[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[August 5, 1994]
[Pages 1432-1437]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the Anniversary of the Passage of the Economic Program
August 5, 1994

    Well, thank you all. We've established one thing beyond doubt. We 
all have enough sense to come in out of the rain. [Laughter]
    Thank you, Mr. Quimby, and thank all of you. We've had 
representatives of four fine companies speak here today: the head of one 
of our largest corporations; the head of a medium-sized high-tech 
company, growing and growing into the world economy; the head of a small 
company that's doubled the number of--or now a man that's moved from a 
small job to a large job in a small company that's growing very rapidly; 
and a new employee. The Vice President and I wanted these folks here for 
this announcement today because they represent what our efforts are all 
about.
    I said the other night in my press conference that there are a lot 
of lobby groups in Washington, but I wanted the White House to be known 
as the ``home office of the `American association of ordinary 
citizens.''' And what I mean by that is that in this time of profound 
change, what we need to be doing is figuring out how we can make the 
changes necessary together to en-


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able all of our people to live up to their potential, to fulfill their 
dreams, to move into the next century with the American dream alive in 
every family and with American leadership secure. And when I sought this 
job, I was convinced that would require some changes in my political 
party, some change in the other political party, and some changes in the 
way we do our work here in Washington.
    If you listen to the four stories here, that's really what's behind 
all these arcane arguments and all the political rhetoric over economic 
policy: the simple question of whether people will be able to pursue 
their destinies and their dreams and live up to the fullest of their 
abilities. I could never hope to say it any better than these four 
people did, and I think we should give them all another round of 
applause. [Applause]
    Today, we celebrate because this morning, as the chart to my left 
shows, the Labor Department reported that since our administration came 
into office, our economy has produced more than 4 million new jobs, 
almost all of them in the private sector. Now, as we know, when I ran 
for office, I said I thought we could produce 8 million new jobs in 4 
years and that we would do 4 by the end of '94. So we're 6 months ahead 
of schedule.
    I do want to correct one thing. You know, I get criticized sometimes 
for my attention to detail, but I want to show you this. Where is it? I 
asked for this pen this morning when I looked at this chart because when 
I looked at the numbers, there are actually not 4 million new jobs but 
4.1 million new jobs. And now that we're out of the rain, I'm going to 
make a correction on it.
    Manufacturing jobs have been increasing in this country for 7 months 
in a row now for the first time in 10 years. All the jobs created last 
month, 100 percent of them, were in the private sector, not in 
government. Companies like Kenlee Precision have added those second and 
third shifts, jobs that made it possible for people like Charles Quimby 
to get ahead. Companies like Ellicott Machine have been able to hire new 
workers like Frankie McLaurin. Executives like Bob Eaton and Carol Bartz 
are making a good beginning in this remarkable partnership we have to 
renew America. And they described to you, perhaps better than I could, 
what the role of the National Government is in their agenda for the 
future, what we should be doing and what we should not be doing.
    None of this has been easy. Indeed, I have been mystified since I 
got here about why some of these things are as hard as they are and why 
they take as long as they do. One of the problems is that in this town, 
sometimes words replace reality. In the computer business and in high 
technology, virtual reality is a very good thing. It enables you to 
replicate situations and to avoid future problems. In Washington, I'm 
not sure we have virtual reality; I think what we have up here is 
virtual unreality, which is a bad thing because it enables you to almost 
dehumanize problems and turn them into words and rhetoric and labels. 
And we have all these word battles up here that don't seem to make any 
sense to ordinary people.
    Once in a while I watch the evening news and--I'm usually working 
when it's on--once in a while I watch it, and I see the way we're 
presented, and I look at that and I say, well, heck, if I was still back 
home I wouldn't be for that guy either. [Laughter] Just because of the 
way it all plays out. You know, it's so--it's kind of unreal. And what 
we've got to do is find ways to bring reality, your reality, the way you 
look at the world, the way you live with the world every day, into the 
decisionmaking of this town.
    And that's what we did when we passed that economic plan. Bob Eaton 
had it right. He said, well, he wouldn't have done it in the same way we 
did, but he was glad we got the job done. Well, that's the way I feel 
about his cars. I don't have any idea if I'd make the same decisions he 
makes on everything, but they make awful good cars and I'm glad they got 
the job done. In the end, that's the way we should judge ourselves.
