[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
[April 7, 1995]
[Pages 474-485]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the American Society of 
Newspaper Editors in Dallas, Texas
April 7, 1995

    The President. Thank you very much. Thank you. ``Fishbait'' Favre. 
It's got kind of a nice ring, doesn't it? [Laughter] I knew he was born 
in New Orleans before he ever said it. I love to listen to people from 
New Orleans talk.
    I thank you for that kind introduction. Your convention program 
chair, Bob Haiman, and your incoming president, Bill Ketter, ladies and 
gentlemen, I'm very glad to be here.
    I thought that in addition to me you were going to hear from three 
people who had run, are running, and were about to run for President. 
But only Bill Weld showed up. I hope he stays in the ``about to run.'' 
He and Steve Merrill are very impressive men, and I'm glad that they 
came here and gave the Republican point of view.
    It's a privilege to be here. I'd like to begin by saying that I am 
very proud, and I know you are, for the work that the Inter American 
Press Association has done in its Declaration of Chapultepec. I know 
that you and the Newspaper Association of America have worked tirelessly 
for press freedoms all throughout the Americas. And just before I came 
out here I was proud to sign a Charter of Endorsement for the 
Declaration of Chapultepec. And I thank you for giving me that 
opportunity and for what you have done to advance the cause of a free 
press.
    I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who said, ``Well, in 
the '94 election we discovered the limits of liberalism, and now we're 
about to discover the limits of conservatism.'' And it put me in mind of 
a story I once heard about the--and actually, I thought about it because 
I met Mr. Favre--about the late Huey Long, who, when he was Governor and 
he was preaching his share-the-wealth plan, was out in the country one 
day at a little country crossroads. And he had all the people gathered 
up. And he was going on about how the people were being plundered by the 
organized wealthy interests in Louisiana.
    And he saw a guy out in the crowd that he knew and he said, 
``Brother Jones, if you had three Cadillacs, wouldn't you give up one of 
them so we could gather up the kids and take them to school during the 
week and take them to church on the weekend?'' He said, ``Sure, I 
would.'' He said, ``And if you had $3 million, wouldn't you give up just 
a million of it so we could put a roof over everybody's head and make 
sure everybody had food to eat?'' He said, ``Well, of course I would.'' 
He said, ``And if you had three hogs--'' He said, ``Wait a minute, 
Governor, I've got three hogs.'' [Laughter]
    Anyway, that's the limits of liberalism. Now we're about to discover 
the limits of conservatism.
    Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a historic moment in our country's 
history: on the verge of a new century, living in a very different kind

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of economy with a bewildering array of challenges and opportunities. In 
1992 and in 1994, the voters spoke out and demanded bold changes in the 
way we govern and the policies we pursue. They know better than anyone 
else that they are living in a time with new challenges that demand new 
answers.
    In the last 2 years, my administration has begun to meet those 
challenges. I ran for President because I felt we were being victimized 
by 12 years of gridlock in which the deficit had gone up, the wealthiest 
Americans had done quite well, the middle class had stagnated, and the 
poor were in trouble, in which the American dream was really at risk 
because half of the American people were working for the same or lower 
wages that they had made 15 years earlier.
    I had a clear mission. I wanted to grow the middle class, shrink the 
under class, and speed up the opportunities for entrepreneurs. I wanted 
to promote the mainstream values of responsibility and work, family and 
community. I wanted to reform the Government so that we could enhance 
opportunity, shrink bureaucracy, increase our security, and most 
important of all, empower people through education to make the most of 
their own lives.
    In the first 2 years we've made good progress. The economy is up, 
and the deficit is down. We've expanded educational opportunities from 
Head Start through more college loans that are more affordable. The 
American people are marching toward more security because there are no 
Russian missiles pointed at the children of our country for the first 
time since the dawn of the nuclear age, because we passed a serious 
crime bill that will lower the crime rate in many of our communities 
throughout the country, and because we've begun to address some of the 
problems of family security with the Family and Medical Leave Act. And 
certainly, we have done a lot to shrink and to reform the Government's 
bureaucracy.
    But it is not enough. Too many Americans don't yet feel any of those 
benefits. Too many still feel uncertain about their own future, and too 
many people are overwhelmingly concerned about the social and the 
underlying moral problems of our society. And so in 1994, they voted to 
give the Republicans a chance to run the Congress.
    In the last 100 days, the House of Representatives has passed a 
series of bold initiatives. We will soon begin the second 100 days of 
this Congress. In the first 100 days, the mission of the House 
Republicans was to suggest ways in which we should change our Government 
and our society. In the second 100 days and beyond, our mission together 
must be to decide which of these House proposals should be adopted, 
which should be modified, and which should be stopped.
    In the first 100 days, it fell to the House of Representatives to 
propose. In the next 100 days and beyond, the President has to lead the 
quiet, reasoned forces of both parties in both Houses to sift through 
the rhetoric and decide what is really best for America. In making these 
decisions, it is absolutely vital that we keep alive the spirit and the 
momentum of change. But the momentum must not carry us so far that we 
betray our legacy of compassion, decency, and common sense.
    We have entered a new era. For years, out here in the country, the 
old political categories have basically been defunct, and a new 
political discussion has been begging to be born. It must be now so in 
Washington, as well. The old labels of liberal and conservative, spender 
and cutter, even Democrat and Republican, are not what matter most 
anymore. What matters most is finding practical, pragmatic solutions 
based on what we know works in our lives and our shared experiences so 
that we can go forward together as a nation. Ideological purity is for 
partisan extremists. Practical solution, based on real experience, hard 
evidence, and common sense, that's what this country needs.
    We've been saddled too long with a political debate that doesn't 
tell us what we ought to do, just who we ought to blame. And we have got 
to stop pointing fingers at each other so that we can join hands.
    You know, our country has often moved forward spurred on by purists, 
reformists, populist agendas which articulated grievances and proposed 
radical departures. But if you think about our most successful periods 
of reform, these initiatives have been shaped by Presidents who 
incorporated what was good, smoothed out what was rough, and discarded 
what would hurt. That was the role of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow 
Wilson in the aftermath of the populist era. That was the role of 
Franklin Roosevelt in the aftermath of the La Follette progressive 
movement. And that is my job in the next 100 days and for all the days I 
serve as President.

