[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[April 7, 1994]
[Pages 601-605]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Arrival in Topeka, Kansas
April 7, 1994

    Thank you, Governor Finney, for your friendship, your leadership, 
and your kind remarks, and for your belief that every American and every 
Kansan ought to have health care that can never be taken away. Thank 
you, Congressman Slattery, for your long personal friendship and your 
support and for being such a strong voice in the Congress not only for 
fiscal responsibility but for basic sanity in our national policies.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to be back in Kansas. I want to thank 
Major General Rueger for welcoming me, and Colonel Dewayne Ellinson. I 
want to thank the people who helped to put this event together today, 
the carpenters local, the floorlayers local. I want to thank the Topeka 
High School Band over there and the cheerleaders and all those who are 
cheering. The people who are here from Pauline South Elementary School, 
thank you for coming. I want to thank the members of the National Guard 
and the police officers and others who made this day possible. I also 
want to acknowledge in the audience today the presence of the first 
American woman to be the Treasurer of the United States, Georgia Neese 
Gray. How are you, ma'am? God bless you for being here. I want to thank 
your Lieutenant Governor, your attorney general, your State treasurer, 
your local mayor, and the chairman of the Democratic Party for meeting 
me here at the airport. But mostly I just want to tell you it's nice to 
be back in Kansas.
    You know, since Jim was kind enough to mention the basketball game, 
you all know that for most of my public life I didn't live in 
Washington, DC. I was the Governor of one of your neighboring States. I 
lived and worked in an atmosphere very much like the way you all live 
and work. And I didn't understand what I often saw in Washington, where 
every position was pushed to its logical extreme, whether left or right, 
where it seemed that every debate took on more rhetoric than reality and 
shed more heat than light, where people seemed to be debating whether 
the Government could do ev-


[[Page 602]]

erything or the Government had to do nothing, where people were either 
told they were on their own or not challenged to assume any 
responsibility for their own future.
    I ran for President because that didn't make much sense to me, 
because I thought we ought to come together as a people, we ought to 
bridge the lines that are dividing us, and we ought to move to the 21st 
century together, recognizing that Government cannot solve all the 
problems but that we have a Government to discharge those 
responsibilities which have to be done by all of us together through our 
elected officials. I believed then and I believe even more strongly 
today that instead of paralyzing extremism, what this country needs is 
moderate, aggressive progressivism of people who are dedicated to 
getting together and getting things done. Cut down on the rhetoric, turn 
up the action, put people first, and move the country forward.
    Now, there has been a lot of rhetoric about the deficit and how 
terrible it was, but it tripled in the last 3 years. Instead of that, we 
have adopted an aggressive economic program designed to reduce the 
deficit, hold down interest rates, increase investment, and get growth 
back into this economy. In the past 14 months, the American economy has 
produced 2.5 million private sector jobs, twice as many as were produced 
in the previous 4 years. That's the kind of action I went to Washington 
to take.
    I have asked the United States Congress to pass a new budget that 
cuts spending in 300 different areas, eliminates 100 different 
Government programs, still invests more in education, in high-technology 
jobs, in defense transitions to help the people who won the cold war to 
win in the face of defense cutbacks, in health research and the things 
that will help us to win in the 21st century. And if it is adopted, it 
will mark the first time since 1969 that the President has proposed and 
the Congress has adopted an actual decrease in domestic spending, 
exclusive of health care and Social Security, and it will mark the first 
time since Harry Truman was President of the United States that we 
reduced the Government's deficit 3 years in a row. That's action, not 
rhetoric.
    We also have many challenges to face. The United States Congress has 
already done some things in the area of education and training which 
will be important for the future of Kansas, and more are on the way. 
Last year we reformed the college loan program so that more young people 
could borrow the money to go to college at lower interest rates and pay 
the money back on better terms, and so that tens of thousands of our 
young people could work in their communities solving problems at the 
grassroots level in the national service program and earn money to 
invest in a college education or further education and training. That 
will move our country forward.
    Just a couple of days ago I signed out in California a bill called 
Goals 2000, which for the first time in the history of America will 
write into our laws world class education standards for all our schools 
and all our students and support grassroots reform, not Government 
mandates but grassroots reform in every community in America to meet 
those world class standards.
    Soon the Congress will pass a bill we call school-to-work, for all 
the young people in Kansas and throughout the country who know they need 
more training after high school but don't want to go to 4-year colleges. 
We know from the census data that every one of our young people needs to 
finish high school and should get at least 2 years more of some sort of 
training if they want to get a good job with a growing income. We don't 
have a system to move people from school to work, but at the end of 4 
years, if this bill passes and I get to sign it, we will.
    Moving our people to the 21st century by making sure that they can 
change jobs, learn new skills, and always be able to compete and win, 
this is the kind of thing that I wanted to be President to do. It's a 
real thing, not a rhetorical thing, that will change the lives of the 
American people.
    And finally in this area, I have asked the United States Congress to 
completely change the unemployment system. You know and I know that even 
in the months when we create a lot of jobs in America, a lot of jobs go 
away. All over America today, small businesses are creating jobs; big 
businesses are still downsizing. We know that the average 18-year-old--
you look at those young people out there from this high school--the 
average one of these young people will change work eight times in a 
lifetime. We do not need to have an unemployment system that says you 
can live on unemployment payments for several months, and then your 
unemployment will run out and you still won't have a job. That's what's 
happening today. Most peo-


