    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [January 26, 1995]
    [Pages 95-102]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC Nightly News
    January 26, 1995

    State of the Union Address

        Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, your Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, said
    that your State of the Union speech the other night was the most
    important one of your Presidency. When you got back to the living
    quarters and you were alone with Hillary, how did the two of you
    critique it?
        The President. Well, I thought it was effective in the sense that I
    got a chance to get back to the basic values and the basic ideas that
    got me into the race for President in the first place, really that drove
    my whole public service career before I became President. It was a
    little longer than I wanted it to be, partly because I was frankly not
    anticipating that the Congress and especially the Republicans would
    respond as positively as they did to some of the things that I said. And
    I appreciated it, but it lengthened the speech some.

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        That was a good problem to have. That was what my friend Mack
    McLarty calls a high-class problem.
        Mr. Brokaw. Well, I always get the impression, though, that once you
    get up there and get into a roll, so to speak, it's pretty hard for you
    to sit down; you love the art of political oratory so much.
        The President. Well, I like--the State of the Union I like because
    it really gives the President an opportunity that's not there at any
    other time of the year to talk both to the Congress and to the American
    people in a way that goes way beyond ordinary politics and partisanship
    and at least gives the opportunity to go to the heart of the problems
    and the challenges and the opportunities of the country.

    President's Strength of Conviction

        Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, we did a poll that began really shortly
    after the State of the Union speech. Good news and bad news for you in
    it. Your job performance rating is 51 percent positive, 40 percent
    negative. Those people who agreed with the goals of the State of the
    Union speech, 58 percent; only 9 percent disagreed. But then this
    question: Bill Clinton, do you think that he's a man of strong
    convictions, or is he easily swayed? Those who felt that you had strong
    convictions, 31 percent; easily swayed, 61 percent. That's a continuing
    problem for you.
        The President. It is, but it's obviously a problem of perception
    rather than reality. If you look at all the strong opponents I've got, I
    wouldn't have them if I didn't have strong convictions. No other
    President, while sitting in office, has ever taken on the NRA. I did, at
    great cost. We reversed 12 years of trickle-down economics and reversed
    this deficit in a brutal fight where we prevailed by only one vote in
    each House, largely because the Members knew they would be angering the
    wealthiest and most powerful people in our society by raising the income
    taxes in the top 1.2 percent. I took on the strongest constituencies in
    my own party, including my friends in the labor movement, to pass the
    Brady bill. I took on the banking interests of the country to reduce the
    costs of the student loan program and lower the cost of it. So I clearly
    am a person of strong convictions who has taken on brutal, tough fights.
    I went forward with the Haiti mission when nobody was for it.
        So it's clear that (a) I'll take on unpopular things, (b) I'll make
    enemies, and (c) I'll fight until I win. But we live in an environment
    in which I think maybe because of the way it's covered and maybe because
    of my style--because naturally I don't talk in ways that try to threaten
    people; I like to try to bring people together--maybe I've contributed
    to my own problem.
        But the historic record is that we have taken on tough fights others
    ignored and walked away from; we got results because we fought through
    to the end. And that, it seems to me, if you just take the four examples
    I gave you, will be the enduring truth. And my job now is to show the
    American people as this new Congress meets that I will work with them in
    a reasonable way. I don't think they want me to be hard-headed and
    totally uncompromising, but there are some things that I will draw the
    line on and fight for.

    New Covenant

        Mr. Brokaw. But with all due respect, Mr. President, you used that
    phrase the other night--the New Covenant was a phrase that you used in
    your acceptance speech, but then once you took office, you didn't put
    many of those issues front and center until the Republicans just beat
    your brains in on November 8th, like the middle class bill of rights,
    for example, talking more about leaner Government, a higher minimum
    wage, school prayer you even made some references to.
        The President. Now wait a minute, let's go back. That's simply not
    true. What did I do when I first got here? What was in the first
    economic plan? I said to the American people, ``We've got to bring the
    deficit down and get the economy going first. So I cannot afford to give
    all the middle class a tax cut. We're going to start with a working
    families tax cut that this year will lower taxes $1,000 a family, for
    every family with an income of under $26,000.'' Now, we did something
    miraculous. In the whole history of American politics, nobody has ever
    given a tax cut to 15 million American families and kept it a secret.
    But somehow I succeeded in doing that. We made 90 percent of our small
    businesses eligible for a tax cut. We gave a tax cut to people who start
    new businesses. We made a good first step. And I said in '93, ``Let me
    get the deficit down. Let's get the economy going. Let's give these
    people

