    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [November 5, 1994]
    [Pages 2001-2007]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Association of Realtors in Anaheim, California
    November 5, 1994

        Thank you very much, Bob Elrod, for those kind remarks. Gil Woods,
    Secretary Cisneros, I'm delighted to have you with me here today, and I
    thank you for your outstanding work in the area of housing, for all the
    things you are doing to make our country a better place. I'd also like
    to thank the United States Marine Corps Band from El Toro who played
    before I came. I thank them.
        I am delighted to be here with all of you, including, I understand,
    hundreds of you from 36 nations, including some newly emerging
    economies, who have traveled here for this convention.
        I was kind of looking forward to coming here today. You know,
    Saturday is traditionally moving day in America, and families think
    about moving toward new homes. For me, it was just another opportunity
    to move out of Washington and come see you. [Laughter]
        This has been an interesting 2 years for me. There have been some
    great times and some not-so-great times, some that were exhilarating and
    some that were nearly bizarre. Some days I feel like the boy who told
    his mother that he really didn't feel like going to school, and his
    mother said, ``But Son, you have to go to school. I raised you to do the
    right thing.'' He said, ``But it's not fun for me at school anymore,
    Mother. I mean, the students don't like me. The teachers don't like me.
    The coaches groan when I walk by. Even the custodial workers don't like
    me.'' She said, ``Son, you have got to go to school. You're intelligent;
    you're healthy. You don't have a good excuse. Besides, you're 45 years
    old, and you're the principal.'' [Laughter] So I try to show up,
    regardless. And I'm glad to show up here today.
        Today I want to talk with you about the dream of homeownership and
    the larger American dream of which it is a part and what we can do
    together to keep the economic renewal that began 21 months ago going. I
    ran for President of this great land of ours because I felt that for too
    long our National Government had neglected issues that are fundamental
    to our national strength, our security, and our future: good jobs,
    strong families, better schools, safe streets, and a world more full of
    security, trade, freedom, and peace.
        In this country, when I took office, we had already been grappling
    for 30 years with profound social problems that have disturbed every
    person in this great hall today, affecting the breakdown of our
    families, our communities, the rise of crime and drugs and gangs and
    guns.
        We have lived, and certainly you have lived, with about 20 years of
    economic stagnation for many ordinary Americans who are the bulk, the
    heart and soul of the home-buying public, people who work year in and
    year out for wages that have barely kept up and often have not kept up
    with inflation. And we have had--we had had 12 years of a policy which
    became loosely known as trickle-down economics, with which I deeply
    disagreed and with which you

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    as an association at least disagreed with specific parts of, as I heard
    in my introduction, the things that we reversed from the '86 tax act.
        When I became President, we put together an economic strategy that
    was comprehensive in approach, long-term in vision, but quite basic:
    reduce the deficit; change the way Government works, make it smaller
    with less regulation, more efficiency, a greater emphasis on
    partnership, and increase the impact of the things that you should do;
    ease the credit crunch; help small business; invest more in the security
    of our families and the skills of our people; invest in new technologies
    and defense conversions; increase trade.
        We have pursued this strategy with discipline and persistence and
    success. The deficit includes a spending cut of $255 billion. This year
    alone, it is $100 billion less than it was projected to be when I took
    office. We are looking at 3 years of deficit reduction in a row for the
    first time since Harry Truman was the President of the United States.
        In changing the way Government works in this country, we have
    adopted now two budgets covering 6 years, which will reduce the size of
    the Federal Government by 272,000, to its smallest size since John
    Kennedy was the President of the United States. Already there are 70,000
    fewer workers working for the Federal Government than there were on the
    day I was inaugurated President.
        We have deregulated banking, deregulated trucking. We have gone a
    long way to deregulate Federal rules and regulations on States, giving
    20 States permission to try their own ideas to move people from welfare
    to work, giving 9 States permission to try their own ideas to find ways
    to increase the number of working people who have health insurance in
    this country.
