[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.

[[Page 96]]

    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.