[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 24, 1994]
[Pages 1852-1862]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at the Cleveland City Club
October 24, 1994

    The President. Thank you. It's kind of nice to be out of Washington. 
And it's very nice to be back here for my third appearance. On the way 
in I told Steve, I said, ``Shoot, if I show up again, you're going to 
have to start charging me dues.'' He said, ``You've forgotten Senator 
Metzenbaum's already paid your dues.'' [Laughter] So I thank you, 
Senator, for paying my dues.
    I'm glad to be joined here by so many guests and especially by some 
of your distinguished political leaders. I want to thank Howard 
Metzenbaum, as he leaves the Senate, for the things he's done for Ohio 
and for the United States over the years.
    This is not what I came to talk about, but I want to mention in 
particular a bill that he got into the very last set of bills that 
passed in the filibuster-wild Senate at the end of the session. It's a 
bill that has achieved, finally, some long overdue national notice, to 
make it easier for parents to adopt children and to make it easier to 
get these kids out of long-term interminable delays in foster homes and 
into solid adoptive homes. And it's a great contribution to what I think 
ought to be the pro-family position of the United States of America. I 
thank you for that, sir. It was great.
    I'm glad to be here with Senator Glenn and Congressman Fingerhut, 
Congressman Stokes, Congressman Sawyer, Congressman Hoke. Former 
Congressman Mary Rose Oakar is here and as an Arab-American is going to 
the Middle East with the American delegation. I'm glad to see you here. 
Mayor White, I thank you for meeting me at the airport last night at 
midnight. I thought, now, there is a guy who is leaving no stone 
unturned. I thought Cleveland already had all the Federal money the law 
allowed, and there was Mike at the airport at midnight. [Laughter]
    Your ex-treasurer, our new Treasurer, Mary Ellen Withrow is here. 
[Applause] Thank you. The only person happier than I was when Mary Ellen 
Withrow was appointed was Lloyd Bentsen, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
because you can't print a new dollar bill until you've got a Treasurer, 
and he didn't have his name on any dollar bills. So after Mary Ellen was 
confirmed, Lloyd Bentsen sent me the first dollar bill with his name on 
it and with her name on it, which is framed in the White House.
    I'm glad to see my friend Joel Hyatt here, and so many other friends 
of mine here in Ohio. I thank you for coming.
    Eighteen months ago I had the privilege of speaking here at your 
club and outlining our economic programs to get the economy moving 
again. That was on May 10th of 1993. Ninety days after I spoke to this 
distinguished gathering, Congress passed that economic program by a 
landslide, you may remember, one vote in both Houses. [Laughter] As the 
Vice President always says, he's the most successful member of my 
administration; whenever he votes, we win. [Laughter]
    Today I wanted to come back here to discuss with you the progress 
that's been made and what we still have to do and the decisions that lie 
before you as citizens of this great country. We have made an important 
beginning with a comprehensive economic strategy designed to empower 
American workers to compete and win in the 21st century. That is, after 
all, our mission.
    The key elements of the strategy are simple and direct and 
important: First, reduce the deficit; second, expand trade and intensify 
the efforts of the United States Government to be a partner with 
American business in doing business beyond our borders; third, increase 
our investment in education and training, in technology and defense 
conversion; fourth, bring the benefits of free enterprise to areas which 
have been isolated from it, in our inner cities and rural areas, with 
new strategies, including but