        We are working hard to change the way our Federal Government relates
    to our schools with very strong national standards of excellence in
    education but deregulating the way the schools meet those standards,
    instead emphasizing local reforms, grassroots initiatives, all kinds of
    changes initiated by people at the local level to help achieve the kind
    of learning that we simply have to have if our people are going to
    compete and win in the 21st century.
        And inasmuch as I am here in Orange County, I have to say a special
    word of thanks to a member of my administration who happens to be an
    Orange County Republican. Roger Johnson, who runs the General Services
    Administration, has helped to spearhead our reinventing Government
    initiative to make sure that we not only downsize the Government, that
    we also make the Government work better. If you ask the people in
    California, for example, we rebuilt all the highways out here that were
    damaged by the earthquake in about half the time that people said we
    could do it if we worked flat out. We did it not by Government mandate
    but by simply saying we would pay you more if you finished quicker.
    [Laughter] A novel idea, long discarded by the Government, revised for
    the California earthquake rebuilding effort.
        We finally adopted a bill to change the way the Government buys $200
    billion worth of goods and services with your tax money every year. And
    in so doing, by stripping away rules and regulations, we are saving $50
    on every single Federal Government purchase, under $2,500, a year. No
    more $500 hammers. No more $50 ashtrays. We have opened the markets to
    the kind of competitive pressures all of you observe.
        This year, even though we reduced defense and domestic discretionary
    spending for the first time in 25 years, we are investing more in Head
    Start, in more affordable loans for middle class students, in national
    service to allow young people to earn money for their college education
    by serving their communities at the grassroots level, in apprenticeship
    programs for people who don't go to college but do want good training
    and good jobs for the future.
        And we are taking all the money that we are saving by reducing the
    Federal bureaucracy by 272,000 and putting it into financing the crime
    bill, giving the money right back to grassroots communities to hire
    police officers, to institute the prevention and the punishment programs
    that I believe can lower crime and violence in this country if people at
    the community level will spend the money in the proper way. We took the
    money from the Washington bureaucracy and gave it to every community
    represented by every person in real estate in this entire hall. I think
    it was a good switch. It will make our country safer.
        We have also increased our investment in new technologies and
    defense conversions to help communities that have been hurt by base
    closings or by their big industries losing defense contracts. And we
    have dramatically expanded

    [[Page 2003]]

    trade with NAFTA, with the GATT world trade agreement. As soon as the
    election is over, literally a couple of days after that, I have to go
    all the way to Indonesia for the second annual meeting of the leaders of
    the Asian-Pacific economic group. It's a leadership organization that I
    really got to meet for the first time as leaders in Seattle last year.
    Why am I doing this? Not because I want to take another trip 2 days
    after the election but because Asia is the fastest growing part of the
    world economy and the United States needs to be in those markets. It's
    high-wage jobs for us. We have to continue to push that approach.
        Let me say that just this year, our exports to Mexico since we
    adopted NAFTA are up by 18 or 19 percent, 3 times the overall growth in
    our trade. Auto exports to Mexico are up 500 percent. I just came back
    from Michigan, where the biggest complaint is the amount of overtime the
    autoworkers are having to work. That, folks, is a high-class problem.
        Now, this is the strategy of which you were a part when your
    organization supported our efforts last year. What I want you to know is
    it is working. Just yesterday we learned that unemployment in the United
    States had dropped to 5.8 percent, a 4-year low, and that unemployment
    in California had dropped to a 3-year low at 7.7 percent.
        For those of you who aren't from here, let me tell you what happened
    to California. They not only went through the national recession, but
    California, with 12 percent of the population, had 21 percent of defense
    expenditures and suffered the impact of 40 percent of the base closings.
    So they're lagging a little behind the national recovery, but they are
    coming, too. They had a substantial drop in unemployment last month; now
    they're at a 3-year low.
