    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 19, 1994]
    [Pages 1796-1802]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Governor's Leadership Conference in New York City
    October 19, 1994

        Thank you very much. You know, after the last several months in
    Washington, I'm sort of disoriented. I don't know how to react to that
    sort of reception. When I came in and you were so wonderful and warm and
    you were cheering, I said to the Governor, I said, ``Well,

    [[Page 1797]]

    shall we sit down now?'' He said, ``No, no, no.'' He said, ``That's part
    of your problem.'' He said, ``Let them cheer. When they boo, you sit
    down.'' [Laughter]
        When Andrew Cuomo, who as you know is a Presidential appointee,
    wrote his father a note and said, ``Ten minutes, don't be too long,''
    and then the Governor came up and embarrassed his son by telling you
    that, I wrote a note on the note. I said, ``Clinton's eighth law: Blood
    is thicker than water, but the paycheck is thicker than blood.''
    [Laughter]
        I appreciated what Governor Lundine said about my supporting tourism
    in New York. I have supported it in two ways. I brought the Democratic
    Convention here, and I come here. And then when I come here, no one else
    can get out, so they have to spend money. [Laughter] And so you know,
    I've gotten to feeling like a thief when I come to New York. I have to
    leave in the middle of the night so I don't inconvenience anybody. But I
    love to come, and I am delighted to be here. And I am delighted to be
    here with so many of you.
        I want to say a special word of thanks to Congressman Schumer for
    his work on the crime bill--thank you, sir--and to Congressman Rangel
    for many things, but especially for supporting our policy on Haiti
    before anybody else was for it. Thank you, sir.
        I appreciate the presence here of my longtime friend Bob Reich and
    the other members of our administration who are here, and those who have
    been here already. I'm proud that they are a part of this.
        You know, we're kind of practical people of this administration.
    There are a lot of folks who worked in State government and local
    government and the private sector who came to Washington. As a matter of
    fact, we think it's kind of strange that Congressman Gingrich says his
    goal in life is to convince you that I am the enemy of normal Americans.
    As somebody pointed out to me the other day, before I came to Washington
    I was one. [Laughter] And we tried to bring a lot of normal Americans to
    Washington who would not forget that most of what counts in this country
    is done somewhere else and that our job was to change the role of
    Government away from this back-and-forth pendulum of either trying to
    solve all the problem or sitting on the sidelines and acting as if they
    didn't exist. We have tried to bring a genuine constructive partnership
    to this country. And I must say, it is a lot easier in New York State
    and New York City because we've had good leadership to work with, and I
    thank the Governor and I thank the mayor for that.
        I must tell you that because I was a Governor for a good long while,
    I have a sympathy for people who like to be Governor for a good long
    while. [Laughter] It's the best job I ever had, in some ways. And I like
    it because it was a real job, dealing with real peoples and real
    problems and real opportunities.
        I think it makes a difference whether you have a partnership for
    growth in New York; I really do. And whether you think that or not is a
    big part of whether you will make any kind of difference. I think it
    makes a difference who's in the partnership. It makes a difference
    whether you have new ideas. Long before I ever dreamed of running for
    President and thought it was a practical option for me, I read the first
    volume of the Cuomo commission report. And I remember both volumes very
    well, all the ideas that they had, all the suggestions they gave not
    only to States but to our country for dealing with these problems. To
    me, that's what we ought to be doing in government, being catalysts for
    helping people take responsibility for their own lives and get together
    in their communities and reach across the lines that divide them and
    solve their problems and seize their opportunities.
        Twenty-one months ago I went to Washington, determined to do what I
    could to restore the economy, to make our Government work for ordinary
    Americans again, and to empower people to compete and win in the 21st
    century. After 21 months, there's a lot we still have to do. But it is
    clear that America is in better shape. We have more jobs, a lower
    deficit, low inflation, a smaller Federal Government doing much more.
    We're doing things that make Government work for ordinary people,
    valuing work and family with things like the family leave law, our
    initiatives in welfare reform, tax credits for working families just
    above the poverty line so they don't fall into the poverty line--no one
    who raises kids and works 40 hours a week should fail at either task--
    immunizing all the children in the country under the age of 2 by 1996.
        We've made a serious assault on crime. You've already talked about
    it a lot. Let me just say that a lot of the ideas in that crime bill
    have been pioneered here by Governor Cuomo, in-