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not limited to welfare reform; fifth, reinvent the Federal Government, 
make it smaller, more effective, less regulatory, more efficient.
    These strategies have all been implemented. And I want to go through 
them point by point, but I want to say what is clearly obvious. The 
implementation of these strategies required a reversal of the policies 
of the past 12 years. It required much more aggressive, innovative 
partnership with the private sector. We recognized that Government's 
role cannot be either to save the economy, because we don't have the 
capacity to do that in the global economy, or to sit on the sidelines 
but instead to do everything we can to create the right climate, the 
right conditions and to empower people so that they can compete and win 
by taking responsibility for themselves and their families. The 
increasing changes in the world make this imperative.
    The course of the last 21 months is very different from the previous 
course, as I have said, and one of the great questions in this election 
season is whether we will press on this course or return to the course 
we abandoned just 21 months ago, a course with easy promises and 
superficial attraction but which is a proven failure. We cannot afford 
to bankrupt the country when we need to invest and grow the economy.
    Let's look at the record. Business leaders here and all around the 
country understand that a nation, like any successful enterprise, needs 
a clear mission, a strategy to achieve the mission, the determination 
and the patience to implement the strategy, and a willingness to look at 
the bottom line, to measure success and failure and to make adjustments 
as indicated by results. The mission is clear, to empower the American 
people to compete and win. The strategy is sound; I just outlined it. We 
clearly have pursued it with determination, and the bottom line is 
getting stronger every day.
    Let's look at the elements of the strategy, starting with the 
national deficit. You all know that the deficit exploded in the 1980's 
and that the aggregate debt of the United States quadrupled in only 12 
years from what had been accumulated in the previous 190-plus years.
    Last year we began to change that. We passed huge reductions in 
Federal spending, cuts in over 300 Federal programs, outright 
eliminations in scores of programs, a 5-year freeze on domestic 
discretionary spending, restrictions on entitlements. In the budget I 
just signed we not only reduced defense spending, we reduced 
discretionary domestic spending for the first time in 25 years.
    The Congress enacted the reinventing Government program in which the 
Vice President has taken such a lead and in which we committed to reduce 
the size of the Federal Government by 272,000 over a 6-year period, 
bringing the Government to its smallest size since President Kennedy 
served in this office. Already there are more than 70,000 fewer people 
working for the Federal Government than there were on the day I became 
President. One hundred percent of this money is going to help you and 
people like you all over America fight crime at the grassroots level. 
That is how the crime bill is paid for. That is how we are going to 
increase the police forces of this country by 20 percent, build another 
100,000 jail cells for serious offenders to enforce the tougher 
penalties in the bill, and pay for the preventive strategies that the 
law enforcement officers and the community leaders and the mayors say 
will work, not by increasing the deficit, not by raising taxes but by 
shrinking the Government.
    One other part of this strategy that I think is terribly important, 
especially in Ohio, to mention is the procurement reforms. The United 
States spends about $200 billion a year buying goods and services under 
rules and regulations that would give anybody a headache. It was the 
rules and regulations, not outright venality, which caused the famous 
stories you've all heard of the $500 hammer and the $50 ashtray, rules 
and regulations which literally added $50 to every Government purchase 
that cost $2,500 or less--$50. If it was a $50 purchase, it cost $100. 
If it was a $1,000 purchase, it cost $1,050. After years of haggling 
about it, we have finally passed procurement reform which will save 
hundreds of millions of dollars a year and put an end to the policies 
which brought us the $500 hammers, thanks largely to the leadership of 
Senator John Glenn, and I thank him for that.
    Well, all this has led to deficit reduction. When I spoke here last 
year the Federal deficit for 1994, the fiscal year that ended on the 
last day of September, was estimated to be $305 billion. Today the 
Treasury has announced its preliminary estimate, $203 billion, $102 
billion less than was projected before the plan was passed. The decline 
in the deficit since 1992 is the largest 2-year decline in our history 
and

[[Page 1854]]

the first time in 20 years the deficit has gone down for 2 years in a 
row.
    Let me go over here and try to illustrate what this means, and I 
hope this microphone works. It does. That's the technology wizards in 
our administration having their way.
    So you can get a feel for this, the deficit, which was very small in 
1979, began going up dramatically. It was at about $60 billion, or $65 
billion in 1980, and then it began really rising. It had gone to $220 
billion by 1990; you see where it was in 1992. Our budget took quite a 
bit off of it last year. And what these figures mean is that now we are 
drawing the line on the deficit down to $200 billion, a dramatic change.
    So you can get an idea of the difference, if we hadn't passed that 
deficit reduction plan last year, the deficit would have been off the 
charts, up here at $305 billion. And because we did, next year it will 
be off the charts down here at about $170 billion. And when that 
happens, it will be the first time that the deficit's gone down 3 years 
in a row since Harry Truman was the President of the United States. The 
Congress deserves credit for doing this and helping to lift a burden of 
debt from our children and helping to free up funds that would otherwise 
have been consumed in financing Government debt to finance homes and 
businesses all across the United States.
    The second thing I want to emphasize is that the remarkable thing 
about this budget is that while reducing the deficit and reducing 
spending, we have actually been able to increase our investments in 
education and training and technology. We increased Head Start. We 
increased funds to help all States develop apprenticeship training 
programs for young people who don't go to college but do want to get 
good jobs. With the new individual education accounts that I announced 
on Friday, we are reorganizing the college loan program to provide lower 
interest loans, lower fees on the loans, longer repayment options for 
young people who get jobs when they get out of college with modest wages 
and should not have to pay more than a certain percentage of their 
income. Over the next few years, this will make 20 million Americans, 
including almost a million in Ohio, eligible for lower interest, longer 
term repayment on their college loans. At a time when what you earn 
depends upon what you can learn, these investments are very, very 
important for the economic future of the entire United States.
    In addition to that, we have increased our investments in defense 
conversion, including in several sites here in Ohio. This is especially 
important because defense has come down rather dramatically since 1987, 
and we had built a huge high-wage, high-tech infrastructure around the 
defense industries that can make a major contribution to our moving into 
the 21st century if we have the kind of partnerships to help them make 
the transition.
    The third thing we did was to expand trade and to intensify 
America's efforts to promote the sales of American products. We passed 
NAFTA. We negotiated a new trade deal with Japan which has opened 
markets for everything from cellular telephones to American rice and 
apples for the first time. We have negotiated the GATT agreement. And I 
believe Congress will pass it after the election when they come back in 
a special session to do that. That will add $100 to $200 billion a year 
to the gross national product of the United States.
    We've also changed the time when the American Government thought 
that it should be totally passive in helping American companies pierce 
foreign markets when other governments were doing everything they could 
to help their companies do the same. We've worked hard from Saudi Arabia 
to South Africa to China to open up contracts for American businesses 
that they can win on the merits.
    The fourth thing I mentioned I want to take a minute of time to talk 
about because it relates to the kind of things that Mayor White has 
tried to do here in Cleveland. We know that even as the economy grows, 
there are pockets of our country that have not been affected by the 
economic recovery, where investment has not come, where jobs have not 
come, where people are still despondent, places where free enterprise 
has not reached. This is true, by the way, in every advanced country, 
but it's more true in the United States, in our inner cities and in some 
of our isolated rural areas. What are we to do about it?
    The first thing we have to try to do is to change the job mix, keep 
getting more good jobs here, which we're doing. The second thing we want 
to do is to try to provide special incentives for people to invest in 
isolated areas, the empowerment zones, the enterprise community concept, 
all of which offer incentives for people