        Overall, the economy of our country has produced more than 5 million
    new jobs in the last 21 months, 91 percent of them in the private
    sector. In this year, the best news may be that about half the new jobs
    are high-wage jobs, that more high-wage jobs have come into the American
    economy in 1994 than in the previous 5 years combined. That's good news
    for homeownership. It's good news for the American middle class. It may
    mean that after a very long period of time, we are turning around
    average wage levels by changing the job mix in America.
        I mentioned the auto industry to you; there are more people working
    in the auto industry now than in any year since 1979, even though they
    are much more productive and it takes far fewer workers to produce a car
    than it did in 1979. For the first time since 1979, automakers in the
    United States have produced worldwide and sold more cars worldwide than
    their Japanese competitors, for the first time in 15 years. And in the
    annual vote that occurs every year of international economists, for the
    first time in 9 years the United States was voted the most productive
    economy in the world. We are moving in the right direction.
        I have to say, as has already been noted, that we have focused
    intensely on the real estate industry as a part of all of this, because
    you are one-fifth of our gross domestic product, because we need a
    healthy real estate sector. And in the economic program last year, when
    you asked for passive losses to be restored for real estate
    professionals, when you asked for FHA limits that moved with the
    markets, when you asked for mortgage revenue bonds to be extended
    permanently, when you asked for a secondary market for commercial real
    estate loans, you got those things in our economic program because they
    were good for the United States and for our economy.
        Housing starts are up 30 percent since January of '93. And after
    declining by 664,000 the previous 4 years, construction jobs have
    increased by 436,000 since those changes were made and since we have
    begun to move this economy forward in the last 21 months. And I thank
    you for your contribution to the economic progress of the United States.
        I want to talk now about where we go. But I have to say, just for a
    moment, if you will indulge me, since I know I have a good bipartisan
    crowd here--there may be more, indeed, Republicans then Democrats in
    this audience--this is a rather curious election season. I mean, after
    all, if I were a Republican President who said to you, ``Look, we've
    reduced the deficit, reduced the size of Government, gotten the economy
    going again, adopted the toughest crime bill in history, promoted peace,
    and reduced the nuclear threat and increased trade all around the
    word,'' the Republicans would say it would be unpatriotic to campaign
    against the people who voted for those policies in their races for
    Congress. I think that's right.

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        And yet, we are living in a time of such cynicism that a lot of
    these races all around the country are being dominated by people who
    say, ``Vote for me because I know that the Government is inherently bad,
    that everything they do is wrong, that anything they do will make the
    problem worse, that if anything good happens in this country while Mr.
    Clinton is in office, it's either in spite of him or unrelated to the
    fact that, like the principal, he shows up for work every day.''
    [Laughter]
        Now imagine this--suppose your office worked that way. And some guy
    comes in, and he says, ``Hire me to work in your real estate office
    because the real estate industry is inherently sick, and you couldn't do
    anything right if you wanted to. And if you hire me, I'll sit in the
    office all day, and I won't try to sell a house.'' [Laughter] If half
    the people who came to work in your place every day said, ``I'm showing
    up for work, but really we're going in the wrong direction, and we can't
    make anything good happen, and that glass is half empty,'' you would all
    be broke. And we are seriously entertaining giving our votes to people
    who tell us these things.
        Folks, the Government is neither inherently good or bad. It is our
    tool. It is the instrument that reflects us. It is what we make of it.
    It can do wrong; it can do right. It can be good; it can be bad.
        My view has been that we have tended to see Government in too much
    black or white terms. We'd look to Government as a savior when we're in
    trouble, and the rest of the time we say that we ought to junk it. It's
    either our savior, or we want it on the sidelines. The truth is, in my
    opinion, as we move toward the 21st century, Government should be seen
    as an instrument that seeks to create opportunity in the private sector.
