[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 24, 1994]
[Pages 1848-1852]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With Chuck Meyer of WWWE Radio in Cleveland, Ohio
October 24, 1994

    Mr. Meyer. President Clinton, good morning, and welcome to 
Cleveland. President Clinton, can you hear me?
    The President. I can. Can you hear me?
    Mr. Meyer. Yes. This is Chuck Meyer, and welcome to Cleveland. Good 
morning to you, sir.
    The President. Thank you, Chuck, it's nice to hear your voice.

OMB Memorandum

    Mr. Meyer. Now, let's clear up a matter here of this budget memo. 
This story broke yesterday in the Washington Post, and your reaction to 
it came on the West Coast yesterday. And some people in Cleveland may 
not be caught up on it, but apparently there was a budget memo that was 
leaked to the Washington Post indicating that one of your 
administration's options in the future might be a reduction in Social 
Security benefit COLA's and a raising of some taxes. What's the straight 
story on that?
    The President. The straight story is that that was not an options 
memo for us, it was a memo which simply cataloged all the things that we 
might be confronted with over the next couple of years by this 
commission on entitlements that's meeting, this bipartisan commission, 
as well as if the Republicans make substantial gains in the Congress and 
try to implement their Contract With America. You know, they've made a 
trillion dollars' worth of commitments to the American people: big tax 
cuts for the wealthy, and they've promised to balance the budget while 
cutting taxes to the wealthy and increasing

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defense and increasing Star Wars again. They won't say how it's going be 
paid for. Our calculations indicate that it would require a 30 percent 
cost cut in everything else. So you're going to have exploding deficits, 
Medicare cuts, and other things if this contract goes in. This memo was 
simply designed to show us the kind of problems we were going to 
confront over the next few years if those sort of things came up.
    The truth is, we're doing a good job right now in bringing the 
deficit down. Today I'm going to speak at the Cleveland City Club and 
talk about the deficit reduction. We brought it down from $290 billion-
plus to $203 billion this year in 2 years. That's $100 billion less than 
it was projected to be when I took office. And we've done it by cutting 
the size of Government, by eliminating Government programs, by cutting 
others, while still being able to increase our investment in education 
and training and new technology. And that's what I want to keep doing, 
managing this thing in a very disciplined way to give us a smaller 
Government that does more. And if we do that, we can maintain our 
commitments to our senior citizens and do what we have to do to grow 
this economy. The main thing we can't do is to throw our economy in a 
tailspin by going back to trickle-down economics.

Administration Accomplishments

    Mr. Meyer. Mr. President, I'm looking at a political cartoon that 
appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer the other day, and it's a couple 
sitting on their front porch and she says, ``I know I'm mad at Clinton. 
I just can't remember why.'' And the whole question comes up here, while 
Ronald Reagan was the ``Teflon President'' and nothing stuck to him, 
everything is sticking to you. And you're getting blamed for just about 
everything going on in the country today, including the heartbreak of 
psoriasis. Why is that?
    The President. Well, I don't know. I think part of it is the skill 
of the Republican congressional leadership and the far right in this 
country in just continuing to keep the American people in a turmoil and 
obscuring the facts. I mean, what I've got to do is to spend more time 
communicating with the American people about what we've done and where 
we're going.
    Take Ohio, for example. The unemployment rate has dropped 1\1/2\ 
percentage points since I've been President. Business failures have 
dropped by 24 percent; jobs are up. The economic plan that the Congress 
passed has given us 2 years of deficit reduction already for the first 
time in more than 20 years, and next year it'll go down again; it'll be 
the first time since Truman was President. Eleven times as many Ohio 
families got a tax cut as a tax rate increase under our economic plan, 
509,000 families. The Family and Medical Leave Act that we passed gives 
2 million families in this State opportunities for the working people to 
take a little time off when their babies are born or their parents are 
sick. That bill was something we supported that the Republican 
leadership opposed. The same is true of college loans for middle class 
kids, immunizing all the kids in this country under 2, things that will 
strengthen work and families.
    So I believe if the people of Ohio and the people of this country 
knew what we've done to empower working people, to increase our 
investments in education, to shrink the size of the Federal Government, 
shrink the deficit, and grow the economy, they'd be pretty well pleased 
with this administration.
    But if you look at the environment in which we've operated, which 
has been highly contentious, highly negative, and almost no opportunity 
to get through the positive achievements, it's not surprising. People 
can only act on what they know.