[[Page 603]]

ple do not get called back to their old job. We need a reemployment 
system so that the first day people are unemployed they immediately 
begin to train for, look for, and have help in finding a new job to 
build a new American economy. And we are going to do that this year in 
Washington.
    We're also trying to make your Government more responsive to you. 
The House of Representatives has before it historic legislation limiting 
the influence of lobbyists in Washington, increasing the influence of 
ordinary citizens. And I urge them to pass the lobby reform legislation 
soon when they come back.
    In addition to that, this Congress adopted last year an economic 
plan which, as you will find out on April 15th, raised the income taxes 
of the top 1.2 percent of the American people and devoted 100 percent of 
that money to deficit reduction--every last red cent--and lowered the 
income taxes of one-sixth of the American people who are working 40 
hours a week, who have children in the home, who are hovering just above 
the poverty line. We don't want them to go into welfare. We want them to 
stay in the work force. So we say, lower the taxes of the people who are 
working hard and playing by the rules, reward work over welfare, and 
make it possible for people to be successful workers and successful 
parents. And we did that for one-sixth of the American taxpaying 
families. And I am proud of that.
    I do want to thank Governor Finney for what she said about the 
response of our administration during the flood. We did everything we 
could to try to help people all over this country, but especially here, 
who were devastated by that flood. During the flood, when the Missouri 
River inundated the town of Elwood about 100 miles from here, FEMA 
responded with disaster relief, and the Corps of Engineers already today 
is guarding Elwood against the flooding in the future by helping to 
rebuild the levee.
    It's just one town, but there are hundreds of towns like that. Every 
time we had a disaster we have tried to say to the American people, 
``This is about people. This is not about ideology. It's not about 
political party. It's about delivering the goods.'' What I want is to 
see the Government work all day every day the way we work when we've got 
a disaster. Why should we wait for a disaster to do the right thing? We 
ought to get together and do the right thing all day every day to move 
this country forward.
    That brings me to the last two things I want to say to you today. 
The first business Congress will face when it comes back is action on 
the crime bill. I think all of you know that over the last 20 years 
we've had a big increase in violent crime and that even though many of 
our major cities are beginning to see small declines in the overall 
crime rate, we still have a higher rate of violent crime than any other 
major nation. We already have by far the highest percentage of our 
people in prison of any major nation. And still there seems to be no end 
in sight.
    Some people say the answer is tougher punishment. Other people say 
the answer is to reach these young people before they get in trouble and 
try to give them a better life. I say both are right, and we must do 
both. We have to be tough, but we have to be smart.
    I started out my career in public life as an attorney general almost 
20 years ago, and I thought crime was bad then. But I never dreamed that 
I would live to see the time when children would actually stay home from 
school, over 150,000 every day, because they were afraid to walk to 
school or afraid to sit in a classroom or afraid to walk in a hall. I 
never dreamed I would see towns, even towns in my home State of 
Arkansas, where gang initiations would require people to go in and pull 
robberies with guns that could turn into murders. I never dreamed I 
would see young people, better armed than police officers, with 
semiautomatic weapons shooting people at random. I never dreamed I would 
see that. And I tell you, we have got to do something about it.
    Our crime bill will do the following things: Number one, it will put 
100,000 more police officers on the street, working the streets, working 
the neighborhoods, knowing the people who live there, in community 
policing. And it will lower the crime rate. If there are those of you 
here who don't believe that you can do it, let me say all you have to do 
is look at the examples all over America. In the city of Houston, Texas, 
which had one of the highest crime rates, one of the highest murder 
rates in the entire country, when the mayor got elected and put 660 more 
police officers on the street and they started working with the 
communities, the crime rate went down 22 percent in 15 months. The 
murder rate went down 25 percent. And the mayor got reelected with 91 
percent. And I think the two things were connected. We can