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    cluding the boot camps and the after-school programs as prevention. It
    is a bill of punishment, police, and prevention, and it's a bill which
    will lower crime, not because of what the Federal Government will do but
    because of what the Federal Government has empowered you to do.
        One of the things that we're doing is hammering over and over and
    over again on the need to implement this crime bill, every single part
    of it, in the proper way: the safe schools provision, the violence
    against women provision, the victims rights provision, a lot of things
    most people don't even know are in there. If you do them all in New
    York, you will lower the rate of crime and violence, not because of what
    the Federal Government did but because of what you will be empowered to
    do with the tools that are in the bill.
        We also supported, as I'm sure the Secretary of Labor has already
    said, the idea of lifetime learning. The average 18-year-old will change
    jobs six or seven times in a lifetime. Many Americans today with good
    jobs still feel insecure because they keep reading about big companies
    laying people off, and they're afraid to change jobs when they're 45 or
    50. We have to make these kinds of changes the friend of ordinary
    Americans, because nothing any public official can do will repeal the
    laws of global economic change. But if we are prepared to seize them and
    make them our own, then all these changes will make life more exciting,
    more interesting for ordinary people. The changes in work will be an
    opportunity to move up, to broaden one's horizons, not to be undermined
    or have your family lose their security or have people lose their sense
    of self-worth. So this issue of developing a system of lifetime learning
    is hugely important in preserving the sense of optimism and strength and
    inner confidence that has always been at the core of what is America's
    greatness.
        We also clearly are working to make the world a safe and a more
    democratic and a freer place. For the first time since the dawn of the
    nuclear age, Russian missiles are no longer pointed at the United
    States. We have played a major role in trying to promote peace in
    Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, and of course, in Haiti. We have
    secured an agreement with North Korea to end that nation's nuclear
    program, which is terribly important. And we have told Iraq that we
    still believe the territorial integrity of its neighbors are inviolate
    and that it must not be enabled to intimidate the United Nations.
        All of this is exhausting work and sometimes frustrating work in a
    world that is ever changing. But it is clear to me that the rewards will
    go to people with vision and energy and discipline and an upbeat outlook
    on the future, and people who are not deterred.
        Let me say today the saddest moment for me in the morning was
    reading about the horrible bombing in Israel, the deaths of innocent
    civilians by a terrorist determined to wreck the quest of the Arabs and
    the Israelis for peace in the Middle East. If you think about the kind
    of disappointments and obstacles those people have to face every day--
    and they're still out there determined to sign that peace treaty with
    Jordan next week, to make a comprehensive peace in the Middle East to go
    forward--now those are real problems.
        The American people should look at the strengths and assets we have
    and say there is nothing that can stop us, look at strengths and assets
    New York has and just say there is nothing that can stop us. This is a
    very big deal when you see Americans feeling a little more pessimistic
    than the facts warrant.
        So I'm glad you're here. And if you don't do anything else when you
    leave but to pat each other on the back and convince yourselves that if
    you work together you will make a difference, you will have done more
    than half of the good you can do by showing up in the first place. And I
    hope you believe that.
        I want to talk very briefly about what we tried to do here. A big
    reason we've had some success in the last 2 years is that our
    administration came into office with an economic mission. We wanted to
    rebuild the American dream and make sure every American was empowered to
    take advantage of it. We had a long-term strategy as well as a short-
    term strategy. And we organized the White House and the administration
    in a completely different way.
        The key figure in that reorganization was Bob Rubin from New York,
    my National Economic Adviser. I don't even know if he's still here. But
    if it hadn't been for him, this whole thing would not have worked in the
    proper way. We have regular, disciplined, sustained efforts involving
    the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, the Trade
    Ambassador, the Council of Economic Advisers Chair, our Commerce
    Secretary, who's clearly the most active