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    We stand at a crossroads. In one direction lies confrontation and 
gridlock; in the other lies achievement and progress. I was not elected 
President to pile up a stack of vetoes. I was elected President to 
change the direction of America. That's what I have spent the last 2 
years doing and that's what I want to spend the next 100 days and beyond 
doing. Whether we can do that depends upon what all of us in Washington 
do from here on out.
    So I appeal today to Republicans and to Democrats alike to get 
together, to keep the momentum for change going, not to allow the energy 
and longing for change now to be dissipated amid a partisan clutter of 
accusations. After all, we share much common ground.
    For example, in 1992, I was elected to end welfare as we know it. 
That was part of my New Covenant of opportunity and responsibility. In 
1994, the Republicans made the same demand with their contract. In the 
last 2 years, I have already given 25 States, one-half of the country, 
the opportunity to do just that on their own. And I introduced the most 
sweeping welfare reform the country had ever seen. I want to work with 
the Congress to get real welfare reform.
    In 1992, I was elected to slash the deficit. That also was part of 
my New Covenant. In 1994, the Republican contract called for a 
continuing deficit reduction and movement toward a balanced budget. 
Well, I cut the deficit by $600 billion, cut 300 programs; I proposed to 
consolidate or eliminate 400 more. I want to cut the deficit. Except for 
the interest run up between 1981 and 1992, our budget would be in 
balance today. My administration is the only one in 30 years to run an 
operating surplus. I will work with the Republicans to reduce the 
deficit.
    In 1992, I was elected to shrink the size of the Federal Government, 
which I have done. That, too, was a part of my New Covenant. In 1994, 
the Republican contract said we should shrink the Government. I have 
already cut 100,000 bureaucratic positions, and we are on the way under 
budgets already passed to reducing the Government by 270,000, to its 
smallest size since President Kennedy occupied this office. I want to 
work with Congress to reduce the size of Government.
    We both want tax cuts, less intrusive Government regulations, the 
line-item veto, the toughest possible fight against crime. These were a 
part of the New Covenant and a part of the Republican contract. In 2 
years, we have made real progress on all these fronts, but we can, and 
we should do more.
    We are near many breakthroughs. The real issue is whether we will 
have the wisdom and the courage to see our common ground and walk on it. 
To do that, we must abandon extreme positions and work together. This is 
no time for ideological extremism. Good-faith compromising, negotiating 
our differences, actually listening to one another for a change, these 
are the currency of a healthy democracy.
    In that spirit, I come here today to outline where I stand on the 
remaining items in the Republican contract and the unfinished business 
of my New Covenant.
    Let's begin with taxes. In 1993, I made a down payment on the 
middle-class tax cut I advocated when I ran for President. We cut taxes 
for 15 million working families. What that means on average is that this 
year a family of four with an income of $25,000 a year or less will have 
about $1,000 in lower tax bills. We did this to ensure that nobody who 
works full-time and has children should live in poverty. If you want to 
reform the welfare system, you must reward work and parenting.
    So I want a tax cut to expand, to include more members of the middle 
class. Why? Because half the American people are working for the same or 
lower incomes they were making 15 years ago. And we've had a recovery 
that's produced 6.3 million new jobs, the lowest combined rates of 
unemployment and inflation in 25 years, and we need to spread the 
benefits of the recovery.
    But this $200 billion tax cut, which is really more than 3 times 
that if you look at it over a 10 year period, is a fantasy. It's too 
much. It's not going to happen. We can't afford it. A realistic cut 
would be somewhere around a third of that. That's something we can 
afford. In the world we're living in up there, if we go beyond that, 
what you're going to see is no success at deficit reduction or horrible 
injustice to the most vulnerable people in our country. So we can't pass 
that. Let's get over it and talk about what we can pass and work on 
doing it. Let's target a tax cut to the right people and for the right 
purpose.
    We have to choose: Do you want a tax cut for the wealthy or for the 
middle class? The Republican plan gives half of the benefits to

