    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [November 2, 1994]
    [Pages 1956-1957]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1956]]

    Interview With John Crane and Ann Nyberg of WTNH Television, New Haven,
    Connecticut
    November 2, 1994

        Ms. Nyberg. Mr. President, thank you for being with us tonight.
        The President. Thank you.
        Mr. Crane. Thank you.

    Foreign Policy

        Ms. Nyberg. You have just returned from an unprecedented preelection
    whirlwind Middle Eastern trip in the name of peace. Following the trip,
    polls shows your popularity up. Skeptics would say the trip was planned
    to boost not only popularity but know-how in the area of foreign policy.
    Your comments, sir.
        The President. Well, we worked for 2 years, very hard, on peace in
    the Middle East. I had no control over the timing of the Israel-Jordan
    peace treaty. Obviously, they made their own decision about when to
    sign. They asked me to come and witness it, because of the role the
    United States and our administration played in that. When I was there, I
    went to visit our troops in the Persian Gulf. I sent them there to
    counter Saddam Hussein's latest aggression. Clearly, I had no control
    over that. There was no politics in this trip. The American people know
    it.
        But the benefits that are coming in foreign policy, the nuclear
    agreement with North Korea, the work in the Middle East, the success in
    Haiti, they are the result of 2 years of hard work that happened to
    coalesce at this time. There was no politics in that, and there
    shouldn't be.

    Midterm Elections

        Mr. Crane. Mr. President, here in Connecticut and across the
    country, Republicans are trying to make you the symbol of all that's
    wrong with Government. The pictures of you appear in many GOP television
    ads. Do you think this midterm election is really a referendum on you?
        The President. No, but I think that it is the culmination of 2 years
    of irresponsible conduct on their part, where they did their best to
    derail the Government, to put the brakes on everything, to oppose
    deficit reduction, to oppose our plans for economic recovery, to oppose
    our plans for things like family and medical leave and the crime bill.
    As a party, they did their best to wreck everything and then to blame
    us. But the American people are beginning to see through it.
        After all, let me put it to you this way. If I were a Republican
    President and I had followed policies which reduced the deficit, shrunk
    the Federal Government to its smallest size since President Kennedy was
    in office, increased the economic prosperity of the country, reduced the
    nuclear threat, expanded trade, and passed the toughest crime bill in a
    generation, they would be running me for sainthood. But because I'm a
    Democrat, they're engaged in a great disinformation campaign. And
    they've signed this contract to take this country back to the trickle-
    down economics of the eighties, a decade which, I might add, was pretty
    rough on the State of Connecticut, along toward the end, with all the
    exploding deficits and other problems. So, I believe the American people
    will see through that. I've got a lot of faith in the people of this
    country to be positive, to be forward looking. And my job is simply to
    get out and give them the facts, and then they'll make the decision.

    Child Support

        Ms. Nyberg. President Clinton, we want to go to the viewers now. As
    you can imagine, we asked them to give us questions for you; we were
    having a chance to talk to the President.
        The first question is from Andrea Wilson of Norwalk. Andrea wants to
    know, Mr. President, what you're going to do to make deadbeat moms and
    dads accountable and responsible for supporting their children.
        The President. I sent in the springtime a welfare reform bill to
    Congress which, among other things, has a much tougher mechanism of
    child support enforcement. I think we have to have more automatic
    requirements, more wage withholding, more respect for these child
    support orders across State lines. It has simply got to be easy to get
    the child support payments out there. We've got billions and billions of
    dollars of unpaid child support. And if we had it paid by people who can
    afford to pay it, the welfare

    [[Page 1957]]

    problem would be much smaller, and it would be a lot easier for people
    who are struggling to raise their children in dignity, to do it.

    Job Creation

        Mr. Crane. Now for our second viewer question, Mr. President. It
    comes from a woman named Eva Nay, who wants to know why, if you made
    jobs one of your administration's top priorities, there are still
    layoffs and little in the way of job creation in Connecticut?
        The President. Well, let me see. I've got some figures right here;
    I'll check it. The national economy, since I became President, has
    produced 4.6 million new jobs. Now, the Government didn't do all that;
    most of these jobs are in the private sector. But we created the
    environment in which the jobs could be created by bringing the deficit
    down, by expanding trade, by investing more in new technologies. Not
    every American who wants a job has one, and of course, there's nothing
    the National Government can do to stop some companies from laying off.
    What our job is is to create more jobs than are lost, and we're doing
    that.
        But just a moment, let me check here. In Connecticut----
        Mr. Crane. Take your time.
        The President. Well, I'm looking here.
        The unemployment rate in Connecticut has dropped more than one
    percentage point. We've had several hundred new jobs added since I
    became President. In the previous 4 years--listen to this--Connecticut
    lost 150,000 new jobs. So, we've got job gain now, where we had job loss
    before. We need to create more jobs. We have to keep working on it. The
    first thing I had to do was to try to stop the job loss. And I think we
    have done that. We're moving forward.
        Ms. Nyberg. And our viewers will be happy to hear that.
        President Clinton, thank you very much for taking time out of your
    busy schedule in Providence, Rhode Island, to be with us tonight.
        The President. Nice to do it. Thank you.

    Note: The interview began at 5:02 p.m. The President spoke by satellite
    from the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence, RI.