[[Page 604]]

do better. We need more police officers on the street helping to make 
our young people and our families safer.
    The bill also toughens sentences for a lot of crimes and says if you 
commit three crimes which cause violence or are reasonably likely to 
cause serious violence, you are not eligible for parole. A small 
percentage of criminals do a large percentage of the violent harm in 
this country. We should identify them and isolate them. And that is very 
important.
    Finally, the bill provides funds to give drug treatment to young 
people, to have community recreation for young people, to provide young 
people a place to go after school or before school, to give communities 
the means to deal with all these kids that are coming from broken 
families in difficult neighborhoods and troubled circumstances to keep 
these things from happening in the first place. An ounce of prevention 
is worth a pound of cure. My mother told me that when I was 6 years old, 
and it's a whole lot more true today than it was 40 years ago. We are 
trying to give you an ounce of prevention, and I hope you in Kansas will 
take full advantage of it when the crime bill passes.
    Now, the last thing I want to say is when we leave here, Congressman 
Slattery's going to take me over to a forum. We're going to hear from a 
bunch of small business people and talk about whether we can provide 
health security for all Americans.
    Let me just tell you what the stakes are. We are the only country in 
the world with an advanced economy that doesn't provide health care 
security to all its citizens. All of our competitors have figured out 
how to do it. We are spending 40 to 50 percent more of our income on 
health care than any of our competitors. We are spending about $90 
billion a year--and that's real money everywhere, folks--on paperwork 
and rules and regulation because of the way we organize the financing of 
health care that nobody else does.
    On any given week in America 58 million Americans have no health 
insurance; 81 million Americans live in families where somebody has a 
preexisting condition, a child with diabetes, a father who's had a heart 
attack, a mother who's had cancer. They either can't get health 
insurance, or they pay more than they can afford, or they can never 
change the job they're in because their new employer will not insure 
them. Three-quarters of the American people have lifetime limits on 
their insurance policy so that, God forbid, if they should have one 
child with a terrible illness that drags on for 10 or 15 years, they 
could lose all their insurance at the time they most need it. That is 
the reality of the world in which we live. No other nation permits this 
to happen, only the United States.
    The result of all this is, small business is paying 35 percent more 
for health insurance than big business and government today. Every day 
more and more people lose their health insurance; about 100,000 a month 
lose it forever. The Government, as Congressman Slattery will tell you, 
is cutting defense spending, cutting domestic spending, cutting 
everything, but health care costs are still going up at 2 to 3 times the 
rate of inflation so that we can pay more for the same health care. This 
system is not working.
    We have the best doctors, the best nurses, the best health care 
providers, the best medical research, the best technology in the world, 
and the worst system of financing health care. And we have to do 
something about it.
    Now, those who like the system the way they have it now say that I 
want to give this country some sort of Government program of health 
care. I don't. You have one, though. It's Medicare, the Government 
program for older people. And most older people feel pretty secure with 
it. But I don't propose to do that. What I want to do is to extend the 
system we have now, guaranteed private health insurance for all 
Americans, and to extend the choices we have now, give every American 
family at least three choices every year of doctors and health care 
plans.
    I want to protect people from unfair insurance practices just as 
Governor Finney is trying to do here. I don't think people should pay 
more because they are older or pay an unreasonable amount because 
somebody in their family has been sick. I don't think people should be 
able to be cut off of health insurance.
    I want to have these benefits guaranteed at work. Why? Because 80 
percent of the people who are uninsured are in working families. And 90 
percent of the health insurance in America today is covered at work 
where the employer and the employee share the costs.
    Can we do it without bankrupting small business? Of course we can. 
You have to give discounts to really small businesses that operate

[[Page 605]]

on limited profit margins. Of course we can. Can we do it and be fair? 
If everybody does it so no competitor has an advantage, yes, we can.
    Will we continue to be the only country in the world that shovels 
more of our health care dollars into paperwork and less into health 
care? Will we continue to be the only advanced country that has another 
100,000 Americans a month lose their health insurance? Will we continue 
to discriminate against small business people and self-employed people 
and let them pay 35 to 40 percent more? Will we continue to have a 
situation where rural folks don't have access to doctors? I don't think 
so.
    I believe we can do better. I think you think we can do better. And 
if we cool the rhetoric and talk about the facts and have practical and 
compassionate approaches to this, we will solve this problem. I'm here 
in Kansas to try to do it today.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:35 p.m. at the Kansas Air National Guard 
ramp. In his remarks, he referred to Maj. Gen. James F. Rueger, Adjutant 
General of Kansas; Col. Dewayne Ellinson, Commander, 190th Air Refueling 
Group, Kansas Air National Guard; Robert T. Stephen, Kansas attorney 
general; Sally Thompson, State treasurer; Mayor Henry Felker of Topeka; 
and Dennis M. Langley, Kansas Democratic Party chairman.