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the 10 percent of the people who are best off, and most importantly, to 
the 10 percent of our people who have done very, very well in the last 
15 years. Twenty percent of the benefits go to the top one percent of 
our people. They have done very well in the new global economy. The 
middle class has suffered the stagnant incomes. Let's direct the tax 
benefits to those people.
    But we also have to choose what kind of tax break. Shall we just put 
money in people's pockets? Or shouldn't we do something that will 
strengthen families and increase the whole wealth and success of the 
United States over the long run? Let's help our people get the education 
and job training they need.
    The technology revolution, the global economy, these are dividing 
opportunity at home and abroad. The middle class is splitting apart. And 
the fault line is education. Those who have it do well; those who don't 
are in trouble. So let's use the tax cut as I propose in the middle 
class bill of rights as sort of a scholarship given by America to people 
for their cost of education after high school. And let's provide for an 
IRA that people can withdraw from, tax-free, to meet the exigencies that 
their families face: college education, health care costs, first-time 
home, care of an elderly parent. These things will strengthen our 
country and we can afford it.
    Let's take welfare reform. As I said, both of us, both the 
Republican contract and my New Covenant, have focused heavily on welfare 
reform. What do we agree on? That there ought to be a limit to welfare; 
that there ought to be flexibility for the States; that we ought to have 
the toughest possible child support enforcement; and that people have to 
take more responsibility for their own lives and for the children they 
bring into this world.
    But the current House bill focuses primarily on cutting costs. It's 
weak on work and tough on kids. It punishes young people for past 
mistakes. We must require them, instead, to look to the future and in 
the future to be responsible parents, to be responsible workers, to be 
responsible students, and then give them the opportunity to do that.
    The House bill also punishes young children for the sins of their 
parents. I think that's wrong. Rich or poor, black, white, or brown, in 
or out of wedlock, a baby is a baby, a child is a child. It's part of 
our future, and we have an obligation to those children not to punish 
them for something over which they had absolutely no control.
    Now, that's where I disagree. But look what we agree on. We are near 
historic change. We can do this. We can make a difference. We can break 
the culture of welfare, and we can do something good for our country to 
support the values we all believe in. And we can give these children a 
better future. But to do it, we're going to have to talk through our 
differences and get beyond the rhetoric to how these real lives work and 
not stand on the sidelines posturing for political gain.
    Let's take cutting the deficit. The balanced budget amendment is 
dead. But now we have to get specific. How are we going to cut the 
deficit and move this budget toward balance? If we can focus on cuts, 
not making partisan points, that's the first step. There are cuts I 
can't live with. There are cuts the Republicans can't live with. Let's 
avoid them and make cuts we can all live with.
    We shouldn't cut help for our children. That builds our future. We 
shouldn't cut their education, their immunization, their school lunches, 
the infant formulas, or the nutrition programs. There's no need to cut 
them. So far, based on the action they've taken, the Republicans want 
the poor in this country to bear the burden of two-thirds of their 
proposed cuts and only get 5 percent of the benefit of the tax cuts. It 
is not right. It is wrong. But that doesn't mean we don't have to cut 
the budget and reduce the deficit.
    The rescission package that passed the Senate last night gives us a 
model about how we should proceed. The House passed a rescission package 
with completely unacceptable cuts in education, child nutrition, 
environment, housing, and national service. The Senate Republicans, to 
their credit, restored several of these cuts. I insisted on restoring 
even more and replacing them with better cuts. And almost every one of 
the Democrats in the Senate agreed.
    So yesterday, over the course of the debate, they worked that out. 
Those cuts were restored as well. There will still be a $16 billion 
reduction in the deficit this year. The bill passed 99-0 in the Senate, 
and I will sign the Senate bill if the House and the Senate will send it 
to me. That's how we should be doing the business of America.
    Let's talk about the line-item veto. As I said before, that was in 
the Republican contract, and

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I campaigned for President on it in 1992. I appeal to Congress to pass 
it in its strongest form. I appeal to members of my own party who have 
reservations about it to support it as well. The line-item veto has now 
passed both the Senate and the House.
    If you look at how it passed the Senate, that's an example of how we 
can make this system work. I strongly supported it. I campaigned to 
Democratic Senators and asked them to support it. They worked out their 
differences, and it passed overwhelmingly in the Senate.
    The President and the Congress both need the power to cut spending. 
If you doubt it, if you doubt it, look at the bill that Congress 
recently passed to restore to 3.2 million self-employed Americans, 
farmers, small businesspeople, professionals, and all their family 
members, the 25 percent deduction for the cost of their health 
insurance. That was a part of my health care plan. I desperately want to 
do that. We ought to do more. They ought to be treated just like 
corporations. It is imperative to sign it. But hidden in that bill was a 
special tax break for people who did not need it. If I had the Senate 
version of the line-item veto, I could sign the bill and help the people 
who are entitled to it, and veto the special break. This is the kind of 
thing that's been hidden in bills of Congress forever. We can now do 
something about it, and we ought to do it.
    Political reform, something that was also in the Republican 
contract: Two of the ten items in the Republican contract have actually 
become law. And two, term limits and the balanced budget amendment, have 
been defeated. Of the two that have become law, they were both about 
political reform, and they were also both part of my 1992 commitments to 
the American people. One applies to Congress the laws they impose on the 
private sector. The other limits the ability of Congress to impose 
unfunded mandates on State and local government. I was proud to sign 
them both. They will advance the cause of responsible Government in this 
country.
    But political reform means more. It must include, I believe, both 
lobbying reform and campaign finance reform. If you doubt how much we 
need lobby reform, just go back and refer to the story that was rightly 
printed just a few days ago about how in this session of Congress you 
have lobbyists actually sitting at the table with Congressmen, writing 
bills for them and then explaining to them what the bills mean. It seems 
to me that since these bills help the people the lobbyists represent, 
but drastically restrict the ability of the Government to act in the 
areas of the environment, in protecting our people, we need some 
significant reform in our lobbying laws. So I don't think we should stop 
there.
    Regulatory reform, another big item in the Republican contract: 
There are lots of horror stories. Every one of you probably knows a 
story that shows where a bureaucrat overreached or there were too many 
regulations or there was too little common sense. I am committed to 
changing the culture of regulation that has dominated our country for a 
long time. I have gone around espousing to everybody that they ought to 
read Mr. Howard's book ``The Death of Common Sense.''
    But for 2 years, we have been working through the reinventing 
Government initiative that the Vice President has headed to change the 
culture of regulation. We deregulated banking. We deregulated intrastate 
trucking. We have reformed the procedures of the SBA. We scrapped the 
10,000-page Federal personnel manual. We have dramatically changed the 
way the General Services Administration operates in ways that have saved 
hundreds of millions of dollars for the taxpayers and put more 
competition into the process, thanks to the GSA Director, Roger Johnson, 
who happens to be here with me today. We are working on these things to 
move forward.
    But we must do more. And yet, surely, the answer is not to stop the 
Government from regulating what it needs to regulate. If the Republicans 
send me a bill that would let unsafe planes fly or contaminated meat be 
sold or contaminated water continue to find itself into city water 
systems, I will veto it. I will veto it. But if Congress will just sit 
down with me and work out a reasonable solution for more flexible 
regulatory reform, we can create an historic achievement.
    I agree that Congress has a role to play. I agree that Congress 
sometimes hears things about the way regulations work that people in the 
executive branch don't. Congresswoman Johnson and Congressman Bryant and 
Congressman Geren flew down here with me today. They're out there all 
the time talking to their members. They may hear things we don't. That's 
why I approve of the Senate's 45-day override

