    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [November 4, 1994]
    [Pages 1987-1988]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Jim Dunbar of KGO Radio, San Francisco, California
    November 4, 1994

        Mr. Dunbar. Good morning, Mr. President.
        The President. How are you?

    Health Care Reform

        Mr. Dunbar. I'm Jim Dunbar, and I'm just fine. And it's a privilege
    having the opportunity to talk to you. I've got a couple of questions
    that I hope you haven't heard thus far this morning.
        Yesterday it was announced that the First Lady was stepping aside as
    the administration's main point person on health care reform. Sir, is
    this a concession on your part that maybe she was just a little too
    visible in her efforts to get the health care package through Congress?
        The President. No. I don't think that's right at all. What happened,
    I think--keep in mind, we took this health care debate further than it
    had ever been taken in American history. For 60 years, Presidents have
    tried to solve the health care problem, to secure the health insurance
    of people who had it, and to cover--help people who didn't and to bring
    costs in line. And for 60 years, they failed because of the power of the
    organized health care interests. This is the first time we ever got a
    bill to both Houses of the Congress. We could have passed the bill this
    year if the Republicans had been willing to work with us in a bipartisan
    manner. But they abandoned their commitment to health care reform and
    decided to play politics with it instead.
        Mr. Dunbar. Are you going to let it rest for awhile, or are you
    going to go right back at it?
        The President. No, we're going to try to--what I have to do now is
    to figure out how we can go at it in a way that will make our plan less
    vulnerable to the $200 million or so that was spent to characterize it
    as a big Government plan that reduces choices for people who have health
    insurance. The truth is, our plan lets you keep what you have. It relies
    on private insurance, not the Government, and it protects people from
    losing their insurance. It covers people who don't. And then it gives
    small business people and farmers and individual people the opportunity
    to buy health care on the same basis as people who are in big businesses
    or Government. That's what we need to do.
        And I just need to go back at it in a way that is less vulnerable to
    the interest groups attacking it. But let me say, it's come out just
    since we stopped our health care efforts, because we couldn't pass it
    through Congress, another million Americans in working families lost
    their health insurance last year. We are the only advanced country in
    the world, the only one,

    [[Page 1988]]

    where people under the age of 65 are losing ground in health care
    coverage, where every year a lot of folks are paying more and more for
    less coverage, every year more and more people are losing their
    coverage. And we're also spending more for health care by far than
    anybody else. The money is going primarily to people in the middle, to
    clerical costs and insurance companies and what the doctors and
    hospitals and the others have to spend to keep up with the mindless
    paperwork of the way we finance the health care system.
        So we can't walk away from it. It's killing the budget. It's bad for
    the economy. It's hurting working people. We're going to have to face up
    to it. I just have to find a way to do it that makes it less vulnerable
    to the insurance company attack that it's a big Government plan.

    Midterm Elections

        Mr. Dunbar. Mr. President, I only have 5 minutes here, and I do have
    a couple more questions. You hear a charge in California--we know you're
    heading here and going to be here over the weekend, and we're glad to
    have you--but you hear a charge that Michael Huffington is buying his
    way into the Senate. But I point out that Dianne Feinstein, Senator
    Feinstein, has spent about $15 million in her efforts to keep that seat.
    And both would argue that they're doing it because the other fellow is.
    Is there some way we could put a cap on that so that being elected to
    Congress doesn't come down to the guy with the most money?
        The President. Well, I certainly think we should. But to be fair,
    Senator Feinstein's had to raise a lot of money because Mr. Huffington
    said he'd spend however much of his personal fortune he had to to buy
    the seat. And the really terrifying thing is that since people are awash
    in information these negative ads have an incredibly disproportionate
    influence over what they should. And people have no way of knowing
    whether the information's even true or not. So it's a terrible, terrible
    thing.
        I tried to pass a campaign finance reform bill through Congress, and
    the Republican Senators killed it at the end of the last legislative
    session. We could have had campaign finance reform, but they had the
    power to filibuster it, delay it, and kill it. And they did.
        The Supreme Court has said that we cannot legally stop a wealthy
    person from spending all the money that he or she wants on a campaign.
    So the only way to discourage a wealthy person from doing that is to put
    limits on spending and then say if you go over these limits, we're going
    to set aside a fund, and your opponent gets a dollar for every dollar
    you spend over it. That would remove the incentive to do that and
    encourage people to be more efficient and to spend more time answering
    questions and being more positive.
        I mean, these campaigns have just turned into nothing more than
    multimillion dollar negative-ad slugfests, and they don't have--very
    often they don't have a lot to do with what is going to happen the day
    after the election. I mean, I think the best case for Feinstein, for
    example, is that as far as I know, she is the only Senator in my
    lifetime who in only 2 years in the Senate, her first 2 years in the
    Senate, has sponsored three major legislative initiatives, the assault
    weapons ban, the requirement that there be a zero tolerance for kids
    having guns in schools, and the California desert bill, the biggest
    wilderness preserve in the history of the country. I know of no Senator
    in my lifetime who's done that. Now that, it seems to me, ought to be an
    argument for giving her a 6-year term. She did something in 2 years
    nobody else has ever done, and she ought to get 6 to keep on helping
    California.
        So to me--I would like to see these races be more positive, talk
    about what ideas people have to build the future and help people and
    empower people to take responsibility for their lives. That seems to me
    to be what we ought to be talking about.
        Mr. Dunbar. Mr. President, unfortunately our time is up. We started
    our egg timer here 5 minutes ago, and it just went ``bing.'' And I
    agreed with your folks to let you go.
        You are welcome any time you've got a little time to devote to
    answering questions. You're welcome any time on KGO. Thanks so much.
        The President. I'd love to do that. I'll be at the Kaiser Center in
    Oakland tomorrow at 2, and I hope some of your listeners will come out
    and see me.
        Mr. Dunbar. We sure will. Thank you very much, sir.
        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The interview began at 10:35 a.m. The President spoke by telephone
    from the Holiday Inn in Duluth, MN.