[[Page 1855]]

to put their money into areas that are otherwise not so attractive. You 
know, for years we've had special incentives for our business people to 
invest in the Caribbean. I don't quarrel with that, but we ought to have 
the same sort of advantages for people who invest in places in the 
United States that have no jobs and no hope and no future.
    I signed a bill not very long ago that will set up a network across 
the country of community development banks, modeled on successful 
experiments in Chicago and even in rural areas in our country and in 
other parts of the world, to make small loans to lower income people at 
a profit to generate capital in areas that otherwise don't have it. 
There are markets all across this country in areas where people live but 
there aren't very many jobs. And we need to bring capital investment to 
development banks there.
    The last thing I'd like to say is, we've tried to make Government a 
better partner with deregulation of banking and trucking and exports of 
high-tech products and by just having our Government work better. The 
Small Business Administration when I took office was, for most small 
business people, kind of a bureaucratic pain. We have reorganized it now 
so that the loan applications are one page long and you're supposed to 
get an answer, yes or no, if you put the documents in, within 72 hours. 
That's the kind of service the American people ought to get if we're 
going to have an agency of that kind.
    Now, this strategy of ours has a lot of critics. When the deficit 
reduction plan passed, there were speech after speech after speech 
saying, ``Gosh, if we do this the economy will collapse; the deficit 
will explode; middle class taxpayers will be bankrupted. This will be 
the end of the world.'' I heard it all. Then when NAFTA passed, we had a 
different set of critics who said there would be a giant sucking sound--
I think that was his phrase--[laughter]--do you all remember that?--to 
destroy our industry. Well, the economic program passed, and jobs went 
up, and the deficit went down. Middle class families did not have their 
tax rates hiked. The wealthiest Americans and corporations with incomes 
of over $10 million did, but all the money went to deficit reduction. 
And we built a new partnership with business by things like deregulation 
of banking and deregulation of intrastates trucking, which saves 
billions of dollars a year which then can be freed up to invest in this 
economy.
    Since NAFTA passed, exports to Mexico are up 21 percent. The Big 
Three automakers report their exports are up 500 percent to Mexico. 
NAFTA isn't a year old, and I just got back from Detroit where the 
biggest problem in Detroit is now complaints by autoworkers working 
overtime. That is a high-class problem.
    So that's the strategy; that's what we've done. What are the 
results? We are in the midst of the first investment-led, low-inflation, 
productivity-driven economic expansion in over three decades. New 
businesses are up. Exports are up. Jobs are growing. The deficit is 
falling. In the last 21 months there have been 4.6 million new jobs in 
the American economy, 90 percent of them in the private sector. In 1994 
something perhaps more fundamental and important has finally begun to 
happen. More than half the new jobs created by our economy in this year 
are above average wage, more high-wage jobs in this year than in the 
previous 5 years combined. And that is good news for the American 
working people.
    Investment in new equipment is 8 times what it was in the last 4 
years. And the Federal Government's purchases are down almost 8 percent. 
This is not a Government-inspired, deficit-driven recovery. This is more 
enterprise and less Government, better for the long run.
    For the first time since 1979 America leads the world in the sales 
of automobiles. For the first time in a decade we've had 9 months of 
manufacturing job growth in a row. For the first time in 9 years the 
annual vote of international economists said America, not Japan, was the 
most productive economy in the entire world.
    Now, you might say, if all that's so, why aren't we happier? 
[Laughter] Well, partly because the atmosphere in which we operate today 
is particularly contentious and, I believe, entirely too partisan. 
Partly because the way we get our information guarantees that we'll know 
more about our failures than our successes, guarantees that we'll know 
more about our conflicts than when we cooperate. Partly because we're 
dealing with long-term problems that haven't really affected a lot of 
real people's lives yet.
    If you look at the problems of crime, violence, family breakdown, 
drugs, gangs, and guns, they are a complex of social problems that have 
been developing over 30 years. You can't just wipe