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legislation. But I will veto any bill that lets a bunch of lawyers tie 
up regulation for years. We've got too much of that as it is.
    So I say, flexibility, yes; reform, yes; but paralysis and 
straightjacketing, no.
    Let's talk about legal reform. Are there too many lawsuits? Of 
course, there are. Do jury awards once in a while get out of hand? Yes, 
they do. Does this affect the insurance system in the country? It has an 
impact on it. But at a time when we're giving more and more 
responsibility to the States in which one of the signal ideas of the 
Republican contract that I largely agree with is that the State and 
local governments should have more responsibility, do we really want to 
take the entire civil justice system away from the States for the first 
time in 200 years? I don't think so.
    Let me give you a couple of examples. Should we put justice out of 
the reach of ordinary people with a ``loser pay'' rule? No. Think about 
it this way: ``Loser pays'' will keep ordinary citizens from exercising 
their rights in court just as a poll tax used to keep ordinary people of 
color and poverty from exercising their right to vote. I will veto any 
bill with a ``loser pay'' requirement such as that that was in the House 
bill. I don't think it's right.
    Punitive damages: they could stand some reform but not artificial 
ceilings. Punitive damages are designed to deter bad future conduct. 
Now, if you have a national ceiling of $250,000 think what that means--
$250,000 may be too burdensome for a small-business person who loses a 
lawsuit. You don't want to put them out of business unless they're 
malicious. But does anybody seriously believe that $250,000 will have 
any kind of significant deterrent impact on a giant multinational 
corporation? So let's negotiate realistic reforms that improve the 
system, but don't wreck it.
    Crime: Crime was a big part of the New Covenant, a big part of why I 
ran for President. The personal security of the American people should 
be our first concern. And we delivered. After 6 years we broke gridlock, 
and I signed a crime bill that was endorsed by all the major law 
enforcement organizations in the country, the cities, the counties, the 
prosecutors, the attorneys general, everybody. And it had bipartisan 
support, too, until we got close to the last election; Republicans and 
Democrats cosponsoring all major provisions.
    What was in the crime bill? It had more punishment, ``three strikes 
and you're out,'' expansion of capital punishment. It had more police, 
100,000 police on our street. And I might say that over half of the 
communities in this country have already received grants under the 
police program just since last October. We're ahead of schedule and 
under budget. There are already about 17,000 police officers authorized 
and funded to be hired. It had more prisons, something the Republicans 
very much wanted, as long as the States agreed to change their 
sentencing procedures. And it had more prevention programs, something 
the police demanded. The police said, ``You cannot police and punish and 
imprison your way out of the crime crisis. You have got to give these 
children in our country something to say yes to. You've got to give them 
a reason to stay off drugs, a reason to stay in school, a reason to 
believe they can have a future.'' So it had all those things.
    Now, if the Republicans wish to continue to try to repeal the 
commitment to 100,000 police or to repeal the assault weapons ban, they 
have a perfect right to do it. But if they send me those provisions, I 
will veto them. On the other hand, while the rest of their crime bill 
needs some work and I disagree with some provisions of it, it has some 
good points. If we can build on the '94 crime bill instead of tear it 
down, we can continue our efforts to make the American people more 
secure. So let's do that. Let's pass a crime bill we can be proud of, 
that builds the country up and makes our citizens safer.
    The environmental protection area: A big part of my New Covenant was 
protecting our environment and promoting our natural resources. It's 
something we can all give to our children whether we die rich or poor. 
And it is our obligation to our future economic health, because no 
nation over the long run succeeds economically unless you preserve your 
environment.
    I just got back from Haiti, and I can tell you one of the biggest 
obstacles to the survival of democracy in that country is they have 
ripped all the trees off every hill in the country, and we need to plant 
tens of millions of trees. We could put half the young people in the 
country to work for a year just trying to undo the environmental 
devastation. And unless we do it, they're not going to be able to regain 
their economic footing.
    I cannot and I will not compromise any clean water, any clean air, 
any protection against toxic

