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



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

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

Health Care Reform

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

[[Page 1988]]

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

Midterm Elections

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

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