    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 25, 1995]
    [Pages 590-592]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the National Rural Conference Opening Session in Ames, Iowa
    April 25, 1995

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. And thank you, ladies and
    gentlemen for that warm welcome.
        The Vice President could have been--you know, that blue-ribbon
    remark at the Iowa Fair, he could have stuck it in a little more. He
    could have said that he still lives on his farm and I haven't lived on a
    farm in 40 years. As a matter of fact, I lived on a farm so long ago we
    had sheep and cattle at the same place. [Laughter] I got off because--
    that's true--and I got off because one of the rams nearly killed me one
    day, and because I didn't want to work that hard anymore. But I am
    delighted to be here.
        I want to thank all of the people here at Iowa State who have done
    such a wonderful job to make us feel welcome and all the work they have
    done on this. I thank Congressman Durbin, who is here from Illinois, one
    of our conference's chief sponsors, and also a man who is not here,
    Senator Byron Dorgan from North Dakota, who was an originator of this
    conference.
        I want to say I'm looking forward to working with Governor Branstad
    and his colleague from Nebraska, Governor Ben Nelson, as we work up to
    the farm bill, because they are head of the Governors' Committee on
    Agriculture and Rural Development. And we're looking forward to that.
        I don't want to give a long talk. I came here to hear from you
    today. I will say, you've been given some materials for this conference.
    If you want to know what our record is in agriculture, you can read it.
    We wrote it up for you, but I don't think I ought to waste any of your
    time on it today.
        I want us to think about the present and the future. And I want to
    make just a couple of brief remarks. There are a lot of paradoxes in the
    American economy, and they are clearly evident in rural America today.
    We have in the last 2 years over 6 million new jobs, the lowest combined
    rates of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. In Iowa, the
    unemployment rate is about 3.3 percent, I think, which the economists
    say is statistically zero. And yet--I just got the report this morning--
    in the last 3 months, compensation for working people in America, all
    across America, increased at a lower rate than it has in any 3-month
    period in 15 years, totally against all common sense.
        The good news is we have low inflation. The bad news is nobody's
    getting any more money for working. And it is more pronounced in the
    rural areas of America, where incomes have stagnated.
        Now, we know something about the dividing lines of this. We know
    that education is a big dividing line. We know that people who have at
    least 2 years of education after high school tend to do well in this
    global economy wherever they live and people who don't tend to have more
    trouble. We know also, unfortunately, that rural areas are not doing as
    well as urban areas. But we know that, in a way, technology gives us a
    way out of this because there are a lot of things that rural areas have
    that urban areas would like to have, affordable housing, clean

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    air, lower crime rates. And we know that technology permits us, if we
    are wise enough, to bring economic opportunity to places where it hasn't
    been before.
        So what I want us to focus on today is, yes, agriculture
    specifically and the farm bill, but beyond that, what about rural
    America? What is our strategy to make rural America stronger
    economically, to reward the good values that reside there, to help to
    make it an important part of America's life in the 21st century, to help
    to make it a place where people will want to come back to and provide
    some balance in this country that we so desperately need?
        I'd just like to mention just three examples, if I might, one in
    agriculture specifically. When this farm bill comes up, there's going to
    be a lot of people saying, ``Well, we ought to just get rid of the whole
    program or cut it way, way back because we've got a deficit.'' Well, we
    do have a deficit, but I would remind you that the farm bill was--the
    subsidies programs were cut in '85. They were cut in '90. We had a
    modest reduction in '93. We finally--we worked for years and years and
    our administration worked for nearly 2 years to bring the Europeans to
    the table in the GATT agreement, to cut the subsidies in Europe. And
    finally we're on an even footing, and I don't believe that we ought to
    destroy the farm support program if we want to keep the family farm and
    give up the competitive advantage we won at the bargaining table in
    GATT.
        We have a $20 billion surplus in agricultural trade. We've got a big
    trade deficit in everything else. I don't think we ought to give it up.
    Should we modify it? Can we improve it? I'm sure we can. Should we
    emphasize other things? Of course we should, but our first rule should
    be: Do no harm.
        The second point I want to make is, I don't think we have done
    enough in some areas that relate to both agriculture and generally to
    rural development, especially in research. And Senator Harkin and
    Governor Branstad were talking to the Vice President and me before we
    came out here about the pork research project that was funded here at
    this school last year, that was targeted for deletion in the House's so-
    called rescission bill. The rescission bill is a bill designed to cut
    some spending so we can pay for what we have to pay for, for the
    California earthquake and to cut the deficit more. But we need to know
    what we should cut and what we shouldn't.
        We need more agricultural research, not less. If you want to--for
    example, I know it's a big controversy here in Iowa, and I don't pretend
    to know what the answer is, but I know this: I know if you want to have
    the kind of position you've got in pork production, if you want to keep
    having $3 billion a year income in hogs, you've got to find a way to
    preserve the environment. And if you want family farmers to be able to
    do it, you have to figure out a way to work the economics out. Laws will
    never replace economics. And therefore we should not back up on
    research. We should intensify research. As we give more responsibilities
    back to State and local governments, more responsibilities back to the
    private sector, the National Government still has a commitment, it seems
    to me, and an obligation to support adequate research.
        The third thing I would like to say is, it seems to me that we need
    a much more serious national effort to focus on what our
    responsibilities are in the area of rural development in general. I have
    spent nearly 10 years seriously working on this issue. A long time
    before I ever thought about running for President, I was worried about
    the broader issues of rural development. I headed a commission called
    the Lower Mississippi Delta Rural Development Commission several years
    ago. And I have worked on this for a long time. I am convinced there are
    things we can do nationally that don't cost a lot of money that can help
    to support a real revolution in the economic opportunities and the
    social stability of rural America.
        So I hope if you have ideas on that, you will bring them out,
    because even in Iowa, only one in five rural residents lives on a farm.
    We have to think about everyone else. And we'll have more people living
    on a farm and being able to sustain living on a farm if there is a more
    balanced economic environment throughout rural America.
        So these are the things that we're interested in. I'm looking
    forward to this very much. I'd like to ask the president of this fine
    institution to come up and offer a few words, and then I would invite
    Governor Branstad and Senator Harkin up here. And then I'd like for our
    Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, to tell you about the hearings,
    the town hall meetings he

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    had leading up to this conference, and then we'll get right into the
    first panel.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:13 a.m. in the Great Hall of the Memorial
    Union at Iowa State University. In his remarks, he referred to Gov.
    Terry E. Branstad of Iowa and Martin C. Jischke, president of the
    university.