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away their reality in a few months. If you look at the economic 
anxieties of people--average hourly wages in this country actually 
peaked about 20 years ago, and working people have been losing their 
health insurance steadily for about 10 years, the only advanced country 
in the world where this is the case. Another million Americans in 
working families lost their health insurance last year. So there are 
real reasons that a lot of hard-working Americans don't feel more secure 
or more happy with good statistics and growth rates. They're still not 
sure that guarantees them a good future and a good job, the ability to 
keep their kids' health insurance or put aside money for their college 
education. They're still not sure that we're going to be able to solve a 
lot of the problems that violate our values and our conscience in our 
society. They're still not sure that they're going to be able to achieve 
the American dream or that their children will be able to.
    I want to say to you, the only way to do that is to keep facing our 
problems and facing our challenges and moving into the future with a 
strategy we know has the best chance to work and to resist easy 
promises, quick fixes, and things that have already caused us trouble in 
the past. The realities of the modern world are that the economy is so 
globalized and change is so institutionalized that no government of any 
nation can promise to protect people from the changes of the world 
economy. You can't make the world go away, to use the phrase from the 
old song. You cannot do that.
    So if change is inevitable and if we will never have a single 
economy anymore--we'll have a local economy in Cleveland and a State 
economy in Ohio and a regional economy in the Middle West and a national 
economy in America and a global economy in the whole world--if that is 
the reality, then what do we have to do? We have to facilitate people 
making the changes that will make change our friend and not our enemy, 
that will make change a source of security for us, not a source of 
insecurity. And we have to do it in a way that promotes those 
institutions of society that are most important to us, principally our 
families and our communities.
    Companies are making changes like this all the time. And the 
changing nature of work is placing enormous demands on working people. 
The average worker today in every kind of work has to be able to work 
with more information, to be more creative, to solve more problems on 
his or her own initiative. We have to see more responsibility being 
devolved down to workers at the grassroots level. And they have to learn 
more skills and information than ever before because the average worker 
will change jobs six or seven times in a lifetime, even if he or she 
stays with the same firm. This is the law of change with which we all 
will live and which we will either use to help make us more prosperous 
or walk away from and pay the penalty.
    Since every American has to face these forces, and every American 
family does, the job of the Government ought to be to try to empower 
people to make the most of them.
    A family can't treat these problems just like a business can. You 
know, if a family's under economic stress, you can't divest yourself, 
although some people with teenagers would like to from time to time. 
[Laughter] You can't really downsize. You can't restructure. I mean, 
you're sort of stuck with who shows up at the dinner table at night. 
[Laughter]
    So when the family is under economic stress, what are their options? 
You either have to learn and to become more productive or get a better 
job or you face increased competition by hunkering down, working harder 
for less, and just trying to be as tough as the times are.
    Now, that is what has happened to millions and millions of American 
families for the last 20 years, that latter alternative, working harder 
for less. The average working family is spending more hours at work 
today than 25 years ago for about the same hourly wages, adjusted for 
inflation. When working families are doing everything they can and small 
business people are and they lose their health insurance or their health 
insurance deductibles are so high that all they really have is the 
insurance that if they get sick they won't lose their home, it's tough 
on them. It's hard to maintain the sense of security and optimism that a 
country like ours needs to lead the world into the future and to keep 
our own dreams alive.
    So what are we are going to do about that? Well, we need more pro-
family policies, like family and medical leave. We need to pass welfare 
reform that enables people to move from welfare to work, to be 
successful parents and successful workers. And we can do that. I sent a 
bill to the Congress last spring. We've given 19 States permission to 
get out from under all

