[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[December 2, 1994]
[Pages 2138-2141]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 2138]]


Teleconference Remarks With the National League of Cities
December 2, 1994

    The President. Thank you very much, Carolyn Long Banks, and thank 
you all for that very warm welcome. I wish you the best in your new job, 
Carolyn, as league president. I want to say to all of you, I wish I 
could be there in Minneapolis with my many friends in the National 
League of Cities.
    I'd like to say a special word of hello to two of your members of 
the board of directors whom I have known for a very long time, from my 
home State, Sharon Priest, the city director of Little Rock, and Martin 
Gipson, alderman in North Little Rock. I'd also like to say a special 
word of thanks to your outgoing president, Sharpe James, who's been a 
good friend of mine. And because of his leadership and the leadership of 
other league members, we now have the toughest and smartest crime bill 
in our history. I thank you for that, Sharpe, and I thank all of you.
    I have long admired the work of the National League of Cities. As a 
Governor, I worked with many of you on many tough issues. And as 
President, I'm committed to doing all I can to face those issues with 
you in a genuine spirit of partnership. To do that, I believe, as many 
of you do, that while Government cannot be society's savior, neither can 
it sit on the sidelines.
    Our job, yours and mine, is to create opportunity, to remove 
barriers to that opportunity, to give our people the tools they need to 
make the most of their lives. When it comes to our cities, we've 
developed a public-private partnership designed to provide opportunity 
where it's most needed. We've encouraged businesses to take root and 
grow in neglected communities. With the Community Development and 
Regulatory Improvement Act, we're steering billions of dollars in 
private investment to the places people need it the most. And very soon, 
we'll announce the winners of our empowerment zones and enterprise 
communities. We're helping Americans to rebuild the American dream for 
themselves. The most important thing we can do, what we've been working 
to do since the beginning of our administration, is to create high-
quality, high-wage jobs, jobs that enable our people to build good lives 
for themselves.
    In recent days, we've had a string of indicators that show just how 
strong this recovery has been. This morning we have the latest job 
figures that show strong success in building good jobs for Americans. 
Unemployment is down to 5.6 percent, the lowest it's been in 4\1/2\ 
years. Since I became President, our economy has produced 5.2 million 
new jobs. So far this year, there have been more new jobs created in 
high-wage industries than in the previous 5 years combined. 
Manufacturing jobs are up for 11 consecutive months for the first time 
in more than a decade. And more construction jobs have been created this 
year alone than in the previous 9 years combined.
    Our strategy of opening up foreign markets to our goods and services 
has certainly contributed to this success. In just a year, NAFTA has 
created an estimated 100,000 new jobs. And yesterday, with strong 
bipartisan support, we took an historic step and passed the GATT world 
trade agreement, which will create hundreds of thousands of good jobs 
here in America.
    Despite these successes, you and I both know there are too many 
hard-working Americans who are still deeply anxious about their economic 
futures and their families. I understand that. For 20 years, stagnant 
wages and a declining rate of job security have taken a terrible toll. 
As our workers face these terrible changes and these exciting challenges 
of the global economy, they are rightly worried about how they and their 
children will adjust. We know that male workers without a college 
education have actually seen a decline in their earnings over the last 
10 years. And we know that most working families are actually working 
more; they have less leisure time. We also know that this is the only 
advanced country in the world where working people are actually losing 
ground in terms of their health coverage. A million Americans in working 
families lost health insurance last year alone. That's why, even as we 
open up trade and create jobs, we've got to work hard to help Americans 
adjust to these changes so that they can win in the global economy.
    The most important thing we can do is to help our people to learn 
the skills they need

[[Page 2139]]

