    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [February 22, 1995]
    [Pages 243-250]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Business Council
    February 22, 1995

        Thank you very much. Ed, you did such a good job, I was thinking
    there wasn't much more for me to say. I'll just--what if I say I agree
    and sit down and get a free meal? [Laughter] I'm delighted to be back
    here with this group, and I'm glad to see many old friends. I've tried
    to make a couple of the tables, and afterward, I want to go around to
    say hello to everybody I missed.
        I, more than anything else, want to say, too, I appreciate the
    receptivity that many, many members of this group have had to working

    [[Page 244]]

    with me and with the members of our administration. I have many members
    of the Cabinet here and sub-Cabinet members, and we've worked on a whole
    range of issues.
        As a gesture of good will, I left my golf clubs home tonight--
    [laughter]--so none of you are in danger of being hit by errant balls.
    Actually, I didn't hit anybody last week, either. I didn't hit it far
    enough to hit anybody. I was trying, but I couldn't get the ball up in
    the air.
        I've given some thought to what we ought to talk about tonight.
    There are several issues I want to speak about. Maybe I should try to do
    pretty much what I did last year, which is to just give you an update as
    big stockholders in America on where I think we are and where we have to
    go.
        I'd like to begin by thanking you for the work we've done together
    in trade, particularly, and the support many of you have given to our
    deficit reduction and budget control and Government reduction efforts
    over the last couple of years and the involvements we've had in building
    new and, in many ways, unprecedented partnerships with the private
    sector to try to promote American products and services around the
    world.
        But even more fundamental than that, I'd like to say that perhaps
    the thing we have most in common is not that we run big operations. Some
    of you may have heard the story I've been telling about the college
    president who told me over New Year's that being president was like
    running a cemetery. You had a lot of people under you, but nobody was
    listening. [Laughter] And sometimes you may feel that way as well.
        But what we really have in common is that we've had the chance, each
    of us in our different ways, to live the American dream. We've had
    opportunities to do what we want to do, to live out the dreams of our
    childhood, to be rewarded for our labors in ways that very few people in
    this country and in this world have had. And it may be just because
    we're eminently deserving, but I'm sure we'd all admit we've been the
    beneficiaries of good fortune and a lot of help along the way as well. I
    know that I certainly feel that way.
        And I think we have a peculiar obligation at this moment in our
    country's history when there is so much change going on to try to make
    sure that we preserve the dream that we've lived for all the people that
    are coming after us. That's really the mission that I think we should
    all be on at the end of the 20th century.
        As you look ahead to the future, it is so full of excitement and
    opportunity and unimaginable benefits. But it is also full of a range of
    changes and challenges to ordinary people that are truly intimidating.
    And these challenges, these great opportunities that are sweeping across
    our country as we hurdle into the global economy of the 21st century are
    having very uneven impacts out there in America, even among people who
    are all trying to do the right thing as hard as they can. All the
    downsizing and rightsizing and changing all the challenges and all the
    rewards that come to people who meet the education premium of the
    knowledge society, they all have a different side which brings upheaval
    and uncertainty and insecurity to an awful lot of our folks.
        And at a time like this, it's very important that the people who are
    out there, trying to make sense of what's going on in the world as it
    affects their lives, at least know that those of us who are in positions
    of leadership and who have responsibility for capturing and keeping and
    preserving and passing on the American dream are doing our dead-level
    best to do that and to keep a world in which, if you're in this country
    and you're doing the right things, you've got a good chance to be
    rewarded for your efforts in making a successful career and raising a
    successful family.
        I ran for President because I thought we were running away from too
    many of our major challenges, because it was too easy to play the
    politics of the moment. There is, as we find repeatedly, a price for
    taking the long view and doing things that are difficult and unpopular,
    but nonetheless, that's work that has to be done.
        When I got here, we began by passing the biggest deficit reduction
    package in history, one that would reduce the deficit by $600 billion-
    plus over 5 years. We cut or eliminated outright more than 300 programs,
    reduced the Federal Government already by over 100,000 positions and, if
    no new laws were passed by the new Congress, the size of the Federal
    Government would be shrunk by 272,000 now over 5 years, making it the
    smallest it's been since Mr. Kennedy was the President of the United
    States.
        In that budget, we were able to give tax relief for working families
    with incomes of under $26,000 a year, increase the expensing provision