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the crazy Federal rules that keep them from moving people into the 
workplace. And we're going to pass it next year.
    We need to set up a national network of these manufacturing 
extension centers, like the Great Lakes Manufacturing Technology Center 
here in Cleveland, to help small firms to accommodate new challenges, to 
compete, and to get new technologies. We need to pass the 
telecommunications reform bill which died at the end of this Congress, 
which will help us to get along that information superhighway and 
provide unbelievable numbers of high-wage jobs for our people.
    We need to reform our job training programs, especially our 
unemployment system, and transform it into a reemployment system. We are 
still stuck with the same unemployment program we've had for 40 years. 
It's not fair to working people, but it's not fair to employers either 
to pay a FUTA tax which you pay to somebody when they're unemployed so 
that they have enough money to get along on. It's less than they were 
making at work but more than they'd be making on welfare. The whole 
assumption is they're going to be called back to work. Eighty percent of 
the people who lose their jobs today don't get called back to their old 
jobs. We are stuck with the 1950's system, when we need one for the 21st 
century that will encourage continuous retraining and placement in the 
work force. So these are some of the things that we have to do.
    Let me just say one last word about health care. By the time the 
people who like the system the way it is got through spending between 
$200 and $300 million to convince the rest of you that I was trying to 
have the Government take over your health care and take away your choice 
of doctors, you didn't like my plan too much. That didn't happen to be 
what I was trying to do, but there was nothing I could do to stand 
against that.
    Here is the problem that we'll have to face. No country in the world 
spends more than 10 percent of its income on health care except us. We 
spend 14 percent. That is $260 billion more than the other most 
expensive system in the world. Now, if we were just buying better health 
care, who would complain? The problem is no other advanced economy in 
the world--the other countries that are about as rich as we are, they 
cover everybody. Their costs are more nearly in line with inflation, and 
people don't lose their health care when they move from job to job, all 
of which happens here.
    I will say again, the 1,100,000 people who lost their health 
insurance last year, almost all were in working families. They weren't 
people who were on welfare; they were in working families. So we have to 
find a way that you folks can accept and feel comfortable with that lets 
you keep what you've got if you've got it and you like it, gives people 
the security that they won't lose their health insurance when they 
change jobs or if they happen to have a baby born with an illness, and 
still brings costs in line with inflation and provides coverage to the 
people who don't have coverage now, 85 percent of whom are workers. 
We've got to find some way to do that.
    Now, keep in mind, we have reduced defense about all we can. We have 
reduced domestic spending for the first time in 25 years. The only thing 
driving the Federal deficit now is Medicare and Medicaid costs going up 
at 3 times the rate of inflation. This is a serious problem. We'll have 
to face it.
    Now, having said all that, I hope that you are optimistic about the 
future. I hope that you will make a decision in these coming elections 
that is consistent with keeping on this course, because it is working.
    This is not necessarily a partisan issue. There are a lot of 
Republicans who have good, serious ideas for how we keep bringing the 
deficit down and be discriminating about what we invest in. But I don't 
think this contract is a good idea because it promises everybody a tax 
cut, it promises a defense increase, promises to revive Star Wars, and 
promises to balance the budget. Now, that will indulge the present 
instead of preparing for the future. It will cut college loans 
explicitly, when we ought to be educating more people. It won't reduce 
the deficit; it will explode it. But it sounds good; it's a trillion 
dollars in promises. We're just 2 weeks away from the election. After 
all I've been through, I'd love to make you a trillion dollars' worth of 
promises. I could show everybody here a good time on that. [Laughter] We 
could have a good time. But it wouldn't be the responsible thing to do.
    The responsible thing to do is to take your licks and say, look for 
the long run. Look for the long run. You know, I know people are 
frustrated and angry. One of the first things that every parent learns 
to try to teach your children is not to make decisions based on frus-


[[Page 1858]]

tration and anger but to make decisions based on what you really know, 
when you're thinking, is best for the present and for the future.
    So I ask you to think about this. We have made a substantial start 
at building the kind of America that will be strong in the 21st century. 
There are reasons for Americans to still feel uncertain and worried. But 
the reasons can be addressed only if we keep going forward, not if we go 
back.
    And the last thing I want to say is this--[applause]--thank you. 
Sometimes we have to see ourselves as others see us. Sometimes where you 
get discouraged or so caught up in the day-to-day business that it's 
hard to make our contract with the future, our commitment to the long 
run, our covenant to revive the American dream, we need to remember how 
other people see us.
    Other people think, folks, this is a pretty great country. It's no 
accident that when they want to have elections in South Africa, they ask 
us to come help put them on, or when after hundreds of years of fighting 
in Northern Ireland, they want the United States to bring people here 
who are on opposite sides and let them come to America and see people 
who share their roots and try to work through this. It's no accident 
that when Saddam Hussein reared up again in the Gulf, the countries 
there that want to be free look to the United States for quick 
leadership. It's no accident that in the Middle East, it was the United 
States that was asked to witness this historic peace agreement between 
Israel and Jordan. That is not an accident. It was no accident. If you 
could have looked into the eyes of those young men and women we sent to 
Haiti in uniform when President Aristide went back and all the Haitian 
people had those signs in Creole saying ``Thank you, America''--they 
know, other people know, this is a very great country.
    It is our job to build on that greatness, even when it requires 
difficult decisions and looking toward tomorrow and not giving in to the 
easy path today. That is what is before us. And I believe that today you 
can see that we are a very different place than we were 21 months ago. 
We're in better shape than we were 18 months ago. We are going in the 
right direction. We should stay on this economic course and make it a 
bipartisan commitment to a strong America and a global economy that 
keeps the American dream alive into the next century.
    Thank you very much.
    Steve Smith. Thank you, President Clinton. We now turn to our 
traditional question-and-answer period, a long tradition of the City 
Club. But because there were so many members who wished to ask questions 
today, we selected questioners by lottery a few minutes before the 
President arrived. In front of this audience, in fact, the names were 
drawn.
    The questions, however, have not been submitted either to the 
President or to the City Club in advance. We'll both be hearing them for 
the first time. Please, those of you who are asking questions, please 
remember that President Clinton is the only one authorized to give a 
speech today so be sure your questions are, in fact, succinct questions. 
[Laughter]
    And President Clinton, if you'll come back up here, I want to tell 
you that our membership director handed me a note while you were 
speaking, indicating that your renewal for City Club membership is now 
due. [Laughter] First question.

