    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 29, 1994]
    [Pages 1655-1659]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Signing the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching
    Efficiency Act of 1994
    September 29, 1994

        Thank you very much, Dick Kovacevich, for your fine words and your
    strong support of this endeavor. Thank you, Tom Labrecque, for what you
    said. Thank you, as always, Secretary Bentsen, for your remarks and your
    stellar leadership. I thank all the Members of Congress for coming and
    the Members of the House who are out voting; you were all introduced by
    name in absentia. [Laughter] But I do want to say a special word of
    thanks to retiring Congressman

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    Steve Neal for his wonderful leadership on this bill, and I thank him. I
    thank the Senators, those who are here especially, Senator Dodd, Senator
    Sarbanes, Senator Bennett, and of course, Senator Riegle. We will miss
    you, and we thank you for this very important part of your legacy.
        I thank Chairman Greenspan and Mr. Blinder and Chairman Levitt for
    coming and for their role in stabilizing and strengthening our economy.
    I never comment on these things, but I'm awfully glad this bill is
    taking effect at a time when banks will still be able to make loans at
    reasonable interest rates. [Laughter]
        There are a lot of other people here--I'll live to regret this, I
    know--[laughter]--a lot of other people here that could be introduced,
    but I think I would be remiss if I did not say something about someone
    who fought for this issue when he was in Congress and is now the
    distinguished Governor of the State of Connecticut, Lowell Weicker.
    We're delighted to see you here, sir. Thank you for coming. We're
    delighted to see Sarge and Eunice Shriver here; thank you for coming.
        And now, there are two other people I would be personally remiss if
    I did not introduce because they had a lot to do with my interest in
    this issue. The thing that sparked my interest in this issue, first of
    all, was being Governor of a State when banks were dropping like flies
    all around the country, and we were determined to protect ours. And I
    began then to seriously think what was structurally wrong with the
    financial system in this country. There is a gentleman here from my home
    State who has been my banker, my adviser, my supporter, and was the last
    person who served as my chief of staff as Governor of Arkansas. I'd like
    to ask him to stand up, Mr. Bill Bowen, former chairman of the
    Commercial National Bank. [Applause] And the other person here, who
    stayed up with me half the night once--you may think you can't stay up
    half a night talking about interstate banking. [Laughter] You may think
    it would put you to sleep even though--but you have never heard Hugh
    McColl talk about it. Will you please stand up? Thank you so much.
    [Applause] I figured if he could be rhapsodic about this at 2 a.m., I
    ought to be for it, strong for it. [Laughter]
        You've already heard how important this legislation is and what it
    will do for the banking industry. I'd like to just take a few moments to
    describe to you, from my point of view as President, how this fits into
    our comprehensive economic strategy. You've already heard people say it
    will make us stronger economically; it will be better for consumers; it
    will make us more efficient. It represents another example of our intent
    to reinvent Government by making it less regulatory and less
    overreaching and by shrinking it where it ought to be shrunk and
    reshaping it where it ought to be reshaped.
        The people who are here up on this stage with me represent the
    economic team who worked with me to try to develop a strategy that would
    put the American people first and enable us to compete and win in the
    21st century and enable us to stay together and go forward in spite of
    all of our differences, to restore prosperity, and to renew the American
    dream.
        The economic strategy we have crafted, while it may have critics in
    every corner from point to point, still should be recognized for what it
    is: a serious attempt by the national administration to systematically
    address the problems of the American economy and the opportunities of
    the American economy that enable us to increase our capacity to work
    together for opportunity for all.
        Secretary Bentsen has been my wise counsel and strong leader.
    Secretary Brown is with President Yeltsin in Seattle today, probably
    still trying to make another sale. [Laughter] As all of you know, he's
    traveled from South America to South Africa to promote American
    businesses and exports and has been the most active Commerce Secretary
    certainly in my lifetime. Secretary Reich has been tireless in his
    advocacy for a skilled work force and for changing our whole
    unemployment system into a reemployment system. Alice Rivlin and before
    her Leon Panetta have played a central role in shaping tough and
    responsible budgets and in giving us 3 years of declining deficits for
    the first time since Mr. Truman was the President of the United States.
    Ambassador Kantor has given us more leadership on trade in the last 20
    months than in any comparable period in the last 35 years. Erskine
    Bowles is not here, but the Acting Administrator of SBA is here, Sandra
    Pulley. And let me say, among other things, they have proved that if you
    put people in charge of the Small Business Administration whose job it
    is or has been in the past to create and expand small businesses, it
    makes a remarkable difference. The agency is less political but more