    [[Page 245]]

    for the small businesses of our country in ways that benefited large
    numbers of them, and of course, we've worked together to lower export
    barriers and to pass NAFTA and GATT, to get the APEC nations to agree to
    a free trade zone in Asia early in the next century, and at the Summit
    of the America's, we've agreed to work on a free trade zone here in our
    own back yard.
        We've had the most active and aggressive efforts on behalf of
    American interests by the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private
    Investment Corporation, at least in all of my experience, and I think of
    that of most of yours. We've tried to harness the power of science and
    technology and the downsizing of the defense budget to make them
    opportunities for us to develop new commercial products that we can sell
    around the world.
        It is important in all these things to realize that we have made a
    fundamental choice as Americans, a choice we've been making now for many
    decades, and that is that we're going to compete and win in the world;
    we're not going to run away from it; we're not going to attempt to hide
    behind barriers; we're going to face the very vigorous challenges that
    global competition presents; and we're going to make them work for the
    American people and for our future.
        Not everyone believes that that's a course we should take. That has
    not only economic implications but also security implications. And so I
    ask that those of you who understand that support the decisions that we
    will have to make that may be unpopular in the short run.
        Many of you have already written to me or called me, supporting the
    action that I took with regard to the financial crisis in Mexico. I
    appreciate that. It is an important issue for the workers and the
    business interests of this country long-term and, as many of you know,
    not simply because of Mexico but because of Argentina and Brazil and all
    of Latin America and, indeed, the developing world at large. We have a
    stake in seeing that people who are committed to democracy and to free
    market economics and to open trade have a chance to succeed in a
    difficult world. And we should not be surprised when there are certain
    rocks in the road, when the path is uneasy and uneven. And so I hope
    that all of you believe that I did the right thing, but I do want to say
    for those of you who have expressed your support, I appreciate that.
        The second point I want to make is that this is not just an economic
    issue. The burdens of leadership, if we want to benefit from them, also
    require us to be involved in the world in foreign policy issues, require
    us to take the lead, for example, in trying to resolve the nuclear issue
    with North Korea, require us to do things that are wildly unpopular in
    the short term but are in our long-term interest, like restoring
    democracy in Haiti and require us to continue to support responsible
    operations in the United Nations.
        Now, in this new Congress, there will be many debates designed
    basically to try to withdraw the United States from a role of world
    leadership. And I understand why people who voted for both parties in
    the last congressional election are overwhelmingly preoccupied with
    their own problems at home. But what you understand is, we cannot solve
    our problems at home unless we remain a leader in the world. It is a
    false choice.
        And so, I urge you to engage the new Congress in a constructive
    debate from your perspective about our responsibilities to maintain the
    leadership of the United States in economic affairs, in support of
    freedom and free markets, and in security affairs. And the two things go
    hand in hand. We should be prudent. We should be restrained. We should
    not be involved in every conflict. We cannot solve every problem. But
    where we can make a difference, where it is plainly in the interest of
    the United States, we must be in a position to do so, in terms of our
    economic interests and our security interests. So that's the first
    request I would make of you in our common obligation to preserve the
    American dream into the next century.
        The second thing I'd like to say is that we have cut Government, and
    we've made it work better. We've tried to do things that other people
    talked about. We've deregulated much of the banking operations. We've
    deregulated intrastate trucking. We have lowered dramatically export
    controls on high-tech products. We've reformed the Federal procurement
    system, which was an unbelievable mess and which the Vice President
    liked because it got him on the David Letterman show, breaking up $10
    glass ashtrays. [Laughter]
        We cut the SBA loan form from an inch thick to a page long and the
    response time to nearly nothing. We did the same thing with FHA
    processing. We are working hard with this