to compete and win in the years to come. That's the idea behind the 
education and training programs we've worked so hard for in the 103d 
Congress: a big expansion of Head Start; the Goals 2000 program with its 
high national standards; the elementary and secondary education reform 
act, with its grassroots reforms; more computers for our schools; things 
like charter schools, more public school choice, better education for 
poor children; character education in our schools. That's what's behind 
our determination to give more affordable loans for millions and 
millions of middle class students to go to college. It's behind the 
national service act, AmeriCorps, which allows tens of thousands of our 
young people to earn money for their college education by serving their 
communities at the grassroots level. And it's what's behind our 
apprenticeship programs for people who don't go to college but do want 
to have good jobs and good skills.
    The strength of all these programs is that they're rooted in the 
idea that individual citizens and communities can decide how best to 
build their own futures. Now for you, nothing in our agenda may be more 
important than our efforts to fight crime. The crime bill we passed is 
the crime bill many of you helped to write. It's a model for how we must 
continue to reinvent our Government to meet the needs of our people and 
to move power out of Washington back to the grassroots. We're moving 
quickly to put 100,000 more police on the street and to institute our 
prevention and our punishment programs. And we're paying for it by 
reducing the Federal work force by 272,000 positions to its smallest 
level since President Kennedy. Already, there are more than 70,000 fewer 
people working for the Federal Government than there were on the day I 
was inaugurated President. And every dollar we save is going back to 
you, going back to grassroots communities who know best how to fight 
crime in the streets. That's a good deal. It will work for America.
    We've made a good beginning on crime, a good beginning on the 
economy. But to do more, I hope we can continue the spirit of 
cooperation with the new Congress that we've seen on GATT this week. I 
hope we can find common ground on your concerns about unfunded Federal 
mandates which I have long opposed; the Glenn-Kempthorne legislation 
would restrict these mandates. And we're working closely with the 
lawmakers to make this bill a priority early, early in the next session 
of Congress.
    We should also continue to cooperate on health care reform. The 
American people still want it, and they still need it. We have to find a 
way to provide working families with that help. We can't continue to be 
the only advanced country in the world where more and more working 
people are losing their health insurance every year and where the cost 
of health care is going up at 3 times the rate of inflation. And for 
small businesses, health insurance premiums this year went up at almost 
5 times the rate of inflation. When the health of the American people 
and working families suffer, the health of our economy suffers. All of 
you know that more and more of our Federal budget is going to health 
care. Medicare, Medicaid, they're the fastest increasing areas of the 
Federal budget. We've held everything else constant or reduced it. So we 
need to find ways that, step by step, we can in a bipartisan spirit make 
progress on this.
    We also have to find ways to cooperate on welfare reform. We have to 
build a strong bridge from dependency to work for millions of Americans. 
We have to attack problems that feed dependency, including the runaway 
problem of teen pregnancies. I've been working on this welfare reform 
issue for more than a decade now. I know that the people on welfare 
overwhelmingly want to get off. We have got a system that was designed 
for another age, as so many governmental systems are, and we need to 
change it dramatically to make it rooted in independence and 
responsibility, not to subsidize dependence. Every American wants this, 
and we're going to do it and do it together.
    On these and many, many other issues, I hope and believe we can 
cooperate with the new Congress. But cooperation for me cannot mean 
abandoning principle, abandoning the hard work we have already 
accomplished together in our fight to restore our economy, our fight 
against crime, our fight to give this country back to hard-working 
people who play by the rules. I will oppose any efforts to take us back 
on those issues. We've worked too hard to build an economic recovery and 
a job strategy and to reduce this deficit that 12 years of irresponsible 
explosive spending left us. And I will fight efforts that jeopardize the 
strategy to create jobs, fight efforts that will explode the deficit, 
fight efforts

[[Page 2140]]

that will put new burdens on the backs of our children.
    The assault weapons ban that you helped to win stands between the 
citizens you and I must protect and the gangs and thugs that would 
terrorize them. I will do all in my power to keep the next Congress from 
doing anything that will jeopardize the safety of our people.
    And I truly hope the new Congress understands how important these 
things are to the American people and to their elected representatives 
at the grassroots level. We've made a good beginning to build together, 
and we have to get on with the job. It's no secret that the landscape in 
Washington shifted dramatically last month. But what must not shift is 
my commitment and your commitment to continue to work for what will 
actually help hard-working, middle class Americans restore the hope that 
they can keep the American dream alive and that will provide 
opportunities and insist on responsibilities for others to move into 
that great middle class.
    What must not change is our conviction that we work best when we 
work together as partners and when we all share responsibility. 
Diversity of government is the great genius of the American system. From 
the smallest of our communities to the biggest of our cities to the 
statehouses and to the Halls of Congress and the White House, no part of 
our effort can be isolated. That's why we must keep talking with one 
another and listening to one another and working together.
    If we work at all our levels, we can help take America in the 
direction it must move. We can help our people find the best path on to 
the bright new century that awaits us. We can give the American people a 
smaller Government, a more entrepreneurial Government, a more flexible 
Government that reflects their values and promotes their interests, if 
we do it together.
    Thank you very much. Thank you.

[At this point, the moderator introduced the participants.]

    Q. Mr. President, I'm Lucy Allen, mayor of Lewisburg, North 
Carolina, where the red carpet will always be out should you choose to 
visit.
    The President. Thank you. You know, I've always felt especially safe 
in North Carolina. [Laughter]

[Mayor Allen asked about changing the Federal Government's pattern of 
preempting local authority.]