Crime

    Mr. Meyer. But, Mr. President, don't you play into those hands 
sometimes yourself? For instance, the crime rate's been going down now 
for several years, and yet crime seems to be the number one issue in 
this campaign, if there is such a thing as a top issue. We have a lot of 
politicians running around the country ready to throw everybody in jail, 
and yet the crime rate's going down. Doesn't that--isn't that a non-
issue?
    The President. No, it's not a non-issue for a couple of reasons. The 
crime rate is going down in some categories in some places because we 
know that local police and community groups have figured out how to 
lower the crime rate with community policing and having neighbors work 
with law enforcement. We know that. But we also know that the crime rate 
is going up in two ways that are very troubling. First of all, it's 
going up among teenagers and people under 18. And secondly, the amount 
of random

[[Page 1850]]

violence is going up among children under 18. And that's very disturbing 
to people, and it makes for a more insecure society.
    Now, what happens about whether people know the crime rate is going 
up or down is a function of what they see on their local and national 
news. But there is still way too much crime and violence in this 
country. How can you say we made our own problem? I gave the Congress a 
comprehensive crime bill, which the first time around both Republicans 
and Democrats voted for it, and the second time around all the 
Republicans bailed out and tried to make it a political issue--or most 
of the Republicans bailed out. Some of them stayed on and showed good 
citizenship.
    But that crime bill will increase police presence by 20 percent in 
the communities of this country. It offers strategies to help prevent 
crime, and it has much tougher punishment for seriously violent 
offenders. So I think it's a very good crime bill. It makes a real start 
in the right direction.
    So if you look at what we've done here in the last 2 years, we've 
strengthened the economy, we've made a serious assault on crime, and 
we've done a lot of things for ordinary working people like the family 
leave bill, the middle class college loans, and things of that kind. But 
I think most people in Ohio support the Brady bill, support the crime 
bill, support the things we've done and regret the fact that it became a 
political football in Washington.

Health Care Reform

    Mr. Meyer. Mr. President, we've had some calls this morning asking 
about health care. I know it was a big disappointment that it did not 
pass, and I read where the White House is gearing up for a more 
aggressive health care plan to pass next year. And yet, the other day I 
read where that 30-some-odd million people in this country who don't 
have health care has grown to nearly 40 million people now.
    The President. That's right.
    Mr. Meyer. I think these people want to know why health care didn't 
pass and why the debate got so bogged down when this was clearly a top 
issue that Americans wanted and were willing to pay for 2 years ago.
    The President. Well, it got bogged down because the people who are 
making a huge amount of money out of the system that we have spent a lot 
of money to terrify the people who do have health care today into 
thinking that if our bill passed it would make it worse and it would 
lead to more Government intervention in the health care system.
    That was not the truth. And what we've got to do is to come back and 
find a way to demonstrate to the American people what we want to do is 
to protect the plans that they have now that they like, but to make sure 
we cover the people who don't have health insurance and we control the 
costs better.
    But here's the fundamental problem. Every other country in the world 
with an advanced economy, every other wealthy country, spends between 9 
and 10 percent of its income on health care to cover everybody. We spend 
14 percent of our income, or another $240 billion, and we have almost 40 
million people without insurance. Another million Americans in working 
families lost their health insurance last year.
    Well, the people that are making that extra $240 billion by and 
large don't want us to change. And they spent somewhere between $200 
million and $300 million lobbying against our health care plan. Then 
again, the Republican congressional leadership operated on the theory 
that they could not permit any kind of health care to pass because it 
would be politically beneficial to the Democrats and to the 
administration. I wanted them to have half the credit. I wanted this to 
be bipartisan. And we've just got to keep dealing with this.
    The health care problem is the main cause of the big Government 
deficit. It is a main source of insecurity for working people who have 
jobs. And we're going in reverse. We're the only major country where 
we're actually losing ground in providing coverage to people. So I'm 
going to come back and try to find a way that the American people will 
support and will not be frightened by, to cover the people who don't 
have coverage, to protect the coverage of the people who do have 
coverage, and to slow the rate of cost increases.