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    a tax cut. Then we'll come back and do the rest.''
        In terms of reducing the Government and the bureaucracy, they didn't
    start that, my goodness, we did. When the Republican administrations
    were here--we've now got 100,000 fewer people working for the Federal
    Government than we did on the day I became President. If the Republican
    Congress passes no other bill, we will have 250,000 fewer people working
    here at the end of my 4-year term. We'll have the smallest Government
    since Kennedy was President. Now, that's stuff we did. We did that. I
    may be a poor communicator of it, but that was at the centerpiece.
        I sent welfare reform legislation to the Congress last year, and
    when they didn't pass it, we just kept on giving States permission to
    get around the Federal rules to move people from welfare to work and to
    support responsible parenting, 24 States, more than were given waivers
    from the Federal rules in the previous 12 years combined.
        So I believe what I said in the State of the Union Address is
    consistent with what I've been trying to do. I think a lot of people, in
    all candor, thought that the health care program was against that
    because they were convinced it was a big Government program. I don't
    think it was a big Government program, but I did bite off more than I
    could chew. I tried to do too much too quick.
        But if you look at what we've done, it's consistent with the New
    Covenant message all along.

    Minimum Wage

        Mr. Brokaw. Part of the case against Bill Clinton that will be made
    even by your friends from time to time is that you talk the talk but
    don't walk the walk. Take minimum wage. Our polls shows that there is an
    overwhelming majority for it. But you've made it clear from the White
    House that you're not going to go up and make the fight to the last
    breath on Capitol Hill for minimum wage.
        The President. That is not at all what I have done. First of all,
    who reversed 12 years of flagrant deficit spending? We did, by one-vote
    fights in both Houses in the most brutal fight anybody can remember. We
    did that. We walked the walk and took a lot of grief for it.
        And one of the reasons the Democrats lost this last session in this
    last election is because the Republicans convinced the voters that we
    raised everybody's taxes when what we did was raise taxes sharply on the
    top 1.2 percent, and a lot of those folks funded those campaigns.
        We took on the NAFTA fight. It was deader than a doornail when I
    became President, and we brought it back to life. We took on the NRA on
    the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. You may agree or disagree;
    no other sitting President had ever done it. So this ``walk the walk''
    business is a bogus charge.
        On the minimum wage, Senator Kennedy, clearly a big supporter of the
    minimum wage, suggested to me before the State of the Union Address, he
    said, ``Instead of putting a number in there, why don't you challenge
    the Congress in a bipartisan fashion to come up with a reasonable
    number? If you say a specific number on your own, even though everybody
    knows you want to go to $5, if you say it, then the Congress, the
    Republicans may feel that they have to be for something else. Let them
    take credit for it.''
        Now, I don't know who told you in this White House that I'm not
    going to push for it, but I'm going to push very hard for it. But I
    think--if you look at realistically where we are, we have a majority in
    both Houses in the hands of the Republicans. We have leaders in the
    Republican Party--the Republican majority leader says we ought to
    abolish the minimum wage altogether.
        I have to create the conditions in which we can raise the minimum
    wage if I possibly can. I want the Congress to do it in a bipartisan
    fashion. I want them to have a full share of credit for it. I will work
    very hard for it. But I don't want to waste a lot of time making strong
    posturing and undermining the chance that we can raise it. I want to
    raise it. I want it to get done.
        And I think in the end--Theodore Roosevelt said, who was a very good
    speaker, that in the end the measure of what we do should be what we do,
    not what we say. So I'm doing my best to actually get it raised.