    And we did the best we could with that economic program, considering 
the fact that at the moment of voting we had no help from the other 
side. They said the sky would fall. One of them, and I quote, said, 
``Taxes will go up. The economy will sputter along. The deficit will 
reach another record high. It's a recipe for disaster.'' That was wrong. 
That was wrong.
    What did we do? We did have a tax increase on the wealthiest 
Americans, but it's still--the rates are well below where they were in 
1980. And all the money went to pay down the deficit and to finance a 
tax break for 15 million working families who were just above the 
poverty line,

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and we didn't want them to go back to welfare. We wanted to encourage 
people with low wages to keep working and to keep raising their kids and 
to stick by the American dream. There were too many people who were 
giving up work for welfare, and we wanted it to be the reverse. So I 
plead guilty to that.
    We also cut $255 billion in spending, and we passed a tough budget 
that helped to drive those interest rates down, get this economy going 
again. This year, we're about to pass another tough budget that 
eliminates 100 Government programs outright, contains the first 
reduction in domestic discretionary spending in 25 years--outright 
reduction--and continues to drive that deficit down while increasing the 
money we're spending to empower people to succeed in the global economy: 
more for education and training, more for Head Start for little kids, 
the establishment of a lifetime learning system, for world-class 
standards in our public schools, more apprenticeships for young people 
who get out of high school and don't want to go to college. And our 
economic program made it possible for 20 million Americans to refinance 
their college loans at lower interest rates and better repayment terms. 
That is the direction in which we ought to be going.
    And finally, as you heard Carol and Bob talking about, we're trying 
to expand the barriers of trade, or tear down the barriers and expand 
the frontiers. Frankie said that Ellicott was doing well largely because 
of NAFTA. They also said--a different group said that the sky would fall 
if we did that. But there we had a bipartisan majority fighting for 
change. We passed it. Our car sales in Mexico are growing 5 times as 
fast as they did before NAFTA was passed. Mexico is now our fastest 
growing trading partner. Even though their economy is in a down period, 
we're still having explosive growth. Think what it will be like when 
they start to grow again. This is very important.
    We're trying to sell airplanes all around the world. We just 
announced a new shipbuilding initiative. The Trade Ambassador, Mr. 
Kantor, has resolved agricultural disputes with Canada. We're selling 
rice to Japan for the first time. We are moving in to the global 
economy, and we are working on these things. And I don't know that these 
things fall very neatly into the kind of words people throw at each 
other here in this town. Is it liberal or conservative, Republican or 
Democrat? I don't know, and I don't care. I just want people to be able 
to work and to do well and to have this economy grow.
    And I know to do that--when we have the deficit coming down for 3 
years in a row for the first time since Truman was President, when we're 
moving toward the smallest Federal Government that we've had since 
Kennedy was President, and when the economy is growing this rapidly--
last year we had more businesses formed than in any year since World War 
II--we're not doing bad. We've got to get rid of the rhetoric and go 
back to reality.
    And I would say this: The future looks good. Fortune Magazine 
predicts for the first time in 10 years, the economy in every State in 
America will grow next year. And that is very good. Most businesses 
expect to grow next year and to expand. And consumer confidence is high.
    But we have to continue to face the tough problems up here. And one 
of the things that I hope very much will happen is that the experience 
we had working through these economic problems and the results that have 
been achieved--when you take on a problem, risk some unpopularity in the 
short run, even if you win by the narrowest of margins, if you actually 
address a problem, you get results. That is very good because that 
proves that Washington is not all that unreal after all, that there 
really is some connection to our lives up here and the way you live 
where you are. Because if you ignore the problems in these four 
companies, 10 years from now there won't be anybody from your companies 
to show up here and talk at the White House.
    In the end, you have to face the challenges before you. We are now 
seeing that again. We have some challenges ahead of us. The Congress 
must, must approve the worldwide GATT trade agreement that we 
negotiated, that we got agreement on, but the Congress has to enact it. 