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waste. The environment cannot protect itself. And if it requires a 
Presidential veto to protect it, then that's what I'll provide.
    I will also veto the House-passed requirement that Government pay 
property owners billions of dollars every time we act to defend our 
national heritage of seashores or wetlands or open spaces. If that law 
were on the books in every State in the country today, then local 
governments would completely have to give up zoning or be bankrupt every 
time they try to change a zoning law. That is why every time it's been 
on the ballot in a State--and it's been on the ballot 20 times, 
including in conservative, Republican States--it has been defeated. The 
people of Arizona voted against it by a 20-point margin last November.
    Well, the people do not have to vote--do not have a vote on this 
issue in Congress. But I do, and I'll use it. This is not a good law.
    Peacekeeping: Decades from now when we have our next Republican 
President--[laughter]--he or she will be very grateful that I refused to 
approve the so-called peacekeeping legislation passed by the House. The 
United Nations and the world community did not struggle through 45 years 
of stagnation because of Soviet vetoes to have to deal with a new 
stagnation because of an American congressional veto.
    The United Nations is 50 years old this year. But it's only 4 or 5 
years old as a real force for international stability and security as it 
was imagined by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight 
Eisenhower and Arthur Vandenberg, responsible Republicans and Democrats. 
So let us learn from the United Nations mistakes in Somalia and the 
United Nations successes in Haiti and throughout the world, about how we 
can best keep the peace in partnership with our neighbors throughout the 
world.
    In Haiti there were almost 30 countries in there with us and the 
multinational force, and under the U.N. mission there now, well over 30 
countries, people who came from a long way away because they know the 
world must work together to promote humanity and peace and democracy and 
decency. Let us not walk away from the United Nations and isolate 
America from the world.
    There's some other things I want to talk about. Those are the items 
in the Republican contract, many of which were also in my New Covenant 
and where I stand on them. But I want to talk about some other items as 
well, the unfinished business of the agenda that I ran for President on.
    I was elected to fix a broken Government, to relight the dormant 
fires of the economy, to make sure that working families reap the just 
reward of their effort and are able to pass their children the same 
dream they had, and to end the sort of something-for-nothing mentality 
that had crept into our country by restoring the values of 
responsibility and work and family and community.
    The Republican contract, even where I agree with it, does not deal 
with much of what is really at the heart of America's challenges today, 
opportunity and security for working Americans. So let me talk about 
these issues.
    Health care: In the State of the Union I said I had learned that I 
bit off more than I could chew last year, and we have to reform health 
care a step at a time. But I haven't forgotten the need to reform health 
care. Everybody knows we still have problems. It costs too much. There 
are a lot of people who have inadequate coverage. There are a lot of 
people who have no coverage at all, and there are millions of Americans 
who could lose their coverage at any time. So I call on Republicans to 
join me in taking this one step at a time, beginning with things the 
majority of them have long endorsed:
    First, making benefits portable so you don't lose your health care 
when you change jobs.
    Second, requiring coverage for families with a preexisting condition 
so the whole family doesn't lose health care just because there's been 
one sick child. I saw a couple from Delaware on the street in Washington 
a couple of months ago when I was taking my jog, the best-looking family 
you ever saw. The young man and woman looked to be in their late 
thirties. They had five children. Their fourth child had a birth defect. 
And he was a small businessman. None of them had any health insurance. 
That's an intolerable situation in this country, and we shouldn't put up 
with it.
    The third thing we ought to do is to establish voluntary pools, such 
as those established in Florida and many other States, which allow small 
businesses and self-employed people to buy health care on the same terms 
as those of us who work for Government or big corporations can buy it, 
to put some competitive power behind their need.