    Entitlement Programs

        Mr. Brokaw. It seems to me, Mr. President, that one of your greatest
    challenges in the next year or so is to reconnect to those middle and
    working class families that have traditionally

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    voted Democrat that have strayed now from the fold. Their children are
    going to be saddled with great debt as a result of the entitlements that
    are building up year after year. Why don't you take on entitlements,
    including Social Security and Medicare, in terms of getting the cost
    under control by not eliminating them and not reducing the benefits but
    maybe cutting back on the COLA's, the cost of living increase, taxing
    the wealthy more for Medicare, and saying to the country candidly, we
    have to do something about this?
        The President. Well, let's look at the record. First of all, in
    1993, in that budget battle that passed by one vote, we did take on
    Social Security. We asked upper income Social Security recipients to pay
    a little more on their income to bring them in line with private
    pensions. And it was a big issue in the last election. The Republicans
    ran against us on it. They said we were wrong. It was the responsible
    thing to do.
        We lowered the rate of Medicare increases by taking disciplined
    steps to bring the cost under control. And I said all along that I
    thought that upper income Medicare recipients, people with incomes of
    $100,000 a year or more, might have to pay more for it in order to fund
    health reform and bring the cost under control over the long run.
        But I do not believe that we should mislead the American people.
    Let's just take Social Security. Social Security has produced a surplus
    for this budget for years and years, ever since the Social Security
    reform in the mid-eighties. We take in more every year than we pay out
    in Social Security. Social Security payments are the same percentage of
    our income today that they were in 1972. Now, it is today not a problem
    for the deficit.
        Medicare and Medicaid, the medical programs, have been a big
    problem. We have got to get them down. We have got to control the
    inflation rate there. And we are working on it. And I think that it has
    to be taken on. I met with Senator Kerrey the other day, and I told him
    we would have to continue to work on these things.
        But I think it's very important that we understand what we're doing
    and what we're not doing. I don't think we have to hurt the vast number
    of Medicare recipients. I don't think we have to pretend that Social
    Security is contributing to the deficit when it's not.
        Mr. Brokaw. Yes, but it will be if we continue at the projected
    rate.
        The President. That's right. It will be by the year 2019 or
    something. And we will have to have, at some point in the future,
    another effort like we had in 1983 to take a hard look at it and deal
    with it. And we have to preserve the integrity of the system, and the
    American people plainly are willing to see us do some things. We're now
    raising the retirement age gradually, as you know, under the law passed
    years ago, from 65 to 67, and we'll look at that.
        Mr. Brokaw. But it's----
        The President. But the main thing we have to do--let me just say
    this--the main thing we have to do is to get health care costs more in
    line with inflation and continue to control other spending. We have
    brought the deficit down a lot. We can bring it down some more, but we
    need to do in a way that is really--that is fair and disciplined. That's
    why I've challenged the Republicans: Let's work together on this. Let's
    try to--you want to help now. We had to do it all alone with one party
    for 2 years; now we can do it in a two-party way, and I think it will be
    good.
        Mr. Brokaw. But in your speech the other night and most remarks from
    the Republican side as well, they say, ``Well, Medicare will be off the
    table. Social Security will be off the table.'' We've learned in the
    last couple of weeks about what a hot button, for example, veterans'
    benefits are. We can't get to where we need to get to without dealing
    honestly with these entitlements, can we?
        The President. Well, first of all, we're dealing dramatically where
    we need to get--the deficit of this country, as a percentage of our
    annual income, is much lower than it was when I took office. We've taken
    $10,000 in national debt off every family in the country. We're moving
    in the right direction.
        The issue is not, do we have to deal with health care costs in
    Medicare and Medicaid; the issue is, how do we deal with it? How do we
    deal with these other problems, and what is the fair way to do it? What
    I said was that I didn't think we should have Medicare cuts to pay for
    tax cuts. I thought that was wrong. I think the American people think
    that is wrong.
        You know, we are working very hard, and we'll have some more
    proposals to control the rising costs of Medicare. But I think the Amer-