    [[Page 246]]

    new Congress in many ways that I think all Americans support. I was glad
    to sign the law applying to Congress any requirements it imposes on
    private employers, and I think that will make the Congress think a while
    when they start passing laws that affect you, when they have to consider
    how it will affect them.
        We are working now to pass a bill that will reduce the burden of
    unfunded Federal mandates on State and local governments, and I think we
    should. We are trying to resolve the conflicts in Federal regulations
    that have often occurred between one agency and another, and we are
    making some specific progress there in getting the Labor Department and
    the EPA to work together.
        All of these things have been part of an economic strategy that,
    when combined with your remarkable efforts and those of American
    business people, large and small, and American workers all across this
    country, booming productivity, all these things together have given us
    the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in 25 years,
    nearly 6 million new jobs, 93 percent of them in the private sector, the
    highest rate of private sector job growth in any recovery in the last 20
    years. For the first time in 9 years, last year our country's economy
    was voted the most productive in the world.
        We've reduced our deficit to about half the percentage of our
    national income it was when I became President. And the Council of
    Economic Advisers gave me an interesting chart the other day which
    showed the annual deficit of the country, except for interest on the
    debt--to show you what a problem that is, you take away interest on the
    accumulated national debt--the last time we had an operating surplus in
    the Federal budget was in Lyndon Johnson's term, and it was tiny. In the
    Kennedy-Johnson term, it was larger. In our first 2 years, our operating
    surplus, without interest on the debt, is as large as it was in the
    Kennedy-Johnson term, the first time in 30 years that's been the case
    through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. So we have
    worked hard to control Government spending, but the accumulated burden
    of interest on the debt has changed the dynamics rather dramatically of
    managing that problem.
        We had to make some tough decisions to get to this point. They were
    characterized by our opponents in the last election in ways that
    benefited them politically and burdened us. People accused us of raising
    their taxes when we didn't and accused us of expanding the Government
    when we were contracting it.
        But the important thing is not the results of any particular
    election but that we did the right thing and that the country is moving
    in the right direction, and we must continue to do that and take on the
    jobs that are still ahead. We know we've got a lot more work to do in
    changing the way the Federal Government works. And I believe now more
    than anything else, we are in place and on the way to eliminating and
    consolidating any number of Government programs. In this new budget, we
    cut or eliminate another 400 and consolidate them.
        We've proposed the ``GI bill'' for America's workers, which I hope
    every one of you will support, which would consolidate 70 Federal
    training programs into one program and give an unemployed worker or a
    worker with a wage so low that he or she qualifies for Federal training
    funds the right to a $2,600 a year voucher to take to the nearest
    community college or to any other approved training program to get
    whatever training they need. So that instead of having all these
    piecemeal Federal programs of uncertain impact, we just put the money in
    a pot and use it to educate and retrain workers who are moving between
    jobs. That will increase the productivity of the work force, reduce the
    time of unemployment, and increase the earning capacity of a lot of
    workers.
        Those are the kinds of things we're working on. I think perhaps the
    most important thing we can do, to go back to something Ed said, is to
    try to change this sort of culture of regulation which has accumulated
    over the last 30 or 35 years in both Republican and Democratic
    administrations, unrelated to whether the objectives of the regulation
    are in conventional terms, if you will, liberal or conservative.
        We have regulators who have not wanted to be arbitrary, so they've
    tried to think of every conceivable circumstance that could happen in a
    certain area and then write rules with overwhelming precision, the
    impact of which was to be so incapable of understanding that the
    administration of them was as arbitrary as if you had written something
    very general.
        We have other rules which focus too much on the process rather than
    the end product. Instead of saying, ``This is the clean air standard
    that State X must meet,'' they say, ``Here are the 25 things you have to
    do because they will