It will mean a tax cut in the form of lower tariffs and lower costs for 
Americans and people all across the world of--listen to this--$744 
billion over the next 10 years. It will create hundreds of thousands of 
high-paying American jobs. We have got to finish the job on the trade 
issue. The next step is GATT.
    Before I close, I want to mention two other issues, but it's the 
same point, problems you can't run away from. We must address the health 
care situation this year, not just for the people who don't have health 
insurance but for

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the people who do but who pay too much for it and who could lose it, not 
just for the companies who don't provide health care but for the 
companies who do and pay too much for it.
    Why have the Big Three automakers supported us in health reform all 
along? Because one of the reasons we lost jobs and market share in the 
automobile industry is that they were paying too much for health care. 
And one of the reasons they were paying too much for health care is they 
were paying for all the people in this country who don't cover 
themselves and who don't do their own part.
    Now, here are some basic facts that nobody can ignore. We can all 
disagree on the solution; nobody can ignore these facts. Of all the 
countries in the world, we spend more than anybody else on health care 
by a long ways, but we're the only major country that doesn't cover 
everybody with health insurance. Of all the countries in the world with 
which we compete, we are the only one going in the wrong direction. 
Today there are 5 million Americans, 85 percent of them working people 
and their kids, who are in this country today who do not have health 
insurance, who had it 5 years ago. So we're going in the wrong 
direction.
    We have problems here with people who have health insurance but 
could lose it if they change jobs, somebody in their family gets sick, 
they have a preexisting condition, or the cost of the policy goes 
through the roof.
    Yesterday I gave awards to four young Americans who have done heroic 
things and important community service. The United States has been doing 
this through the Justice Department for the last 44 years. One of these 
young Americans was the daughter of a farmer, who happens to be a 
Republican, in the panhandle of Oklahoma. She was injured and paralyzed 
from here down in a car wreck in 1990. This girl, a beautiful girl, 
could have given up on life, but instead she decided she would devote 
herself to try and encourage other young people not to drink and drive 
and not to ride with people who drink and drive and always put their 
seatbelts on in a car. She was going to try to help other people avoid 
what had happened to her. And her daddy is just a hard-working farmer. 
She's got a sister who is a lovely girl; she's got a wonderful mother. 
They were paying over $3,000 a year for a limited health insurance 
policy with very high deductibles. All of her costs were a couple of 
years ago, attendant on her wreck. This is 4 years later; they were just 
notified that their insurance premiums were going from $3,100 a year to 
$9,300 a year. And this farmer is going to have to drop his insurance.
    Now, with these two wonderful kids, he's got to figure out how 
they're going to college, what they're going to do, living out there in 
a little town in western Oklahoma. And like he told me, he said, ``You 
know, this is not a political deal.'' He said, ``I'm a Republican; I'm a 
conservative. I don't want the Government to do anything for me, but we 
need some help here. There's something wrong if I can't take care of my 
family, hard as I'm working.''
    So again, I say to the Members of Congress on this, let's just do 
something about this. Most small businesses in America are struggling to 
provide health care, and they're paying too much for it, because they 
can't get the same rates that big business and Government gets. Some big 
businesses, like Chrysler, are paying too much for it because when 
people who don't have health insurance get sick, they still get care. 
They go to the emergency room, and then their costs are passed along to 
everybody else in higher hospital bills and higher insurance premiums.
    We know that something works. We know what they do in Hawaii works. 
It's the only State where employers and employees are required to split 
the difference and cover health insurance. And we know that even though 
most everything else in Hawaii is more expensive than it is on the 
mainland because it's way out there in the Pacific, health insurance 
costs for small business are 30 percent lower there than the national 
average. Why? Because everybody has to pay something, but you're only 
paying for yourself, you're not paying for anybody else, number one, and 
number two, because small and medium-sized companies get to band 
together in big buying groups so they can buy insurance with the same 
competitive power as Chrysler and the Federal Government. So we know 
that works.
    So I just think I would say again, all I ask of any of you is to ask 
the Members of Congress to put aside partisanship, rhetoric, and this 
sort of word-throwing, and let's just think about the people of America, 
just like we do here, 4.1 Americans who have jobs, all different races, 
all different religions, all different political groups. All I know is, 
we're better off that they're in that line. And we'd be better off if

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we solved the health care problem, and we're going to pay a terrible 
price if we don't.