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    ican people want us to do it in a way that doesn't take benefits away
    from needy senior citizens who have paid into this program and are
    entitled to be taken care of. And I think we can do it.
        You know, we're moving in the right direction. The economy is coming
    up. The deficit is going down. We're moving. The basic components of the
    deficit now are interest on the debt accumulated between 1981 and 1993
    and rising health care costs. And so we have to understand that it's
    going to take a while to get that down. Most of the burden we're paying
    now on the deficit is because of those two things. And we can solve
    them. We have to solve them with discipline. We can also continue to cut
    other programs. We're cutting a lot of other Government spending in this
    budget, $140 billion in spending cuts.

    Balanced Budget

        Mr. Brokaw. Your Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, says that a balanced
    budget is not a high priority for your administration. Is that a fair
    statement?
        The President. Well, it's not a high priority maybe for the Labor
    Secretary. What is a high priority is continuing to control the deficit
    and moving it down, driving it, driving it. What he meant, I think, was
    that no one believes you can do it overnight or in the next year or two
    and that if we adopt a balanced budget amendment before the people vote
    on it, they're entitled to know, does this mean their taxes are going
    up? Does this mean they're going to cut Medicare and Social Security
    across the board? What is the price of it? Will you get the same
    economic benefit if you take the deficit down to 2 percent of our annual
    income or one percent? What are we trying to do?
        The Kerrey commission itself said that the long-term goal of the
    country should be to at least have the annual deficit down at about 2
    percent of our income because we're investing that much every year and
    we'd be more or less like a State government or a private business
    running their books and balancing them.

    Education and Retraining

        Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, in the course of your administration, it
    is indisputable that more than 5 million new jobs have now been created.
    But unfortunately, once you get just below the senior management level,
    purchasing power has stayed flat at best. It has not declined.
        The President. Absolutely.
        Mr. Brokaw. You've put a big emphasis on job retraining and so on.
    But given the new technology of the workplace, aren't we going to get to
    a situation in this country where we are fixed? Those who are extremely
    well educated will do well; the rest are going to have to scramble for
    their working lifetime.
        The President. I wouldn't characterize it quite that way, but you've
    put your finger on the biggest problem of the economy. If your goal is
    what my goal is, which is to open the American dream to all Americans
    who are willing to work for it, and you recognize that in a knowledge-
    based economy as opposed to the old industrial economy, education is the
    key to income, then it becomes more understandable how we could have had
    5.6 million new jobs in 2 years, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the
    lowest combined inflation and unemployment in 20 years, the lowest
    African-American unemployment in 20 years, and still, no income
    increases for most people. It's because, in the global economy and with
    all of this technology changing, it tends to depress wages except for
    those who are educated.
        That's why I think the middle class bill of rights is the right
    answer: Encourage people to get a tax cut by investing in education, in
    theirs and their children's, and take these Government training programs
    and collapse them and just give a check or a voucher to people to go
    back to school.
        I think--you know, I've been going to these community colleges,
    these other colleges that are community-based. I think that you're going
    to see the educational institutions of the country become the focal
    point for business and labor and small business people getting together
    to train and educate and raise incomes. That is the only thing we can
    do, over the long run, to restore the American dream. So my view is,
    give people the tools they need to take care of themselves by lowering
    their tax burden now and raising their income in the long run.
        It is going to be a challenge--this, by the way, is going on in
    every industrial country--but we have the capacity to do it, because
    we've got so much grassroots strength in these community educational
    institutions if we can get people to take advantage of it.