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    The fourth thing we should do is to expand home care for the 
elderly, so that families who are struggling to keep their elderly 
parents and grandparents at home in a more independent living setting 
have some alternative before putting them into a nursing home when it 
will almost certainly cost the Government much, much more money.
    And finally, we ought to do our best in the way of coverage to help 
families keep their coverage when they're unemployed for an extended 
period of time. And we should do all this within the context of a 
determination to hold down the costs of health care, still the biggest 
problem for most Americans. We can do this without a tax increase and 
while working to bring the deficit down. We have been working very hard 
on this. The numbers clearly make that apparent.
    The second issue I want to raise on our unfinished agenda is the 
minimum wage. The minimum wage is the key, first, to welfare reform. 
Unless work pays, why will people do it? There is some evidence that not 
only will the minimum wage increase I proposed not cost jobs, it might 
actually increase employment by drawing people into the ranks of the 
employed who are hanging out now. Not only that, working people simply 
cannot live and raise kids on $8,500 a year.
    Now, the Republicans want--and they've wanted for a long time--they 
want to index tax rates against inflation, which has now been done. Now 
they want to index capital gains against inflation. They want to guard 
the defense budget against inflation. But they're willing to let minimum 
wage workers fall to their lowest real incomes in 40 years? That's what 
will happen if we don't raise the minimum wage. The lowest real incomes 
in 40 years, is that your idea of the legacy for working people in the 
aftermath of the cold war, in the information age, leading America into 
a bright, new time?
    The minimum wage, again, has always before been a bipartisan issue. 
The last time we raised the minimum wage, it got an enormous vote in the 
Congress from Republicans and Democrats. Let's make the minimum wage a 
bipartisan issue again and raise it to a decent level, so that working 
people and their children will not have to worry about being punished 
for doing the right thing.
    The last issue I want to talk about is education and training. I've 
already said most of what I want to say about it. The Secretary of 
Education is here with me today, along with many other people in the 
White House, my Chief of Staff, Mr. Panetta, and others. We've all 
worked very hard on education. Why? Because I believe that the most 
important job of Government today is to give people the tools they need 
to succeed in the global economy.
    With all these changes that are going on, everybody knows the 
Government can't guarantee everybody a job. We haven't been able to do 
it in a long time, and our ability to guarantee the same job for a 
career is less than ever before. I can work to create healthy conditions 
in which large numbers of jobs will be created, but guaranteeing a 
particular job to a particular person for a lifetime, it is out. It's 
not possible.
    The only thing we can do is to make sure that for a whole lifetime 
people will always be able to get the skills they need, beginning at the 
earliest possible time with good education. That means that as we cut 
the deficit and cut the budget, we must not cut education. We shouldn't 
cut Head Start. We shouldn't cut aid to public schools to meet national 
standards of excellence. We shouldn't cut apprenticeships to help young 
people who don't go on to college get good training so they can get a 
job with a growing income, not a shrinking income.
    We sure shouldn't cut and make more expensive the college loan 
program when we need more people going to college and the cost of going 
is higher than ever before. And we should not cut our national service 
program, AmeriCorps, which lets people earn college money through 
community service. Cutting education in the face of global economic 
competition, as I have said repeatedly, would be just like cutting the 
defense budget at the height of the cold war. It undermines our security 
as a people, and we shouldn't do it.
    I advocated in the middle class bill of rights a deduction for the 
cost of all education after high school; the ability to withdraw tax-
free from an IRA to pay for the cost of education after high school; and 
a ``GI bill'' for America's workers that would collapse literally dozens 
of these Federal programs that are here, there, and yonder in job 
training into one block grant, and not give it to the States, give it to 
the people. Let Americans who are unemployed or grossly unemployed have 
a voucher for cash money which they can use at any education or training 
facility of their choice as long as it's decent and meets good 
standards, so that we can have

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a continuous, seamless web of lifetime of education and training 
opportunities for the people of the United States.
    Well, there it is. That's what I'm for and what I'm against. I do 
not want a pile of vetoes. I want a pile of bills that will move this 
country into the future. I don't want to see a big fight between the 
Republicans and the Democrats. I want us to surprise everybody in 
America by rolling up our sleeves and joining hands and working 
together. I believe this is a time of such profound change that we need 
a dynamic center that is not in the middle of what is left and right but 
is way beyond it. That's what I want, and that's what I'm working for.
    If you want to know how I'm going to make other decisions--if I left 
one out--I would refer you to what I said in my address to the Nation on 
December 15th. My test is: Does an idea expand middle class incomes and 
opportunities? Does it promote values like family, work, responsibility, 
and community? Does it strengthen the hand of America's working families 
in a global economy? If it does, I'll be for it, no matter who proposes 
it. And if it doesn't, I will oppose it.
    The future I want for America is like the one I imagined I had when 
I was the age of these children that are here in this audience. We can 
give this to our children. In fact, we can give a bigger future to our 
children. I am absolutely convinced that if we are tough enough and wise 
enough and unpolitical enough to put the interests of ordinary Americans 
first, and to really focus on the future, that our best days are before 
us, better than we can even imagine. But it all depends on what we do at 
this crossroads. Let's get busy.
    Thank you very much.

[At this point, the President took questions from newspaper editors.]

Newspaper Role in Community Dialog

    Q. Mr. President, you talk about a civilized conversation in this 
country leading towards a new common ground. How would you challenge 
American newspapers to forward that conversation, doing things that we 
aren't doing now?
    The President. Well, I don't know what each of you are doing or not 
doing now. But I will give you some examples. I'll give you three 
examples. I think you should try to replicate in your communities the 
kind of conversation that Newsweek reprinted based on questions they 
asked Speaker Gingrich and me about what the role of Government is and 
what it should be. I don't think that we--I think both of us are a 
little bit frustrated about it, because we didn't know--we just answered 
questions, and then they had to turn it into an article, but it was the 
beginning of an interesting conversation about what the role of 
Government ought to be.
    The second thing I would advise is to take each one of these 
issues--I saw in the, I think it was in the Dallas Morning News, one of 
the papers today I saw, that I read had a portrait of a family on 
welfare. Take each of these big issues and try to figure out how to go 
from rhetoric to reality so that people can understand what all these 
labels mean. Because if all you hear about these debates is what sort of 
pierces through in 10 or 15 seconds on the evening news, chances are 
your opinion will be more dominated by the rhetoric. And if it happens 
to comport with the facts, that's fine, but if it doesn't, that's not so 
good. Newspapers can do that. Newspapers can analyze in depth real, hard 
evidence on various problems.
    And the third thing I think maybe you ought to consider doing is 
sponsoring conversations within your community of people of different 
political and racial and other stripes--just people who are different. 
Because we are running the risk--interestingly enough, we have more 
information than ever before, but the way we get it may divide us from 
one another instead of unite us.
    And I think it might be really interesting if all the newspapers in 
the country sponsored community discussions. I don't mean bring people 
like me or people who want to be President, or even maybe people from 
Congress in from outside, but I mean the people in your local community 
who would represent different political points of view and live in 
different neighborhoods and are from different racial backgrounds and 
have an agenda of common topics that are being discussed all around the 
country, and let people listen to each other and talk to each other.
    My experience has always been that the differences among us, except 
on a few issues, are not nearly as profound as we think they are. And 
then report that to your readers, because we have to establish some 
sense of common ground. If all of our public discourse is about