    One last issue I want to mention: I went to the Justice Department 
last week for what was a great celebration. We had hundreds of police 
officers there to celebrate the fact that after 6 years of bickering, 
the House and the Senate had both passed crime bills and had agreed on a 
common bill through their conference committees to send back so that 
each one of them could pass identical bills, so that I could sign a 
crime bill into law that would give us 100,000 police officers on the 
street--that's a 20 percent increase; that would ban 19 kinds of assault 
weapons and protect 650 hunting and sporting weapons, to make sure that 
this was not a gun control issue, this was an assault weapons issue; 
that would ban handgun ownership by minors; provide for safe schools; 
provide for ``three strikes and you're out,'' tough penalties, more 
prison cells, and billions of dollars for prevention programs to give 
children something to say yes to as well as something to say no to, the 
biggest, toughest, smartest crime bill this country's every passed.
    Unbelievably, after 8 days nothing has happened. The bills are 
there. We need it. The American people know how bad we need it. The 
Democratic mayors and the Republican mayors have endorsed it. The 
Democratic Governors and the Republican Governors have endorsed it. 
Every police organization in the country, the attorney generals, the 
local prosecutors out there in the country where people know that crime 
strikes people without regard to race or political party, everybody is 
for this crime bill. But here the crime bill is, stuck in a web spun by 
a powerful special interest.
    You see, before a bill can come to vote in the House of 
Representatives, it has to be voted out of the Rules Committee. And then 
the House has to vote first on whether the bill's going to actually be 
brought to a vote, not on the bill but whether it's going to be brought 
to a vote. It's a procedure.
    The National Rifle Association is trying to block the vote on the 
rule because they are against the assault weapons ban, because they know 
that a majority of the House and the Senate will vote for this bill if 
it gets to a vote. So they are trying to block the vote on the rule, 
hoping that people can hide and say, ``Well, I didn't really vote 
against the bill, but there was something about the way it was coming up 
I didn't like.''
    I got a letter from a kid from New Orleans last spring who asked me 
to do something about the crime problem. He said, ``I'm 9 years old, and 
I'm really scared that something's going to happen to me.'' And 9 days 
later that kid was shot dead. Now, we've been waiting for 8 days for a 
vote on this crime bill. We have debated this. We fought the assault 
weapons ban. I thought the NRA was going to win, but we won fair and 
square. We only won by two votes, but we won, the police officers and 
those of us who don't want the cops to be outgunned. It was a fair and 
square deal. We won. And we won in the Senate. And it's in the bill. And 
I didn't think we could beat them, but we did. We worked like crazy, and 
we did.
    It is wrong to let the NRA, and other interest groups, too, to be 
fair, who have some other bone to pick with this bill but who know it 
cannot be defeated on the merits, to use a procedural vote to keep the 
American people from getting the police, from the kids from getting this 
prevention money, from the people from getting the ``three strikes and 
you're out law,'' from the police from getting the help they need with 
the prisons, and all the rest of this. This is a good deal, and we're 
not paying for it with a tax increase. We're paying for it by reducing 
the size of the Federal bureaucracy by more than a quarter of a million 
between now and 1999.
    And I want to plead with you to ask the Congress over the weekend 
not to let procedure get in the way of saving the lives and the future 
of the United States. We showed up here to make decisions. If anybody 
wants to vote against the crime bill, let them vote against it. There 
are people who are going to vote against it because they're honestly 
opposed to capital punishment or because they're honestly opposed to the 
assault weapons ban or because they're honestly opposed to the 
prevention funds. Let them vote against it. That's fine.
    But do not let us pull another Washington, DC, game here and let 
this crime bill go down on some procedural hide-and-seek. If we're going 
to have a shoot out, let's do it in high noon, broad daylight, where 
everybody knows what the deal is.
    Thank you very much.

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Note: The President spoke at 10:55 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Charles Quimby, 
manufacturing manager, Kenlee Precision Corp.; Frankie McLaurin, 
steelworker, Ellicott Machine Corp.; Robert Eaton, chairman and CEO, 
Chrysler Corp.; and Carol Bartz, chairman, CEO, and president, Autodesk, 
Inc.