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        Mr. Brokaw. But isn't this whole problem of job creation in America
    going to ultimately prove to be a great frustration for welfare reform,
    because we've talked so much about making welfare recipients go to work
    and learn to get a job when there are not jobs out there for people
    right now that pay a living wage who are not even on welfare?
        The President. Well, but there are two issues here, and let's
    separate them, because for the first time in our country's history in
    this new age, they are separate. There's creating jobs and raising
    incomes. We're creating jobs and more high-paying jobs, but the income
    levels generally are not rising.
        What we have to do is to raise the basic income level, which is what
    the working family tax cut and the minimum wage increase is all about,
    get people from welfare to work, but we also have to raise incomes
    knowing that creating jobs won't necessarily raise everybody else's
    income. They're two separate things. That's why we need both welfare
    reform and the minimum wage increase and the middle class bill of rights
    to pass. They're two different things. We can do them. Is it going to be
    easy? Of course not. If it were easy, it would already be done. But if
    we work together, we can make a difference. We can change the course of
    our future if we work at it.

    President's Safety

        Mr. Brokaw. Let me ask you about a couple of other issues. Another
    man has been arrested today for making a threat on your life. There have
    been all kinds of incidents here at the White House, a plane crashing
    into it, a man firing off rounds from Pennsylvania Avenue. Has this made
    you more uneasy as, essentially, the target who lives here?
        The President. No.
        Mr. Brokaw. Really?
        The President. No. I think--I have two reactions to all of it. First
    of all, some of it may be coincidental. These things happen from time to
    time and may run in waves. Secondly, throughout our history, any leader
    who raised strong hopes and wanted to make big changes has tended to
    spark an adverse reaction too, just almost like a law of physics. If
    you're moving strongly in one direction, you will have an equal and
    opposite force in the other direction.
        And I do think, as I said the other night in the State of the Union
    speech, there is a certain level of frustration and anger in the country
    that is being channeled in ways that often makes us see each other as
    enemies rather than just opponents in a certain sense. And I think
    that's bad. I think that--what I have to do and what I tried to do in
    the State of the Union speech is to say, we're all Americans. We've got
    to look at each other in ways that enable us to build people up. And I
    hope we can change the atmosphere and make it more positive.
        But for me, personally, I don't ever think about it. You can't
    afford to think about it. You realize that--I mean, every day I just
    have a certain number of hours in the day. I have this job for a certain
    amount of time. I've got to focus on what I can do for the American
    people. And the Secret Service is very good. They do a terrific job.
    They're better at it today than they were last year. They get better all
    the time. And you can't have perfect protection. You can't be perfect.
    So I don't think much about it.

    Hillary Clinton

        Mr. Brokaw. Will Hillary have as active a role and as public a role
    in the second half of the first term as she has had in the first half?
        The President. I think she will plainly have an active role and a
    public role. In many ways--today as we speak, she's out at the
    University of California at San Diego dedicating the Eleanor Roosevelt
    College there and visiting, again, a hospital to emphasize her concern
    about having more women take advantage of mammographies under Medicare,
    something that is a big concern to both of us not only because of what
    happened to my mother but because so many women suffer from breast
    cancer. And she can't not do that.
        You know, when I met Hillary, she was already involved in the
    problems of families and children. When we were in law school, she took
    an extra year to work on children and family problems. And when we went
    home to Arkansas we always worked together on these family problems and
    these health care problems. It's the work of her life, and she'll keep
    on doing it, and I would encourage her to do it.

    Speaker of the House

        Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, what do you think of Newt Gingrich?

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        The President. I think he's a very interesting fellow. I think he's
    got a lot of good ideas. I think he's open to looking at things in new
    and different ways.
        Mr. Brokaw. Do you think he plays fair?
        The President. Well, you know, let me say, I think for right now
    what I want to say is, we need to focus on playing fair with the
    American people in the future. And we differ on some things, and I'm
    sure we'll have our fights and arguments, but my commitment to him is a
    commitment to the American people. The American people gave the
    Republicans the majority in the House and Senate. The people who were
    there elected their leaders. He has made some clear statements that he
    wants to change the country in ways that are positive and in ways that I
    think we can work together on. So I'm going to get out there and try to
    work with him.
        Where I disagree with him, I will disagree. I am strongly committed
    to national service. I don't want to see us do away with it. I hope I
    can change his mind on that, and if not, I hope I can prevail. There are
    other areas where we disagree, but if we're going to work together to
    reduce the bureaucracy and expand opportunity in this country, then we
    ought to do it, and we ought to look to the future, not to the past.