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    effective than it has ever been. One of the things they did was to take
    the small business loan form, which was that thick, and cut it to one
    page and give you a decision in 3 days, yes or no, which is something
    that interstate banking will probably make possible for every bank in
    America to do, before you know it. I want to thank Laura Tyson, the
    Chair of our Council of Economic Advisers, who has done so much to help
    us analyze the economy and strategize long-term. But most important of
    all, I want to thank the most self-effacing but talented person I've
    ever had the privilege to work with in the area of the economy, Bob
    Rubin, for coordinating this entire team. And I'd like for him to stand
    up, because he never gets any recognition. [Applause]
        Our strategy was pretty simple: Get our fiscal house in order; bring
    the deficit down; do it and find a way to invest more in the skills of
    our people, the technologies of the future, defense conversion; expand
    trade; open markets; be more aggressive in appropriate ways in having a
    partnership outside our borders between the United States Government and
    our economic interests; and work to find ways to make the Government
    more efficient.
        We have committed ourselves to that. And among other things, the
    budget we are about to adopt--we're in the process of adopting now--
    combined with the budget last year, represent only the first time in 17
    years when a President's had two budgets in a row adopted by Congress
    substantially intact. They will give us 3 years of deficit reduction in
    a row for the first time since the Truman Presidency. But also somewhat
    less known, they will over this 6-year period, because we adopt 5-year
    budgets, reduce the size of the Federal Government by 270,000 to its
    smallest size since Mr. Kennedy was President. All of that money is
    being given to the American people in their own communities to fight
    crime. That's how the crime bill was funded. This is a remarkable
    change. We have already reduced the size of the Federal Government in 20
    months by more than 70,000 people. And so I thank all of them for that.
        The result of these comprehensive efforts and our disciplined
    coordination with other aspects of the public and private sector is that
    our economy is healthy and growing, inflation is moderate, trade is
    expanding, the deficit is dropping, and the Government is shrinking.
    There have been 4.3 million new jobs. And in contrast to the pattern of
    the eighties, when much of the job growth in times that were slow was in
    State and local government, 93 percent of the new jobs for the last 20
    months have been in the private sector.
        According to a recent annual survey by international economists,
    America has now been ranked the most productive economy in the world for
    the first time in 9 years. We've also had 8 months in a row of
    manufacturing job growth, something others had all but given up on, for
    the first time in 10 years.
        Our challenge now is to keep moving in the right direction, to keep
    creating new partnerships between business, Government, and citizens.
    And this legislation is a good step in that direction.
        Under this law, as you've already heard, banks will be able to
    operate in more States with less trouble. We wipe away obsolete
    Government-created restrictions, something I'm determined to do in many
    other areas. And you'd be amazed how many areas these exist in.
        Just for example, in the last year and a half, we have given 17
    States permission to try new ways to move people from welfare to work.
    In every case, we had to wipe away Federal restrictions to allow States
    to do things that nearly 100 percent of the American people without
    regard to race or income want done to find a way to put people in the
    work force and take them off the dole. So we are working hard. We know
    we can save billions of dollars if we do that. Some estimates suggest
    the efficiencies in this bill alone in reducing paperwork and regulation
    will save this industry about $1 billion a year.
        We know this bill is good for consumers for reasons that have
    already been stated. I wish I had thought of Tom's line myself: It's
    easier for a New York bank to expand in Kuala Lumpur than Jersey City.
    So, since he's already said that, I won't give you what they wrote for
    me, which is longer and not nearly as graphic. [Laughter]
        I also want to thank the Congress for working on this bill in a
    bipartisan spirit. You know, I get very frustrated, as all of you know,
    that it takes so long to do big things around here. I went back and read
    ``The Federalist Papers'' the other night, I was so frustrated by it.
    And then, lo and behold, some of our brilliant framers organized this
    Government to slow things down. Even they couldn't be right about every-