Midterm Elections

    Mr. Meyer. Mr. President, I'd like to ask you another political 
question. My 17-year-old daughter, Andrea, told me to pass along the 
message to you that she intends to vote for you in 1996 when she is 
allowed to vote in a Presidential election for the first time. And 
that's the good news.

[[Page 1851]]

    The bad news is, why isn't Tom Foley as excited about you as my 
daughter?
    The President. Well, what are--Tom Foley has done a pretty good job.
    Mr. Meyer. Well, he wasn't by your side in Seattle yesterday.
    The President. Well, he shouldn't have been. You know why he wasn't? 
He had a debate last night, and he was preparing for it, and he was 
doing exactly what he should've done. He was over in the part of the 
State where his district was, doing exactly what he should have done. 
The Seattle Congressmen were all there. And I think he--I would have 
been disappointed if he had come all the way over there and then turned 
around and gone back and taken away 3 or 4 hours from his debate 
preparation time. He's in a tough fight. He's been in tough fights 
consistently in his district for the last 15 or 20 years, and he's over 
there paying attention to the people of his district, which is what he 
ought to be doing.
    Mr. Meyer. Okay. Well, there is some logic to that explanation. But 
there are Democrats around the country this year who don't want you to 
come and campaign for them. And you're reduced to helping get votes for 
Mario Cuomo and Ted Kennedy, and these guys should be winning easy 
reelection, shouldn't they?
    The President. I don't know why you would say that. It's very hard 
for any Governor to get elected to four terms, very, very difficult. And 
Governor Cuomo had a pretty close race 4 years ago. I think he is going 
to win, but it's a very combative environment in New York. And I was 
asked to come in there because it was a difficult case and because I 
think he's an important leader for our country and I hope he can be 
reelected.
    Senator Kennedy has been in office 30 years, and there's a big anti-
incumbent feeling out in the country this year. I think he will be 
reelected because he's been willing to change, embrace new ideas, and 
take a different approach in the last few years. I think he's really 
become an instrument of a lot of the new ideas the American people would 
like to see adopted by the Congress, and I think that's why they'll 
reelect him.
    But I don't think you should assume that because somebody is well 
known they'll have an easy reelection. Sometimes that makes for a tough 
reelection, particularly given the harsh feelings people have about the 
Congress.

Middle East Peace Process

    Mr. Meyer. I know that you have to go in a moment, but I wanted to 
ask you a quick question about Syria. You're making the trip to the 
Middle East this week, and you're visiting Syria, a country that we 
still consider a renegade nation, a country that has not done enough, 
say some, to control radical elements in the region. What do you hope to 
accomplish there this week?
    The President. I don't expect a dramatic breakthrough, and I want to 
caution the American people about that going in. I mean, the primary 
purpose of going to the Middle East is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder 
with Israel and Jordan, particularly given the difficult events of the 
last couple of weeks and the violence that they've undergone. I was 
asked to come there and witness the signing because the United States 
played a major role in this peace agreement.
    But I'm going to Syria because achieving a full peace in the Middle 
East requires a peace between Israel and Syria, which will make possible 
a peace between Israel and Lebanon. And that would be a huge plus for 
the United States and all the world to have a comprehensive peace there. 
I'm going because progress has been made. Terrorism is still an issue 
with Syria, and it will continue to be. But it seems clear to me that 
the best way to end terrorism in the Middle East is to have a 
comprehensive peace settlement there. And I do believe we're making 
progress. And I think if I go to Syria we will make further progress. 
Since I am in the region, I think that I ought to keep working and not 
just celebrate what we've done already, but to keep making progress 
toward the future.
    Mr. Meyer. Mr. President, thank you very much for your time, and 
enjoy your trip to northern Ohio today.
    The President. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.
    Mr. Meyer. I'm sure that was the chilliest jog you've had in a 
while, but I hope it was okay this morning.
    The President. To tell you the truth, I got in late so I slept in. I 
was a derelict this morning, I didn't go jog. [Laughter]
    Mr. Meyer. Well, shame on you, but we'll give you this one.
    The President. Thanks.
    Mr. Meyer. Thanks again for your time.

[[Page 1852]]

    The President. Goodbye.

Note: The interview began at 8:35 a.m. The President spoke by telephone 
from the Sheraton City Centre.