Republican Contract With America

    Representative Martin R. Hoke. Mr. President, my question is about 
the Republican Contract With America which includes several of the same 
proposals that you campaigned for 2 years ago, like the line-item veto, 
a middle class tax cut, requiring welfare recipients to work. But you 
have called this contract, on at least a half a dozen occasions, a 
contract on America. Your advisers may think that this is cute rhetoric, 
but I think it's outrageous because as one of its signers----
    Audience members. Boo-o-o!
    The President. Let him finish. Let him finish. He wanted to do this; 
let him finish.
    Representative Hoke. Thank you, Mr. President. [Laughter] Because as 
one of its signers, your suggestion that I would take out a contract on 
my constituents is a suggestion that I take very, very personally. My 
question is this: At a time when the public is so concerned about 
violent crime, why would you resort to using such talk, in such an 
inflammatory way, especially when you have spoken yourself saying that 
you personally want to reduce the amount of partisanship in the debate?
    Audience member. Ignore him.
    The President. No, I don't want to ignore him. First of all, I agree 
with the line-item veto. I agree that we still should have some tax 
relief

[[Page 1859]]

for middle class taxpayers. The earned-income tax credit relief that we 
provided went to 15 million middle class families, including a half a 
million families in Ohio--10 times as many people here as got a tax 
increase--and it went up to $27,000. I think we should do more; I agree 
with that. There are some things in there I agree with. I certainly 
agree with welfare reform.
    And so I do agree with that. What I do not agree with is saying, 
``Put us in control, and we will cut everybody's taxes, balance the 
budget, increase defense, and increase Star Wars. And we'll tell you how 
we're going to do it after the election.'' That's what I don't agree 
with. And I do think that's a contract on our future.
    And let me say this. And you may think that partisan rhetoric is 
rough, but I see Mr. Fingerhut over there. It was the Republicans, not 
the Democrats, that killed lobby reform and campaign finance reform in 
the last week of the session. And I appreciate your concern about crime 
and violence. I wish you hadn't voted against the Brady bill and the 
crime bill.
    Q. Mr. President, it's an honor to be able to ask a question of the 
President of the United States. You have indicated your dislike for the 
Contract With America. In particular, what do you dislike about the 
balanced budget amendment, requiring welfare recipients to work, a 
middle class tax credit, or reducing the size of Government, which all 
American people want?
    The President. Okay. Stand there. Let's go through them all. First 
of all, I proposed welfare reform not all that different from the 
Republican plan. My bill was there, been in the Congress since March.
    Secondly, I'm strong for the line-item veto, and I recognize that 
some members in my party in the Senate prohibited it from passing, and 
I'm going to do everything I can to pass it. I've always been for it.
    Thirdly, I believe that we should do more to provide tax relief to 
middle class families, especially with children, although I would remind 
you that we did provide substantial relief last time with no help from 
members of the other party. And--wait a minute--70 percent of the tax 
relief in the contract goes to upper income people.
    But my fundamental problem is how it all fits together. On the 
balanced budget amendment, I've lived under a balanced budget amendment. 
The problem with the way the balanced--it depends on how it's written. 
But no matter how it's written you've still got to lower the deficit, I 
mean--and cut the size of Government. It was the Democrats, we've cut 
the size of the Government. When the Republicans were in, they didn't 
cut the size of the Government. The Federal Government has 70,000 fewer 
people working for it today than it does on the day I became President. 
It's going to have 270,000 fewer people working over a 6-year period. It 
will be the smallest Federal Government since Kennedy. We are shrinking 
the Federal Government. We are doing that, and we are doing it in a good 
way. So yes, I'm for that.
    And insofar as those ideas are in there, I am fine on them. But here 
is the problem. My problem is it doesn't add up. You cannot promise that 
in a fixed period of time you're going to cut everybody's taxes, raise 
defense, bring back Star Wars, and balance the budget. That is exactly 
what we heard before. It is almost exactly what we heard before. And 
what did we get? The debt of this country was quadrupled in 12 years.
    A lot of the isolated elements are very popular, and they sound 
wonderful. But when you add it up, you wind up with more deficits, which 
will take the economy down, cause massive--I'm talking massive--cuts in 
all Government programs, including education and Medicare and other 
things. We're not talking about minor things. We're talking about huge 
cuts. You'll still have a bigger deficit. The economy will be weaker, 
and we'll go right back where we were when we tried this before. That's 
my problem, not the specifics. The specifics sound great. But the 
package is cynical because when you say, ``How are you going to pay for 
it?'' ``I'll tell you later.'' And it's the same thing as it was before. 
It's more red ink when we ought to be investing and growing. That's the 
way to put the American people first.
    Q. First of all, I'd like to say, I think you're doing a great job, 
and I'm proud that you're my President.
    The President. Thank you.
    Let me say before you ask your question, I'm glad to have this 
opportunity to have this kind of discussion. And I want people who 
disagree with me to ask their questions. And I don't believe that any 
party or group has a monopoly on political wisdom. But I'll tell you 
something, when you hired me to be President,

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you knew that no matter who was President, this country had a lot of 
serious problems and we had to face them and that all the solutions 
wouldn't be popular. If it were easy, somebody would have already done 
it. The only thing I don't want you to do is to fall into the path of 
just taking another easy way out.
    Go ahead. I'm sorry.
    Q. That's okay. [Laughter]
    The President. Go ahead.