    [[Page 247]]

    produce the clean air standard,'' whether they will or not.
        We have too many rules where the process of enforcing the rules is
    evaluated more than the results. We've found, for example, that we had
    Customs officials who were evaluated on their jobs based on how many
    shipments of imported toys they commandeered. Well, not surprisingly, we
    had more toys than other products in certain Customs places, because
    that's how you determine whether you were doing a good job, not whether
    there was anything wrong with the toys or not. We have other places
    where people are qualified and evaluated for promotions based on the
    volume, the number of fines that they write, not whether or not they
    eliminate the problem which causes people to get fined in the first
    place.
        So this whole culture, it seems to me, needs a thorough
    reexamination. Yesterday, the Vice President and I made an appearance
    before all of the Federal regulators from all of the agencies and
    introduced some of our success stories, a banker from Oklahoma who came
    to talk about how the Comptroller of the Currency was dealing with banks
    from his point of view better than anybody had in decades. We also
    introduced some reminders of why we need regulation, a man whose wife
    was saved by air bags, a man whose son was lost to E. coli poisoning
    because the rule we now have in place on meat inspections was not there
    when his son ate contaminated food. And we talked about the changes we
    were going to try to make.
        I instructed these regulators to review every single regulation they
    have by June 1st and make a report to me by June 1st based on which ones
    they thought could be scrapped altogether, which ones could be modified,
    and whether any of the regulation could better be done at the State and
    local level or by some self-policing mechanism. I asked them to look for
    new measures of success that focused more on results as opposed to
    process.
        Finally, the Vice President's conducting a review of all of the
    regulations covering food, health, the environment, worker safety, and
    financial institutions to make further recommendations for reforms in
    those areas.
        I want to work with the Republicans in this area to try to help to
    break and change a culture of regulation that makes people hate the
    Federal Government when they think it is grinding on them in ways that
    don't make sense and which don't necessarily--the culture often doesn't
    necessarily give us better regulation and better results. And I hope
    that we can work together to do this, but I don't think we ought to roll
    back or wreck things that do work or walk away from our obligation to
    elevate the quality of life in this country.
        One of the reasons our economy is strong, in my judgment, is that we
    have found a way to pursue economic growth and pursue environmental
    protection. We have found a way to pursue increasing productivity, and
    we have seen a reduction in injuries in the workplace.
        So I don't think most people believe we ought to walk away from our
    obligation to have safe food or safe toys or clean air or clean water. I
    don't believe that it's wrong to make sure that our cars are safe or
    that mammograms are accurate. I think that these safeguards really work.
    The question is, how can we change them in ways that really make sense?
        I find that a lot of the things we have to do, like a lot of the
    things you have to do, are not particularly sexy, flashy changes; they
    require hard work. And the impact of them accumulates over time. It's
    just like these 102,000 employees that don't work for the Federal
    Government anymore. A lot of people are genuinely surprised because they
    didn't see any of them leaving on the news at night. And they didn't,
    because we managed the process in a very disciplined way to try to
    minimize disruption in people's lives, the same way you would manage the
    process.
        Now, the temptation is always to try to do something that will make
    a statement that will pierce the public consciousness even if it's not
    the right remedy. That's what we're facing on regulation now, from my
    point of view. Some of the people in the Republican Congress are
    proposing that we freeze all Federal regulations for an extended period
    of time in a way that would override every single pending health and
    safety law on the books. To me, that's not acceptable. And there are a
    whole lot of pending regulations that we have people in this room who
    want to go through. And it will create unimaginable headaches. The last
    time we did it, every single analysis was that it cost more money than
    it saved, that it led to lawsuits, that it turned out to be a headache.
        I know we need to change the way the Federal Government regulates.
    We have already done it in some areas. We have not done nearly