    It seeks to empower people and then challenges people to assume both
    individual and community responsibility, because that's where most of
    the action is in America today. The Government cannot do as many things
    directly, and should not try; but without a sensible, aggressive,
    focused Government, working in partnership and challenging people to
    assume responsibility for their own lives, this country cannot live up
    to its potential.
        Many of the things that we do actually matter. The family and
    medical leave law made a difference in the lives of millions of
    Americans who wanted to be successful parents and workers, who wanted to
    be able to take a little time off when they had a baby born or a sick
    parent without losing their jobs.
        Our expansion of Head Start made a difference. That program works. A
    lot of kids are going to wind up being good students and good citizens
    now who might have taken a different path in life. Those things make a
    difference.
        The changes we made in the real estate laws, reversing the mistakes
    that were made in 1986, made a difference to you. It makes a difference
    whether we do the right thing or the wrong thing.
        So the only thing I ask you to do, without regard to your party or
    your philosophy, is to remember what we did here has made a difference.
    As they say back in Arkansas, where I come from, if you find a turtle on
    a fencepost, chances are it didn't get there by accident. [Laughter] And
    I think you ought to think about that.
        And what we need in this country so much is to get away from this
    whole kind of negative-dominated way of talking, where we scream at each
    other instead of visit with each other. Believe me, I don't have all the
    answers. And if you try to do as many things as I've tried to do, you'll
    make a mistake or two, and I acknowledge that. But what we need in this
    country is people in public life who do what you expect when you're
    trying to get to sell real estate: You've got to show up every day with
    a positive attitude and a willingness to look at the facts and a
    willingness to learn and a determination to make progress. That's what
    we need. We need to discuss these things with one another.
        These social problems we've got in this country, I say again, have
    been developing for 30 years, but they are of profound importance. We
    can fix the economy and if we lose millions of our kids, like those kids
    that dropped that 5-year-old out of that high rise in Chicago, well,
    it's going to be hard for America to be what it ought to be.
        And these economic problems are of profound complexity. When people
    work harder and they get more productive and they make the economy grow
    with no inflation, then the first thing they're told is, ``The economy
    is growing with no inflation, but we might have inflation, so we're
    going to raise interest rates so you won't get an increase in your
    income.'' These are frustrating, complex problems. On the other hand,

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    we don't want inflation. You look at these countries that are gripped
    with inflation. It will kill your economy. These are complicated
    problems. But what we need in America today is a country that should be
    full of optimism and hope and a conviction that we can all make a
    difference.
        When I came back from the Middle East, I was so impressed by that. I
    looked at the faces of our young men and women in uniform in the Persian
    Gulf who moved so quickly against Saddam Hussein's aggression. I looked
    at the people who were there at the peace signing between Jordan and
    Israel and how grateful they were for the role of the United States in
    that peace. And I thought to myself, around the world, nobody is cynical
    about the United States; they know this is a very great country. All I
    ask you to do is to bring your differences into the framework that this
    is a very great country, moving in the right direction, leading the
    world. And we can solve our problems but only if we speak with one
    another and listen to one another and stop just throwing these verbal
    bombs across the fences that divide us and turn us into cynical and
    negative people. We're not going to get anywhere doing that. [Applause]
    Thank you.
        I'd like to take the remainder of my time to talk a little about
    what you came here to discuss, and that is homeownership and whether as
    partners we can do anything to increase it. If you think about it, the
    idea of having your own home is the ultimate expression of optimism.
    Homes are for families. They make for a more secure environment for our
    children. They create pride and self-esteem. They are the extension of
    our personality, our hopes, our dreams. For most of us, they're the main
    harbor of all of our collected memories. They are the most important
    investment in financial security that most Americans ever make. And most
    people who own homes care more about their own communities and have a
    bigger stake in solving the kind of problems that we've been here
    talking about today.