Middle East Peace Process

    Q. In light of the recent events that are going on in Israel and 
your upcoming trip, what kind of assistance will you give to or pressure 
will you put on Arafat to control what's going on in terms of the 
violence coming out of the territories?
    The President. That's an excellent question, first of all. Let me 
tell you a little about my trip, so I can answer that question. The King 
of Jordan and the Prime Minister of Israel are going to sign this peace 
agreement in a couple of days, and they've asked the United States, the 
President, to be the witness of it because we worked so hard on it.
    I'm going to go to Cairo to see President Mubarak, who's been a real 
partner of ours in this Middle East peace process, and to visit with 
Chairman Arafat there in Egypt about all the issues you just raised. I'm 
also going to Syria, as you know, to hope to make further progress there 
because until we have a peace with Syria, we can't get a peace with 
Lebanon and a comprehensive peace in the area.
    There are two questions in the question you asked. One is the 
question you asked, what are you going to do to see that Chairman Arafat 
keeps his commitments under the agreement he made with Israel? The 
second question is, what can we do to increase his capacity to keep 
those commitments?
    Keep in mind, the really difficult thing in this Middle East peace 
package is, if Israel makes an agreement with Jordan, they are two 
nations, with two systems of law enforcement, two armies, two sets of 
borders. They can--they have a real capacity to enforce their agreement, 
the same as if we can ever get this agreement with Syria or with 
Lebanon; you will have borders, armies, institutions, law enforcement.
    With the agreement with the PLO in the West Bank and--I mean, in 
Gaza and Jericho--I mean, in Jericho and the West Bank, you have only 
the beginnings of the capacity to honor this. Now, when Corporal Waxman 
was kidnapped, I believe that Mr. Arafat really made an effort to help 
find out where he was and to share intelligence with the Israelis, and 
it was a good first step. But I will press him to honor the agreements 
in spirit and letter, but we also have to develop his capacity to honor 
the agreements. That is very important because, keep in mind, the PLO 
had never--not only never run a police force or an army before but never 
had to see the lights come on or do all the things Mayor White has to 
worry about: does the sewer system work; does the water system work; 
what is the order and structure of events?
    So the challenge is not only to get them to want to keep their 
commitments but to ensure that they can keep their commitments.
    Q. Good afternoon, Mr. President. First of all, I'd like to say I'm 
a native of Camden, Arkansas, a Razorback, 45 miles from Hope, Arkansas.
    The President. Thank you.
    Q. Watermelon capital of the world. [Laughter]
    The President. The chamber of commerce thanks you.

Public Awareness of Administration Accomplishments

    Q. All right. I am a staff rep with the international union of 
Communication Workers of America--President Morton Bahr, out of 
Washington, DC, headquarters; Jeff Rechenbach, our newly elected vice 
president here in district 4.
    My question is--and you already alluded to most of what I'm going to 
say--all the good things you're doing leading our country, good things, 
signing the bill, the family leave bill, the crime bill, and also you 
just signed the education bill the other day. Why--I'm getting to the 
question--[laughter]--I want to know why you're not getting that--the 
media, rather, is not getting that out for all the good things. All we 
are hearing is the negative side of it.
    The President. Well, I told my press conference the other day in 
Washington that I arranged it that way because I didn't want to peak too 
soon. [Laughter]
    It's a complicated thing, really it is. Let me--it is a complicated 
thing. First of all, there is a highly political chain of communication 
on the other side of people that disagree with me

