagerly look for other options, 
because we have been very fortunate that we could get the money through 
the Congress to deal with the floods and to deal with the earthquakes. 
But it is a difficult thing.

Health Care Reform

    Mr. Jackson. When we have health care reform, will the new system, 
whatever its final shape, better serve the masses in time of a major 
disaster?
    The President. Oh, absolutely. I kept wondering, when I was out in 
California and I realized how many people were hurt or needed medical 
care or thrown out of their homes and maybe subject to overexposure, how 
many of those people didn't have health insurance, whether they didn't 
go to the doctor or didn't visit the hospital just because they didn't 
have any coverage, or whether they did, took medical care, and now 
wonder whether they can afford to pay for it or whether they're at risk 
of bankruptcy.
    If we would simply join the ranks of all the other advanced 
countries in the world and provide comprehensive health care that can 
never be taken away through a system of guaranteed private insurance, it 
would stabilize life for working families enormously. I also will say 
that according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office study 
issued about a week ago, small businesses would benefit perhaps more 
than big businesses because their premiums would go down and everybody 
would be covered.
    We have simply got to stop making excuses and saying, ``Well, 
America's the only country in the world that can't figure out how to 
cover its folks.'' You've got almost one in four people living in 
California without any health insurance--citizens, never mind the 
immigrant population, citizens who don't have health care. We have got 
to do a better job.
    Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, Blenda Wilson, who's the president of 
CSUN, would love to ask you a question if she may. And by the way, I've 
just realized why it was difficult for you to get through to Boris 
Yeltsin, sir. He was worried that you might have been calling for 
disaster relief. [Laughter]
    The President. I thought I might have to get on the phone and phone 
around the world to get enough money to deal with it, but we made it. 
[Laughter]

Disaster Assistance and Education

    Blenda Wilson. Mr. President, we're delighted that you would join us 
on this opening of our spring term. While we've been talking about 
disaster relief and health care, I recall your work several years ago 
with the education commission of the States and found you to be a strong 
advocate of education, partly because, I think, you realize as we do 
that the young people and middle-age people, for that matter, who attend 
California State University will be those citizens and employees and 
employers and entrepreneurs that are essential to economic development. 
When you think about the relationship of disaster relief and higher 
education and work-study programs, which are very important to you, what 
would you say to the students that are gathered here at this public 
university?
    The President. Well, first of all, I'm proud of the fact that 
Congress was able to come up with the money to fully reimburse Cal 
State, Northridge, for the losses it incurred, along with a 10 percent 
match coming from the State. I'm very proud of that.
    Secondly, I hope that during this clean-up effort, there will be 
even more jobs available in the short run, which will help a lot and 
which some of your students will be able to get.
    But thirdly, and perhaps most important of all, the average age of a 
college student today is a little over 26 years of age. More and more

[[Page 256]]

people recognize that if they want to get a good job with a growing 
income, if they don't want to have the kind of stagnant wages that most 
American workers have been saddled with for 20 years, they've got to 
have at least 2 years of post-high-school education and training. And we 
are busily engaged here in Washington in passing some education 
legislation and some training legislation which will make it easier for 
every person in America to get those 2 years of post-high-school 
education and training. That's the most important thing of all. If you 
stay there, if you see it through, if you go on and get a 4-year 
education, the more you have, the better your prospects are. But we 
know, based on the 1990 census, we actually now have hard evidence that 
the global economy is punishing high school dropouts, punishing high 
school graduates, and rewarding people who have 2 years or more of post-
high-school education.
    So if we want to restructure the California economy and we want new 
jobs in high-tech areas without the guarantee of defense, we've got to 
make sure that every young person and every not-so-young person in 
California who will go to a place like Cal State, Northridge, does so.
    Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, I can't think of an occasion when a 
Chief Executive of the United States has aligned himself so immediately 
and completely with a Californian concern or issue, in this case a 
natural disaster. Our leader locally is Mayor Richard Riordan, of 
course.
    The President. Is he there?
    Mr. Jackson. Yes.
    Mayor Richard Riordan. Mr. President?
    The President. I had to do it, otherwise he would have camped out on 
my doorstep here and never gone home. [Laughter]
    Mayor Riordan. Well, I feel like you've been camping out on our 
doorstep. I'd like to thank you on behalf of not only the students, 
faculty, and staff of Northridge but all the citizens of L.A. for your 
A-plus effort and your A-plus team. We've had, I think, more Cabinet 
members in Los Angeles in the last month than you've had in Washington.
    The President. Thank you, Mayor.
    Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, thank you so very much, indeed, for 
taking our call on the spur of the moment like that, sir.
    The President. Thank you, Michael. Let me just say one thing. I want 
to compliment the Mayor and everybody that we've worked with in 
California. I know you could say that they're so good at this because 
you're becoming experts at dealing with disasters. But let me say, I was 
a Governor for 12 years. I went through floods and hurricanes, I saw 
whole little towns blown away. I have lived through a lot of these 
things. And I cannot say enough about the leadership of the Mayor and 
the people out there. The work that they've done, it's just been 
terrific.
    And in terms of doing this radio program, you know, one of the 
things I said I'd do if I ever were fortunate enough to be elected 
President is to try to give this job back to the people of this country 
and their real concerns. And you know, I just left a very important 
meeting with the President of Kazakhstan. That's a long way away, but it 
affects American interests. But our interests can only be affected there 
if people in California can succeed, if the people who are listening to 
this radio program can succeed.
    So, I think I did my job today by talking to you, and I just loved 
it. I thank you for giving me a chance to do it.
    Mr. Jackson. Thank you, sir.
    The President. Thank you. Bye bye.

Note: The telephone interview began at 2:35 p.m. The President spoke 
from the Oval Office at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to 
Dick Krimm, Assistant Associate Director for Response and Recovery, 
Federal Emergency Management Agency.