        You know, I was thinking this morning as I flew over here, I have
    very vivid memories of every home I ever lived in, even when I was just
    3 or 4 years old. And I bet all of you do, too. I can hardly remember
    anything about my very early childhood, but I remember the feel, the
    look, the atmosphere of the first home I ever lived in. I think we all
    agree that more Americans should own their own homes, for reasons that
    are economic and tangible and reasons that are emotional and intangible
    but go to the heart of what it means to harbor, to nourish, to expand
    the American dream.
        A national survey recently found that most people won't start saving
    for a home until they believe that they can actually buy a home. And I
    want to say to the American people, and especially to young families, if
    that's what you think, you ought to start saving now, because I am
    determined to see that you have the opportunity and together we can make
    that opportunity for the young families of our country.
        I am committed to a new and unprecedented partnership between
    industry leaders and community leaders and Government to recommit our
    Nation to the idea of homeownership and to create more homeowners than
    ever before. I heard the kind introduction--well, of course the home
    mortgage deduction helps millions of ordinary citizens to achieve the
    dream of homeownership. Of course it does. But I believe we can do even
    more.
        As the economy recovers, we know that we're going to make progress
    anyway. There are 1.5 million more homeowners in America today then
    there were 22 months ago. Housing starts are up and sales and profits
    are up. Here in California, where, as I said, the economy has been in
    difficulty, the pace of home sales for the first 9 months of this year
    is the highest in 5 years.
        But still we face serious problems. Troubling changes occurred in
    the housing sector after 1980. After 46 years of steady growth,
    homeownership expansion began to head downward. Inflation, recession,
    stagnant incomes, the failure to enforce laws prohibiting discrimination
    in housing and lending, high costs and a reduced role for FHA perhaps
    all played a role. But by 1992, the national rate of homeownership had
    slipped dramatically. Homeownership for young families fell from 44.5
    percent in 1980 to 37.6 percent by 1992. In 1980, more than 70 percent
    of our children lived in homes owned by families. In 1991, that had
    fallen to less than 63 percent. By 1990, 2 million young American
    families who would have become homeowners if the upward trend had
    continued, did not have the chance to own their own home. We have got to
    turn this around. We have to move this measure or our national
    prosperity forward as well. And I am convinced that we can do it.

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        Therefore, today, I am directing HUD Secretary Cisneros to develop,
    in cooperation with the most significant members of the housing industry
    and government at all levels, a plan to boost homeownership to an all-
    time high in the United States before the century is out.
        This initiative will draw heavily on the expertise of those of you
    in real estate, financing, and building. Representatives of State and
    local governments and nonprofit community-based groups will join in.
    Participants from our administration will include the Assistant to the
    President for Economic Policy, the Assistant to the President for
    Domestic Policy, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Veterans
    Affairs. I want them to write and send me, within 6 months, a detailed
    strategy that recommits America to homeownership, that will add millions
    of new homeowners by the end of this century.
        I can assure you--just don't forget, the end of this century is just
    a couple of years away--I can assure you that this is not a report that
    will sit on a shelf. It is one that will be implemented. And let me be
    clear, this is not a Government program. I have asked for the
    involvement of realtors, homebuilders, mortgage bankers, Fannie Mae,
    Freddie Mac, insurers, the Habitat for Humanity, bankers groups,
    nonprofits, 40 other groups already on board to do their part. This is
    an initiative based on cooperation, not a Government program.
        We can achieve the results we seek for America's homeowners if we
    take seriously the lessons I mentioned earlier about the way we reinvent
    and change the role of Government, not what Government can provide but
    what Government can help make it possible for you to provide.
    Specifically, I've asked the Secretary to focus, in the beginning, on at
    least three areas. First, I directed this group to find ways to cut the
    costs and the regulations involved in buying a home. I want it to be
    simpler, less costly.