    [[Page 248]]

    what we need to do. We have a process in place that we've been working
    on for months to do it. But I ask you to help us do it in the right way.
    I also hope that when we get into this whole budget, we will be able to
    proceed in the right and responsible way.
        A lot of you here, for example, have argued in the past and have
    testified in the Congress for expanding Head Start, for the Women,
    Infant, and Children program, for continuing to invest in the education
    and training of our people. We know that the only way to raise incomes
    in America and the global economy is to improve the education and
    training of the work force and to improve the overall productivity and
    wealth-generating capacity of the economic system itself. We clearly
    have an obligation there. And so, I would hope that the second thing I
    would ask you--the third thing, after the regulatory issue--support
    regulatory reform, insist on it, demand on it, demand it, give us your
    ideas, but let's don't do something that looks good that will have a
    perverse impact.
        And the third thing I would ask is that you would support an
    investment budget for the Federal Government that gives people the
    chance to make the most of their own lives. It gives people the chance
    to get the education and training they need.
        You know, one of the best things we've done is this direct student
    loan program. When I ran for President--and I had been a Governor for a
    dozen years; I had listened to students who dropped out of college; I
    listened to people who couldn't go to college; I listened to older
    people who wanted to go back. And one of the things I kept hearing
    complaints about was the loan program and how a lot of people wouldn't
    go to school or would drop out because they didn't want to borrow so
    much money and they didn't think they could pay it back. So under our
    system now, people who borrow money, number one, get it at lower cost
    and, number two, have the option of paying the money back as a
    percentage of their income, so that if they get out of school and take a
    modestly paying job, they can still pay their loans back no matter what
    the burden is.
        And believe it or not, because we went to direct loans and got out
    of the middle-man system where we essentially guaranteed student loans
    to banks who made them so that there was no risk and very little
    incentive on collecting and no incentive to go to court to collect,
    because we were going to pay anyway, we actually have cut the cost of
    the student loan program by over $5 billion over a 5-year period and
    increased the volume of loans and lowered its cost.
        These are the kinds of things, it seems to me, we ought to be doing.
    And by the way, every now and then the Government does something right.
    When I became President, you were paying out $2.8 billion a year in tax
    money because of loan defaults. We've cut that to $1 billion a year.
    We've cut it by almost two-thirds, the costs.
        So these are the things, it seems to me, we ought to be doing. And
    so I would say to you that on this last point--this is very important--
    it's not only important for us to say what the Government should not be
    doing--and I will support this new Congress, as I said, in many ways;
    we're going to have a big fight on the line-item veto, and a lot of
    people in my party aren't for it, but I am strong for it; I think we
    ought to have it; I will support it--but there are some things we should
    be doing, things that we do right. And I hope that you, of all people,
    who understand the critical importance of education and training for a
    lifetime, will support a responsible Federal role here.
        Let me just tell you that this is not an idle discussion I'm having.
    Just today, just for example, the chairman of the relevant House
    committee introduced a bill that would eliminate the Federal commitment
    to food and nutrition for children, throw the money into two block
    grants and send it to the States and freeze the money, which will
    effectively mean the end of the School Lunch Program. Now, that has been
    a remarkable success. It feeds 25 million kids every day. It has a low
    administrative overhead, and we are in the process of simplifying the
    ability of the schools to participate in the program, cutting their
    costs, cutting their hassles.
        We have done everything we could, by the way, to make flexibility
    the order of the day for States. We've granted more waivers in welfare
    reform and health care reform than the two previous administrations put
    together, so that States who were serious about changing their own
    systems could get around all these Federal rules. But doing away with
    the School Lunch Program is not my idea of reinventing Government or
    saving tax money.
        When I was growing up, a conservative was somebody who said, ``If it
    ain't broke, don't fix