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    Commerce Secretary in my lifetime, the SBA Director, who has changed the
    Small Business Administration dramatically. You now apply for an SBA
    loan on a one-page form and get an answer in 3 days.
        We work with all the other Departments you see here: The Education
    Department is a part of our economic strategy; the Health and Human
    Services Department and welfare reform is a part of our economic
    strategy; HUD is a huge part of our economic strategy. And we all work
    together in a disciplined way to think about where America is going in
    the rest of the world and what America has to do at home. And we work
    very hard to support and cooperate with and move forward with Governors
    and mayors and folks in the private sector, with whom we meet on a
    regular basis and work through the major issues.
        Now, if you look at the economy we confront, we all know what the
    strengths of it are. We also all know we have some problems: 30 years of
    accumulated social problems; 20 years of stagnant wages for hourly wage
    earners with limited educations, increasingly buffeted by a global
    economy; and 12 years of an economic theory that I don't think worked
    very well, except to give us a big debt and reduced investment.
        Our strategy was pretty simple and straightforward: reduce the
    deficit; increase investment in education and training, new
    technologies, and defense conversion; increase trade and the sales of
    American products and services around the world; work with business to
    sell abroad when it is appropriate and proper to do so; give special
    incentives to forgotten areas--you heard the talk earlier about the
    community development banks and the empowerment zones--so that we can
    get free enterprise into inner cities and isolated rural areas; reduce
    the role of Government wherever we can, reduce regulation, reduce
    bureaucracy, but increase the effective leverage the Federal Government
    has and be a good partner. That has been our strategy.
        Now, if you look at what's happened, the deficit is going down
    dramatically. It's about half of what it was when I took office, as a
    percentage of our national income. Trade has increased dramatically.
    Since NAFTA was ratified, trade to Mexico is up 19 percent this year;
    that's 3 times as much as our overall trade. The GATT world trade
    agreement will bring hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs into the
    country, and the Congress will adopt it, I believe, in late November.
    We're selling everything from rice and apples to telephones and Mustangs
    in Japan now, some of them for the first time. Every country in our
    hemisphere but one is now a democracy, and they're all going to meet in
    Miami in December and talk about how we can increase our common wealth
    and prosperity by working together. We are doing things, in short, that
    make a lot of sense.
        We've increased our investment in Head Start and apprenticeships, in
    providing more affordable college loans to middle class kids, in spite
    of the fact that the overall deficit has been reduced on the domestic
    side for the first time in 25 years this year. We still were able to
    increase our investment in education and training.
        Governor Cuomo mentioned in passing a very important thing about
    Long Island in defense conversion. We are investing hundreds of millions
    of dollars around this country to help communities where bases have
    closed that need to rebuild themselves and to help businesses that used
    to depend on defense business that's not there anymore. Defense
    spending's peak in 1987--it peaked in 1987. In 1993 when I took office,
    there was still $500 million in funds the Congress of the United States
    had appropriated for defense conversion that had not been spent. We were
    just leaving these companies and these communities out there floating in
    the wind with no strategy to bring them back into the industrial base of
    America and the industrial future of America.
        We are changing that now, and it is very important. If you look at
    New York, if you look at the economic profile of New York, especially
    out on Long Island, it is criminal to walk away from these companies
    that helped us win the cold war just because we are reaping the benefits
    of the cold war by reducing defense spending. So that's a big, big part
    of our economic strategy.
        These things are working. The community development bank legislation
    I just signed, but you will see when it comes out that we'll be able to
    create, we estimate, about 150,000 jobs in very isolated inner-city and
    rural areas just with the community development bank authority that has
    already been provided. So I am very hopeful about that.
        We're also shrinking the Government. It's an unusual thing for the
    Democrats to be doing, but we did it anyway. We passed bank reform