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    thing, but anyway, we took our time on this bill.
        And there are so many things that we've been able to do in the last
    year and a half that were just sort of hanging around for 6, 7, or 8
    years. But when the bill did pass, when we had the confluence of forces
    and energy and vision to pass it, it passed with overwhelming bipartisan
    support, which should increase the confidence of the American people
    that this is a good thing for our country and that it will help all of
    us to do better.
        Let us all acknowledge that this work is far from over. You've
    already heard the previous speaker say there was more to be done in the
    banking area, even though we have had a very good year and a half with
    trade. And NAFTA, by the way, is having a very positive effect on our
    economy. We've had a 19 percent increase in exports to Mexico, a 600
    percent increase in the exports of automobiles and trucks to Mexico
    since NAFTA passed. Jobs are up to both Canada and Mexico because
    exports are up. Still, the really important thing to do is to pass the
    GATT.
        I am going in November to Indonesia to meet with the leaders of the
    big Asian economies. I will then go back to Florida in December to have
    all the leaders of the democratic governments in the Caribbean and Latin
    America there at the Summit of the Americas that Mr. McLarty, who is
    here, is coordinating for us. We need to be able to continue to be the
    leader in opening up the global economy to efficiency and to competition
    and to expansion.
        This is not a zero-sum game, this economy. But the only way it
    cannot be that is to keep pushing back the limits of the possible. And
    the only way you can do that is to have global economic growth. So we
    will keep hoping and working for GATT. I think we need to create it and
    pass it as quickly as we can. The American people will be a winner
    there.
        All of you know that every serious economic study of the GATT has
    estimated that it will create hundreds of thousands of high-paying
    American jobs over the next decade and ultimately add between $100
    billion and $200 billion to our GDP every single year. It will cut
    foreign tariffs by a third. It will provide a global tax cut of $744
    billion. So I hope that the bipartisan support the GATT has will result
    in the same thing that happened with the banking bill, that we will pass
    it and pass it in a prompt way.
        Yesterday the House Ways and Means Committee approved the GATT by a
    vote of 35 to 3. This morning the Senate Finance Committee approved it
    by a vote of 19 to 0. The fact is, these folks have figured out that
    this is good for our economy, good for our country, good for our global
    leadership to continue to be pointing the way for other countries, to
    keep them looking upward and outward and reaching out to each other
    instead of drawing inward and giving in to the difficult pressures that
    all of us face.
        I want Congress to pass the GATT this year. If it passes the House
    but not the Senate, I'll urge the Senate to return after the election
    recess and pass it then. We have come too far on this journey, making
    our Government more efficient, our economy more productive, and working
    together, to back off now.
        You know, this week I've had the honor to represent you at the U.N.
    and to meet with President Yeltsin here in Washington and to watch as
    our courageous soldiers are working to bring democracy back to Haiti in
    a peaceful fashion. I am reminded that the world, with all of its
    difficulties, has never really had greater opportunities and that our
    very existence now is not threatened, as it once was, because of the
    progress we have made in trying to learn to live together.
        People everywhere who yearn for political freedom and for economic
    opportunity are having more chances to realize both than ever before. We
    have a chance to help them. Sometimes we are called upon to help them in
    definite and specific ways, as we were early in the process of Russian
    reform or as we have been in Haiti. But I always believe that the most
    powerful way we help is by setting the right example.
        We have set a good example today. Passing the GATT is setting a good
    example. Reaching out to the rest of the world, being unafraid to
    compete and determined to contact people and to work with them and to
    keep doing what we do better is the best way to set that kind of
    example. To me, that's what this bill represents, and I'm honored to be
    here to sign it today.
        Thank you very much.
        We don't have enough room on the dais for every Member of Congress
    who's here, but I

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    would like to ask at least Mr. Neal to come up here. He and Senator
    Riegle should be in this picture. It may get them so many write-in
    votes, they won't be able to retire.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:05 p.m. at the Treasury Building. In his
    remarks, he referred to Richard Kovacevich, president and chief
    executive officer, Norwest Corp. of Minneapolis; Tom Labrecque, chairman
    and chief executive officer, Chase Manhattan Bank; Alan Greenspan,
    Chairman, Federal Reserve Board; Alan S. Blinder, member, Council of
    Economic Advisers; Arthur Levitt, Chairman, Securities and Exchange
    Commission; Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr., first Director of the Peace
    Corps; Eunice Shriver, director, Special Olympics; and Hugh McColl, Jr.,
    chairman of the board, NationsBank Corp. H.R. 3841, approved September
    29, was assigned Public Law No. 103-328.