    The President. I'd like to suggest three things. First of all, we 
need to pass a sensible unfunded mandate bill. We need to get on with 
that area.
    Secondly, we need to continue the work we are doing here in 
Washington to try to increase our capacity to give more flexibility to 
State and local governments to take their own initiatives in areas of 
national interest where the circumstances are different from locality to 
locality.
    Let me just give you an example. Our administration has given 20 
States the waiver authority to create their own welfare reform programs, 
in 9 States the authority to create their own health care reform 
programs. We're examining things that we can do to accelerate that 
process and to help local governments, cities as well as States, in that 
process. I think that the American people know there are great national 
purposes we must pursue but that they differ in their facts from place 
to place.
    And the third thing I think we have to do is to set up a much better 
system of consultation with local government before Congress enacts laws 
or the Federal executive branch enacts regulations that can affect you. 
And let me just give you one example. You mentioned one, so I'll use the 
one and try to show the example that I mean. In the telecommunications 
legislation that was proposed last year but not quite passed, there 
would have been some restriction on the ability of local government to 
confine access to local cable channels. It was not an intended intrusion 
on the right of local government but rather the desire to build a true 
information superhighway with very few barriers to access all across 
America. There may be an argument for not doing that. And one of the 
things I hope we can do is to get together with administration officials 
and interested people in Congress and representatives of local 
government early, early next year so that we can hear your concern about 
that. And I feel the same way about land use, zoning issues, and other 
things.
    I don't believe we ought to be out here passing laws or adopting 
regulations until there has been a real effort to resolve differences at 
the local level. Because if there is one thing that's clear from this 
election and from the mounting frustrations of mayors and Governors and 
county

[[Page 2141]]

officials all across America over the last 10 to 15 years, it is that 
people want most decisions that affect their lives made by that level of 
government as close to them as possible. If it can be done by something 
outside the government, that's what they want. But if it's a 
governmental decision, they'd like it made as close to them as possible. 
So our job is to help see that that is accomplished.
    On the other hand, this telecommunications issue is a great national 
enterprise. Creating the information superhighway will create jobs and 
opportunity for Americans; it will allow poor children in little 
isolated rural places access to information that was formerly the 
province of the wealthiest people in the most well-funded school 
districts in America. This can do a great thing for our country, but we 
have to do it, as I said, in partnership. And I'll do my best to do that 
with you.
    Thank you very much.
    Q. Thank you, Mr. President.

[A participant asked about proposed middle class tax cuts and their 
impact on local economies.]

    The President. Well, there are a lot of tax cut proposals around, as 
you know, in the Congress. And the Republican contract calls for several 
hundred billion in tax cuts. I can't remember the exact figure. There's 
already been a bill introduced to cut income taxes 20 percent across the 
board.
    The first thing I want to say is that I think we need more tax 
fairness in the Federal Tax Code, we need to give hard-working middle 
class people a dividend from the end of the cold war and the dramatic 
downsizing of the Federal Government that is going on. They haven't 
really received it yet. And I think that's very, very important.
    I also think, however, that most hard-working Americans have a 
vested interest in seeing us keep this deficit under control. In a 
couple of years, interest payments on the debt will be greater than the 
defense budget because of the explosion of debt that grew up between 
1981 and 1993, when the Federal deficit, national debt, was quadrupled. 
We cannot continue on that track. I'm trying to turn it around in the 
other way. I don't think people ought to be spending over 20 percent of 
their income tax payments every year just paying interest on the debt 
that was piled up in that period.
    So while I favor a middle class tax cut and I don't rule out working 
with the Republican Congress on some of their ideas, my standard will 
be: Will it help increase incomes for the middle class, will it promote 
jobs and growth, and can we pay for it? That will be my standard. If we 
do it in that way, I think that the municipalities will be all right, 
except that we're going to have to cut a lot of spending up here. And 
especially, I would urge our friends in the National League of Cities 
who are in the Republican Party, to make sure that the Congress 
understands what the consequences are of all these budgetary decisions.
    I can't predict what will happen. All I can tell you is, I want 
better tax fairness, I want to do something that increases middle class 
incomes, I want a dividend from the end of the cold war and the 
downsizing of the Federal Government.
    We made a beginning last year, by the way, when we cut taxes on 15 
million working families, with 50 million people in them, with incomes 
of up to $27,000. But we have to do more. I think there's a way to do it 
in ways that will actually help the economic climate of our cities, by 
putting more money into the pockets of your citizens, if we do it with 
real discipline and care. But again, as you implied in your question, 
there are consequences to all these decisions, especially if we're going 
to be disciplined and pay for them. So I would say that the National 
League of Cities ought to ask to be a partner with Congress in the 
decisions about how the taxes are going to be cut and what the 
implications for the cities are. I hope you will ask for that 
partnership, and our door will always be open to you.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:36 a.m. by satellite from Room 459 of 
the Old Executive Office Building to the meeting in Minneapolis, MN.