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    legislation that was hung up for 7 years--we'll save a billion dollars a
    year in compliance costs; trucking reform legislation that will save
    billions of dollars a year. There are already 70,000 fewer people
    working for the National Government than there were on the day I became
    President, and we are reducing the overall size of the Government by
    270,000, and all the money's going back to you to fight crime. That's
    how we're funding the crime bill.
        Now, what are the results? The smallest Federal Government since
    President Kennedy; 3 years of deficit reduction for the first time since
    President Truman; 4.6 million new jobs; more than half the new jobs this
    year above average wage; more high-wage jobs this year in our economy
    than in the previous 5 years combined; the first time in 15 years this
    year American companies will sell more automobiles around the world than
    Japanese companies; the first time in 9 years in the annual vote of
    international economists, the United States was voted the most
    productive economy in the world. We are moving in the right direction,
    and you should be proud of that.
        In the State of New York, the unemployment rate has dropped about
    1\1/2\ percent. There are over 100,000 more jobs. Two million New
    Yorkers are eligible for lower interest, longer repayment terms on their
    college loans; 3.1 million New Yorkers are protected by the family leave
    law. You'll get another 6,100 police in the crime bill; you've already
    gotten 108, within 2 weeks after the crime bill was signed, to New York.
    You've got 20 percent more funding in Head Start and $400 million for
    prisons. We are making a good beginning. We are moving forward, and
    we're doing it together. That's what partnerships are about.
        Do we have more to do? Of course we do. And I want to mention just
    some of the things that were left undone by this Congress and some of
    the things we need to do in our own partnership. We walked away from
    some very important environmental legislation. And I'll just mention
    one: The Superfund bill was filibustered at the end of the Congress. The
    Superfund bill to clean up toxic waste dumps was supported by the
    chemical companies, the unions, and the Sierra Club. I never saw
    anything they were all for at the same time. There was no one in America
    against the Superfund bill except more than 40 Republican Senators who
    didn't want any Member of Congress who happened to be in the other party
    or the President to come to New York and say, ``We're helping you to
    clean up toxic waste dumps.'' So the poison is in the ground because the
    filibuster poisoned the political atmosphere. And we have to change
    that. We have to change that.
        We walked away from three bills that will help to change the culture
    of Washington: campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, and a bill to
    say--and the business people ought to like this--a bill to say that when
    Congress imposes a requirement on private employers, the Congress has to
    observe the same requirement, live under the laws you impose on the
    private sector. And we're going to do our best to pass all three of
    those next year.
        And then--Governor Cuomo has already talked about health care. Let
    me say that it was interesting to me, the day after the health care
    legislation was declared over for this session, all the papers were all
    of a sudden filled with articles about how all the problems are still
    there: more and more Americans losing their right to choose their
    doctor; '93 census shows that another 1.1 million Americans in working
    families, in working families, lost their health insurance; the cost of
    health care is still going up at well over the rate of inflation. So
    this will not go away.
        And I also want to say--and I don't think I've ever said this in
    public before, but I finally made a study of this. When I came to
    Washington, I came to Washington from a State that was both low in per
    capita income and had a high percentage of poor people. So I never had
    to worry about the problems of New York, which is high in per capita
    income but has a high percentage of poor people. I am convinced now that
    that Medicaid formula is unfair to you, and I think we should change it.
    And I think that's fair. [Applause] Thank you. You all--you need to sit
    down, or you'll increase my mail from someplace else. [Laughter]
        But it is--I will work with Governor Cuomo, with Mayor Giuliani,
    with others. We will work through this. It's not going to be easy, but
    this is an error, I think, in policy that the Congress did not make on
    purpose. It was something that had not been fully accounted for. I mean,
    in the last couple of years when Charlie's been trying to get more for
    New York, there were people who were on purpose trying to get more for
    their States. I didn't mean it like that. Ran-