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about everything, and they have their own kind of media outlets. And the 
Democrats really never developed such a thing in the time when we didn't 
have the White House and I think didn't appreciate it because the--the 
national media tends to be--during the--while Congress is there, the 
things that go on longer get more coverage than the things that go on 
shorter. So if you pass a bill and it's good news, it's news for one day 
or maybe one night on the television, and then it's gone. If you have a 
bloodbath over health care for 4 months, you hear about it every day. 
And you remember what Mark Twain said, that there are two things people 
should never see, sausage and laws being made. [Laughter]
    And I think sometimes just the--it's hard to see the forest for the 
trees sometimes. And I think that, you know, I need to give more thought 
about what my responsibility in this is, how I can do a better job of 
communicating with the American people, getting this information out. 
But it's always easier when the Congress goes home because then I can go 
out and have meetings like this, we can talk, and we can communicate.
    It is one of the great frustrations of the job, you know, because 
all the research shows that only a very small percentage of the American 
people know about the family leave law or the middle class college loans 
or the apprenticeship programs or immunizing all the kids in the country 
under 2 or the Head Start program. Senator Glenn showed me an excerpt 
from Time magazine which said that this Congress had enacted a higher 
percentage of my proposals than any Congress had done for a President 
since the end of World War II, except for President Eisenhower's first 2 
years and President Johnson's first 2 years. And I dare say nobody in 
America knows that.
    So I would say I have to do a better job of that. I think sometimes, 
you know, I get so busy working on things I forget that the American 
people hired me to communicate with them as well as to work. And 
frankly--and our adversaries, if they just want to stop us from doing 
things, then they don't have to do as much work as we do because all 
they have to do is just keep saying no out in the country, so it's 
easier. They have an easier burden than I do because they don't have to 
get anything done if they just want to stop things.
    So I just have to do a better job. And any of you got any good ideas 
about how I can do a better job of communicating, I'd like to have them. 
I'm not as good a talker as I thought I was when I got this job. 
[Laughter]
    Thank you.
    Q. Mr. President, I'm Tom Corey from Brook Park, Ohio. And I want to 
add our welcome to you, as well.
    The President. Thank you.

Middle East Peace Process

    Q. My question is the Middle East again, back to that, Lebanon, and 
how soon do you think we can expect a treaty between Lebanon and Israel? 
And the second part of the question is, can we get the travel ban to 
Lebanon lifted? And then, I believe you are more than a candidate for 
the Nobel Peace Prize.
    Thank you.
    The President. First of all, I think there will be a peace with 
Lebanon, for reasons that you clearly understand by the question you 
asked. Peace with Lebanon will probably come about the time peace with 
Syria does. I think we have some chance of getting there. I wouldn't 
expect some sort of immediate breakthrough; I don't want to unduly raise 
expectations. But we are making good, steady progress. And I think it is 
very much in the interests of the people and the governments of Syria, 
Lebanon, and Israel to keep going with the peace process. I cannot set a 
time for you on that. If I knew, I probably couldn't say, but I don't 
know.
    But I can tell you, we're making good progress. The travel ban is an 
issue which will come up. We are trying to take these issues one by one, 
as we can. I'm encouraged by the travel that's going back and forth in 
other countries now, especially between Israel and Jordan. I'm 
encouraged by the lifting of the embargo against Israel by the GCC 
countries. So this is another barrier that will surely fall; even though 
I can't tell you when, I think it'll be sooner rather than later because 
we seem to be on a pretty good roll here.
    If the people of Israel can keep their courage up and the people of 
the Middle East can keep their courage up and we won't be intimidated by 
these terrorists and enemies of peace, I think we'll get there in a 
reasonable time. And I thank you for your question.
    Q. Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, this will be the last 
question.

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Health Care Reform

    Q. President Clinton, my question is about health care and how it 
might be paid for. My proposal is that to keep the taxpayers constantly 
informed as to the cost of health care, that a national sales tax be put 
on every purchase at the retail level, and that this--if the 
expenditures on health care increase or if they decrease, then that this 
is--as quickly as possible be reflected in the amount of the percent of 
the tax; also that tax stamps be put out--Ohio wants to do that--so the 
people knew they were paying for the program. So, sir, to keep the 
taxpayers informed, I think the regular tax and that sort of thing 
should be adjusted as a function of time and as a function of the total 
expenditures.
    Would you comment, sir? [Laughter]
    The President. Well, there are--I know you're laughing, but there 
are some people in the Congress who think that health care should be 
funded that way, too, with a national--some sort of national sales levy.
    Let me tell you what my problem with it is. My problem with it is 
that we are already, let me say again, we are already spending 14 
percent of our income on health care. Canada spends 10; Germany and 
Japan are a little under 9 percent of their income.
    Now, part of the reason we spend more is that we have higher rates 
of AIDS and higher rates of violence and higher rates of some other 
health problems than they do. So if we had more people showing up at the 
emergency rooms in Cleveland that are cut up or shot or have drug 
problems, just to take three, we're going to pay more for health care.
    But a lot of it is because our system is so incredibly inefficient 
in so many ways. And the problem I've always had with just passing some 
sort of a tax to cover the uninsured is that you just build in all the 
inefficiencies into the system and you force the people who are 
already--many of whom are already paying more than their fair share for 
health care to pay for everybody else's health care as well, without 
knowing whether they're going to pay their fair share.
    So there are a lot of people, good people, who agree with the 
proposal that you have outlined. But I'm just reluctant to embrace it 
until I believe we've done more to build in some competitive pressures 
to take waste out of the system and to make sure the people who can pay 
their own way are doing their own part before we ask the rest of 
Americans to do anything for them.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:40 p.m. at the Statler Tower Building. 
In his remarks, he referred to Steve Smith, club president; Mayor 
Michael R. White of Cleveland; Representative Eric Fingerhut; King 
Hussein of Jordan; Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel; President 
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; and Yasser Arafat, Chairman, Palestine 
Liberation Organization.