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segmenting the electorate and then trying to make sure that by election 
day you've got the biggest segment, and there's never an opportunity to 
redefine where we are in common, that may work okay in a stable time 
because the policies are more or less set, the direction is more or less 
set; nobody's going to veer too much one way or the other anyway. But in 
a time of real profound change where the information revolution has made 
all of us actors, it is important that we try to establish more common 
ground. So those would be my three suggestions.

V-J Day 50th Anniversary

    Q. Mr. President, we're coming upon the ceremonies to commemorate 
the 50th anniversary of V-J Day. And someone suggested that it's time to 
try to heal the wounds of that war, and that the United States should 
take the first step by apologizing for dropping a bomb on Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki. Should we apologize? And did President Harry Truman make the 
right decision in dropping the bomb?
    The President. No. And based on the facts he had before him, yes.

Cuban Refugees

    Q. Mr. President, last week you went to Haiti, where the military 
operation of our troops and other nations really helped restore order 
and to stop the refugees from coming to our State and to our country. 
Several miles away, there are several thousand Cubans trying to flee 
that oppressive regime who are now being detained indefinitely in 
Guantanamo. What's the way out for our policy and for those Cubans?
    The President. First, we are doing our best to deal with the 
situation at Guantanamo, which is a very difficult one, for reasons 
because of where you're from you understand as well as I do. We have 
moved quickly, or as quickly as we could to review the cases of the 
children and the elderly people who are there, and we have moved quite a 
lot of people into the United States. We are now having detailed 
discussions about what we should do about the remainder of the people 
who are there at Guantanamo. Meanwhile, we've done what we could to make 
their conditions as livable, as bearable as possible.
    As to our policy, even though I recognize most countries disagree 
with it, I think being firm has been the proper policy. And I do not 
believe we should change it except within the confines of the Cuban 
Democracy Act. I would remind everyone here who's interested in this 
that the Cuban Democracy Act, while it stiffened sanctions against Cuba, 
also for the first time explicitly laid out in legislative language the 
conditions under which the United States might change various actions 
toward Cuba in return for actions by the Cubans.
    Let me give you just one example. We have established, for the first 
time, direct phone service into Cuba. And the lines are quite jammed, as 
I understand it. It's cut the cost of calling home and calling relatives 
for Cuban-Americans. And it's enabled the Cuban Government to earn some 
money, because in all direct telephone conversations internationally, 
countries--at least, many countries--put a fee on such conversations. We 
did that because we thought it was the appropriate thing to do given the 
state of our relations and because of some things that had changed. Cuba 
is now establishing a more genuine farmers market that shows some 
movement in that area.
    But the Cuban Democracy Act gives us a framework for future 
movement, and I--and also a firmness in our policy. And I think we 
should stay with both, both the firmness and the framework of the act.

Multiracial Families

    Q. We have heard from several people here that there ought to be a 
multiracial box on the U.S. census forms so that people with parents of 
two races wouldn't have to deny one of them. What do you think should 
happen here?
    The President. I wouldn't be opposed to that. That's the first time 
I ever heard it, but it makes sense. It's interesting that you raised 
that because of a related debate that's going on in Washington today, 
which is whether we should pass a Federal law which makes it clear that 
we should not discriminate against parents of one race in their attempts 
to adopt a child of another race. And I personally strongly support that 
position. And we've been trying to work through it to make--I though we 
had adopted that position last year at the end of the year. We did in 
large measure. We're talking about whether we need any other legal 
changes to achieve that.
    But I--we are clearly going to have more and more multiracial, 
multiethnic children and families in this country. You're the first 
person

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who ever asked me that question. But I think it ought to be done. I 
can't see any reason not to do it.