        Second, I want to target new markets, underserved populations, tear
    down the barriers of discrimination wherever they are found. Let me just
    make this point--[applause.] Thank you. Look at our trade policy. What
    are we trying to do? We tore down barriers to trade with Mexico because
    we knew they'd buy more of our products. We would buy more of theirs;
    they would buy more of ours. It would change the job mix in America for
    more high-wage jobs. The biggest untapped market in America for many of
    us are the millions and millions and millions of people that the economy
    of the 1980's left behind, people who live in our cities, people who
    live in our isolated rural areas, people with productive capacities who,
    if they can become consumers, can explode the American economic growth
    rate well into the next century. That is what this is all about, and we
    should all focus on it.
        Third, I want to develop new strategies for educating those who
    haven't considered becoming homeowners because they don't have an
    adequate comfort level or enough information to act. And believe it or
    not, at least our research indicates it's a much bigger problem than I
    would have thought when we began to look into it. Let me go through
    these issues briefly one at a time.
        A modest starter home today costs about $94,000 in many parts of the
    country, even more here in California. With only a 5 percent down
    payment and closing costs, that's about $9,000 up front. Half the young
    families in this country make about $25,000 a year. Well, it's hard to
    save $9,000 when you're raising children on less than $25,000 a year.
    Many families are paying more in rent than it would cost them to own a
    home and to build equity, but they can't come up with the front-end
    money. We have to do better.
        Secretary Cisneros has taught me the term ``lifer.'' As an old
    attorney general, I thought that had to do with the criminal justice
    system. But today, more and more, it refers to people who are renters
    for life, middle class Americans who have no hope of becoming
    homeowners. We can do better than that, and we will.
        We have to do a better job of reaching the underserved, of
    eradicating discriminatory practices that prevent minority families from
    finding, financing, or buying the home of their choice. It's wrong for
    anybody with a solid work history to be denied a home. And as so often
    is the case in the United States, if we do the right thing, it will be
    good business. It will be more money for all Americans and a greater
    rate of economic growth.
        The third and final element of the plan will involve improving our
    efforts at education and outreach. According to one national survey,
    fewer than half of all American adults know what they need to know to
    navigate the real estate market successfully. Surely with all the
    communications technology available today, we

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    can do better than that in America. Every day you counsel, you educate,
    you elevate the comfort levels of potential homeowners. We need your
    help in learning how to do this better for people throughout the United
    States.
        If we do these three things--and perhaps this group, which will
    include representatives of your industry, will come up with others--we
    can widen the circle of home ownership beyond anything we have ever
    seen. And in so doing, we can slowly begin to restore the confidence of
    battered middle class American families who fear that even in times of
    economic recovery, their own family security will not be enhanced. That
    is the key to restoring the American dream, having working people
    believe that they can live in the turbulent, fast-changing times of the
    21st century and still come out winners if they work hard, become
    lifetime learners, play by the rules, and raise their kids well. And
    finding a way for these people to own their own homes is a critical part
    of restoring the sense of American security and the reality of the
    American dream. I want you to help me do that.
        My fellow Americans, through Presidents and administrations of both
    parties, the American people have been committed across party lines to
    the idea of homeownership. We have shown through things like the FHA and
    the GI bill that we can work in partnership to empower people who will
    take responsibility for their own lives. I am trying to do that now in
    many, many other areas of our national life. We are trying, all of us,
    to face problems we have ignored too long. We are trying to deal with
    the challenges and seize the opportunities that await us.
        I just want to say this last thing in closing: I am convinced that
    the best days of this country are ahead of us, if we will only seize
    these challenges, seize these opportunities, and maintain the attitude
    that all of you inculcate into everybody who works with you every day. I
    am telling you this is still the strongest country in the world, the
    greatest peacemaker in the world, the most powerful economy in the
    world. The only thing that can get in our way is our failure to believe
    in ourselves and our unwillingness to work together to face the
    challenges before us. If we can get rid of that, there is no limit to
    America's future.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:40 a.m. at the Anaheim Convention Center.
    In his remarks, he referred to Bob Elrod, president, and Gil Woods,
    president-elect, National Association of Realtors.