    [[Page 249]]

    it.'' And now we've got lots of folks in Washington--there are all these
    things that are broken we ought to be fixing, and they're running right
    by them, trying to fix things that are working just fine. The School
    Lunch Program does not need to be destroyed in our common lust to reduce
    the Federal Government where it has to be reduced.
        In 1991, as I said, there were five major CEO's who appeared before
    Congress to say that the WIC program, the Women, Infants and Children,
    was a good idea. Three of them are here tonight: Bob Allen, John
    Clendenin, and Bob Winters. They said WIC was, I quote, ``a triple-A
    rated investment in the future.'' They were right then; they're right
    now. At that time, a bipartisan group in the Senate, led by Senator
    Leahy and Senator Dole, helped to save that program. We have expanded
    that program, and we're going to have healthier children and a stronger
    future as a result. So I ask you please to stand up for that.
        Lastly, let me say that a lot of you supported, a lot of you
    opposed, and a lot of you sat on the sideline and scratched your head
    when we had the big health care debate last year. I want to put this
    issue before you. As has always been the case, at least since President
    Nixon first tried to do it in '72--I don't know what happened when Harry
    Truman did it; I know what happened to him, but I don't know what
    happened to health care costs--but there was a dramatic moderation of
    health care costs last year. More people are going into managed care
    plans. But there are still serious problems with it.
        The only part of the Federal budget that's going up at faster than
    the rate of inflation are Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt.
    We've now had 2 years in a row where we have reduced both defense and
    domestic discretionary spending and produced what I said before, an
    operating surplus, except for interest on the debt.
        The only responsible way to deal with the entitlements problem over
    the long run is to keep working to help to solve the health care
    problem. And in spite of the moderation in health care costs, you should
    know that another million Americans in working families lost their
    health insurance last year. We're the only country in the world with an
    advanced economy that has a smaller percentage of people under 65 with
    health insurance today than had it 10 years ago. And most of you
    represent companies that are paying for that, because these people do
    get health care when they're too sick and it's too late and they show up
    at the emergency room, and you get the bill in indirect costs. You know
    that.
        So as I have said in the State of the Union Address, we bit off more
    than we could chew last time. We tried to do too much. But piece by
    piece, we need to have some insurance reforms. We need to think about
    people whose families are without insurance when they're unemployed. We
    need to think about what we can do to put some pieces in place that will
    stop the cost-shifting and allow some long-term reform of this system
    and bring the Medicare and Medicaid programs within line of inflation
    without having even more costs passed along to you.
        Those are things that I can report to you, this country's in better
    shape than it was 2 years ago, but these are things that we need to work
    on. We need to maintain America's economic and security leadership in
    the world. We need to continue to work to downsize the Government and to
    change the culture of regulation in the right way. We need to stand up
    for what is necessary and appropriate from our National Government in
    terms of preserving the quality of life and, more important than
    anything else, empowering people to make the most of their own lives.
    And we need to keep working at this entitlement/health care problem
    piece by piece so that we can help the economy to grow, help the deficit
    to be controlled, and provide health care to the people who deserve it.
    If we do those things, we will be doing what we should do to give the
    next generations of Americans the American dream that brought us all
    here tonight.
        I think it is a very exciting time to be here. I enjoy it. I enjoy
    working with the new Congress, and I don't mind the disagreements with
    the new Congress. But the most important thing is, this is not a game,
    and it is not a dress rehearsal. We are taking the American people into
    the next century, and we owe it to them to do it in a way that gives
    countless generations that come behind us the chance to be in rooms like
    this for generations from now and to do whatever they want to live up to
    their God-given ability.

    [[Page 250]]

        Thank you very much. Thank you. Ed, tell them to go serve dinner,
    and I'll go shake hands. [Laughter] Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:40 p.m. at the Park Hyatt Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., chief executive officer,
    E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc.; Robert E. Allen, chairman and chief
    executive officer, AT&T Corp.; John L. Clendenin, chairman and chief
    executive officer, BellSouth Corp.; and Robert C. Winters, chairman
    emeritus, Prudential Insurance.