Telecommunications Legislation

    Q. One of the issues we've been examining at this convention, Mr. 
President, is the new information age and our own role in it. And one of 
the issues that's likely to come up in the next 100 days to which you 
referred is a broad reform of telecommunications policy. Do you think 
that a pragmatic, practical compromise solution in this area, which 
affects how people get their dial tones and what is on the dial tone, is 
likely to come out of these discussions?
    The President. I do. I think it is likely. Let me say that I very 
much wanted to pass a telecommunications act in the last session of 
Congress. And we came within a hair's breadth of being able to do it. 
Some rather--to me anyway--rather minor problems hung it up in the 
Senate. And as you know, it's not difficult to hang a bill up in the 
Senate. And so it got hung. If we can pass the right kind of 
telecommunications act, it can be good for American consumers and it can 
pump billions of more dollars into this economy and create a very large 
number of jobs.
    It's interesting that you would ask me this. The Vice President and 
I had lunch yesterday, our weekly lunch, and we talked about this for 
quite some time. My concern about the bill in its present form in the 
Senate is that I believe, as written, it would lead to a rather rapid 
increase and a rather substantial increase in both telephone and cable 
rates in ways that I do not believe are necessary to get the benefits 
that the telecommunications bill seeks to achieve. So I would like to 
see some provisions in there which deal with that.
    I can also tell you that the Antitrust Division of the Justice 
Department has some fairly serious reservations about how far it goes. 
Now I have in several areas been willing to see, because of the 
globalization of the economy, some modifications in our antitrust laws. 
But I'm concerned--and I think they're warranted. But I think that this 
may go too far. But the most important concern I have is, are we going 
to have a very large and unnecessary increase in cable and phone rates 
immediately if the bill, as passed, is adopted? That is my major 
concern. But I think we can get one, and we certainly need to get one.

First Lady's Role

    Q. Mr. President, yesterday on the front page of the New York Times 
was this headline, ``Hillary Clinton a Traditional First Lady Now.'' 
Could you tell us, was there a point where you sat down with the First 
Lady to discuss her role for the remainder of your term? [Laughter]
    The President. No.
    Q. And if so, what was the content of that discussion and what 
prompted it? [Laughter]
    The President. I was trying to think of something really funny to 
say, but it would be a polite way of saying I don't discuss my private 
conversations with my wife. [Laughter]
    Actually, while I was very pleased with the First Lady's trip and 
with the way my wife and daughter were treated and what they learned, 
and very, very pleased with the coverage, I don't really agree with 
that. I mean, I think that I very much wanted her to go to India, to 
Pakistan, to Bangladesh, Nepal, to Sri Lanka because that part of the 
world is a very important part of the world to us. And for various 
reasons, we have not been as closely involved, even with the democracies 
there, as we might have been, largely as a legacy of the cold war.
    But one of the biggest obstacles to the modernization of those 
countries and to the vitality and preservation of democracy are the 
challenges faced by women and children there. I did not consider the 
trip either too traditional or unimportant. I thought what they were 
doing--what Hillary was doing was profoundly important. And after 
getting a blow-by-blow description of the trip for a good long while 
yesterday from both my wife and daughter, I still feel that way.
    So I--when my wife was an unconventional First Lady of Arkansas and 
working full-time and, as she told that lady in the Bangladesh village, 
making more money than her husband--[laughter]--still her first concern 
was always for the welfare of mothers, children, and families. She 
founded an organization called the Advocates for Families and Children 
in our State. She was on the board of the Children's Hospital. We built 
an intensive care nursery there, the first time the State had ever been 
involved. This is a 25-year concern of hers, and I wouldn't over-read 
the significance of it.
    I also wouldn't underestimate the significance of having a First 
Lady who can galvanize a glob-


[[Page 485]]

al discussion about the role of women and young girls on our planet and 
for our future.

Electronic Information Regulation

    Q. You alluded to our being in the information age. Many of us in 
this room are investigating and developing ways of disseminating 
information electronically. There are thousands outside this room who 
are doing the same. What role, if any, does the Federal Government have 
in censoring or regulating that information and news?
    The President. Let me begin by saying I support what you're doing, 
and I've tried to bring the White House up to date electronically. You 
know, we have a pretty sophisticated E-mail operation. And now you can 
take a tour of the White House and all the Federal agencies on the 
Internet and find out more than you ever wanted to know. So we're trying 
to be there for you in virtual reality land.
    I guess you're asking me about the bill that Senator Exon introduced 
on trying to regulate obscenity through the E-mail system, or through 
the electronic superhighway. To be perfectly honest with you, I have not 
read the bill. I am not familiar with its contents, and I don't know 
what I think. I do believe--about this specific bill. [Laughter] I'll 
tell you what I think about the issue.
    I believe that insofar as that Governments have the legal right to 
regulate obscenity that has not been classified as speech under the 
First Amendment, and insofar as the American public widely supports, for 
example, limiting access of children to pornographic magazines, I think 
it is folly to think that we should sit idly by when a child who is a 
computer whiz may be exposed to things on that computer which in some 
ways are more powerful, more raw, and more inappropriate than those 
things from which we protect them when they walk in a 7-Eleven.
    So as a matter of principle, I am not opposed to it. I just can't 
comment on the details of the bill, because I do not know enough about 
it. And I do not believe in any way shape or form that we should be able 
to do on E-mail, or through the electronic superhighway, in terms of 
Government regulation of speech, anything beyond what we could 
elsewhere. I think the First Amendment has to be uniform in its 
application.
    So I'm not calling for a dilution of the First Amendment. But if you 
just imagine, those of us who have children and who think about this, 
you just think about what's the difference in going in the 7-Eleven and 
hooking up to the computer. I think that we have to find some resolution 
of this. And within the Supreme Court's standards, which are very 
strict, I am not philosophically opposed to some action.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:55 a.m. at the Loews Anatole Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Gregory Favre, outgoing president, Robert J. 
Haiman, board of directors, and William B. Ketter, incoming president, 
American Society of Newspaper Editors; Gov. William F. Weld of 
Massachusetts; and Gov. Stephen Merrill of New Hampshire.