    Baseball Strike

        Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, is there anything that you can do about
    the baseball strike?
        The President. I'm certainly trying. You know, I have named Mr.
    Usery the mediator, and I talked to him this morning. I asked him to get
    the parties back together in the strike and to give me a report by
    February 6th, and if he couldn't get them to agree, he should actually
    make a proposal and tell them what he thinks they should do based on
    having heard all sides.
        Mr. Brokaw. Would you throw out the first ball on a game that was
    being played by so-called replacement players?
        The President. Well, I believe the players and the owners ought to
    come back together and give us a baseball season. I think they ought to
    give us spring training. You know, they have this feeling that baseball
    is always a game, not just a business. There are communities in spring
    training areas all over the South that are dependent on them for income
    and opportunity. But there are people--there's still a significant
    percentage of the American people, probably you and I among them, who
    really believe baseball is something special. And you know, there's a
    few hundred owners and a few hundred more players, and baseball
    generates $2 billion worth of revenues every year; about a thousand
    people ought to be able to figure out how to divide that up and give
    baseball back to the American people, and I hope they'll do that.

    Loan Guarantees for Mexico

        Mr. Brokaw. You've also been working very hard this week on Mexico,
    pressing for a $40 billion fund to help prop up the peso. Even the most
    casually informed American taxpayer is going to say, ``Wait a minute.
    Why do we want to risk $40 billion of my money for Mexico, when you look
    at the experience of the last 15 years in South America when some very
    sophisticated banks and other investors simply got burned by putting
    dollars down there?''
        The President. Well, they did, but we're not going to risk it.
    That's the difference. And I want to point out, one, we should help
    Mexico because it's in our interest. They're our third biggest trading
    partner. We've got $40 billion at risk and three quarters of a million
    jobs in America. Secondly, we have other interests at risk. We have the
    prospect of a new flood of illegal immigration if there's an economic
    collapse in Mexico. Thirdly, if Mexico has an economic collapse, we know
    from what we've seen already that it will bleed off into Argentina and
    all these other countries that are supporting our move to support more
    democracy and more free market economics in Latin America. So we have
    interests there.
        Now, this is not foreign aid. It's not a loan. It's not a gift. We
    are cosigning a note. That's what the loan guarantee is. And we will
    only do it if we have good collateral. Mexico has never failed on any of
    its financial obligations to us in the past, and this will be something
    where we will cosign a note with good collateral. I think it's in our
    interest. I know it's not popular, but it's in our interest clearly, and
    we should do it.

    Russia

        Mr. Brokaw. Do you think that Boris Yeltsin is in charge of Russia
    every day?
        The President. I think he is in charge of Russia.
        Mr. Brokaw. Every day?

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        The President Well, if he's in charge, he's in charge every day. I
    think he's running the government. He's the elected President. He's been
    much more vigorous in the last few days in his assertion of policy with
    regard to Chechnya. The United States supports the territorial integrity
    of Russia and all of its neighbors, but we want to see an end to the
    violence there and a political reconciliation. I do believe he's in
    charge. And he's the elected President, and we've worked with him, and
    our country is better off. There are no Russian missiles pointed at
    America now for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age. We're
    destroying 9,000 nuclear weapons and ways of delivering them. We're
    moving in the right direction there.

    Super Bowl XXIX and the 1996 Election

        Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, I want to conclude with two scorecard
    questions. Who do you like in the Super Bowl, and who do you most want
    to run against in 1996?
        The President. I want the Republicans to decide who I'm going to run
    against, and I'll abide their judgment and gladly receive them. And I'm
    for the team from California.
        Mr. Brokaw. Now, Mr. President, there's a northern California and a
    southern California. [Laughter] One has a lot more votes than the other.
        The President. They do.
        Mr. Brokaw. You're not going to get off by just saying California.
        The President. Both those communities voted for me. And I'm going to
    be for them. [Laughter]

    Note: The interview began at 11:42 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House, and it was embargoed for release until 4 p.m.