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    gel's eyes nearly popped out when I said that. [Laughter] But I think it
    is very important, and we will work through it.
        The other thing I want to say is something about welfare. Now
    welfare reform has become like God, motherhood, and apple pie;
    everybody's for it. And that's good. Franklin Roosevelt said in the
    Depression that to dole out relief in this way is a subtle destroyer of
    the human spirit. No one ever intended for it to work this way. And I
    think I would be fair in saying that no President has ever spent as much
    time as I have had the opportunity to spend, because I was a Governor,
    actually talking with people on welfare. I find that the people on
    welfare would rather us change the system than almost any other group of
    people in America; they're not very satisfied with it either.
        So what we have to do is to find a way that rewards work, that
    requires work, but that also enables people who work to be responsible
    workers and good parents at the same time. That is very important. I
    sent a welfare reform bill to Congress last spring. The Congress did not
    act on it this year. I hope and believe they will act on it next year.
    It will work to reduce teen pregnancy, to toughen child support
    enforcement, to educate people more, and also to give them the support
    they need for their kids if they go to work. And we will ask Congress to
    pass that plan.
        In the meanwhile, we have to keep granting these waivers. I saw when
    all of you were clapping before that you actually know what a waiver is.
    If you know what a waiver is, this is the largest group ever gathered in
    the history of the United States that knew what a waiver was--which is
    amazing to me, I mean, that's something which is truly laudable. A
    waiver means that the Federal Government has a bunch of rules and
    regulations it ought not to have to tell you not to do things you ought
    to be able to do, but we'll let you do it anyway. That's what a waiver
    is. And today I guess the most important thing I have to announce is
    that I'm going to give one of those waivers to New York for your welfare
    reform proposal.
        I believe very strongly in this. Everybody talks about welfare
    reform, but some people do it, and some people just talk about it. I
    want you to have a chance to prove that Jobs First works. I want you to
    have a chance to prove that you can either move 21,000 families off of
    welfare or keep them from going on in the first place. I want you to
    have a chance to prove what I know, that most people on welfare want to
    work if it will work for them in their family situation. And so that's
    what this welfare reform waiver will do. And I know you will make the
    most of it.
        I want to say again, this administration is dedicated to
    partnership. I am a Democrat by heritage, instinct, and conviction, but
    I don't believe the National Government has all the answers. I believe
    that we need a smaller but more effective National Government. I think
    that we need more activism at the grassroots level. Tomorrow I'm going
    to Massachusetts to sign an education bill that clears away for all
    States a lot of the rules and regulations that kept people from
    educating our children, especially our poor children, as well as they
    are capable of doing. This is a direction we must continue.
        The last thing I want to say is that this is not entirely a job for
    government, and attitude and personal conduct count. You know, those
    kids that beat up that New York City transit detective the other night,
    they should have been home. They shouldn't have been out on the street
    beating him up. There's nothing I can do as President to change that.
    But all of us together, if we talk about the responsibilities of parents
    and neighborhoods and community groups, if we take some of that crime
    money and use it to provide opportunities for kids to go someplace
    constructive late at night and to have role models that are positive
    role models, if they don't have a home to go home to, that will make a
    difference.
        And that's something you have to do. That's something you have to
    do. We need more people who will do what those two men did on the Upper
    East Side yesterday when they put their own lives at risk to help that
    man who was stabbed at the automated teller machine and then go get the
    people who stabbed him. That's what America ought to be about. We ought
    to lift people like that up, we ought to follow them, and we ought to do
    what they do. That's the last point I want to make to you. None of this
    is going to work unless most of us have our heads on straight.
        I've become a friend of Ken Burns, the wonderful filmmaker who did
    the series on the Civil War and did the baseball series. And so I
    watched it all. It's the only baseball I got this year. Reich is going
    to fix that for next year,

    [[Page 1802]]

    or he'll need three boxes to get up here when he comes back. [Laughter]
        But listen to this. Listen to what your Governor said in the
    baseball film. Baseball--Mario Cuomo is talking about why he always
    liked Joe DiMaggio. He said, ``Always you look for heroes. Always the
    people look up to see something that represents them, to something that
    is larger than them, and if it's perfect, something they might become.''
    Well, we can't all be Joe DiMaggio, but we could have all done what
    those guys did at the teller machine yesterday, every one of us. And we
    can all take one kid in trouble and give that boy or girl somebody to
    look up to. And we can all do less bellyaching and more visionary talk
    about the future. And every one of us, including me, every one of us
    could spend a little less time placing blame and a little more time
    assuming responsibility. That is what is great about your country.
        And I just want to leave you with this thought: When President
    Aristide went back to Haiti this weekend, there were all these Haitian
    people in the street with these little signs with their messages on it.
    And the most frequent message was, in Creole, a simple ``Thank you,
    America.'' And if you had seen just the eyes, the faces of our young men
    and women down there in uniform who brought them their freedom back,
    some of them Haitian-Americans, Americans of all different races and
    sizes and both genders, it would be impossible for you not to want to do
    whatever you could to make this country and this State what it ought to
    be.
        So the Governor will try to do his part. I'll try to do mine. If you
    do yours, the 21st century will be the best time this country ever had.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:45 p.m. in the Imperial Ballroom at the
    Sheraton New York Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gov. Stan
    Lundine of New York.