    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 22, 1995]
    [Pages 1448-1449]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1448]]

    Remarks on the Los Angeles County Fiscal Relief Plan and an Exchange
    With Reporters in Santa Monica, California
    September 22, 1995

        The President. Good morning. I am very pleased to announce today
    that a fiscal relief plan for Los Angeles County has been developed by a
    team of officials from the county, State of California, and the Federal
    Government. Overall, the package will provide $364 million in additional
    relief in resources to the county. It will allow the county to avoid
    closing any of its hospitals and to keep open a majority of the clinics
    it had planned to close.
        The plan is structured around a 5-year Federal waiver that will
    allow the county to restructure its health care system in a rational and
    planned way and to move from its current reliance on hospital care to a
    system that emphasizes more preventive and primary care.
        Reaching this unique agreement was possible because we had
    tremendous cooperation from both local and State officials. The
    development of this plan is an excellent example of intergovernmental
    cooperation at the local, State, and Federal levels. I want to thank the
    members of the county board of supervisors for their leadership during
    this difficult time, including the board chair, Gloria Molina, Yvonne
    Burke, Zev Yaroslavsky, Deane Dana, and Michael Antonovich. I also want
    to thank Mr. Margolin for the work that he did on this project. I know
    that they are committed to a meaningful restructuring of the current
    health care system, while continuing to ensure that the communities of
    Los Angeles County have access to critical health care services.
        I also want to say that this agreement was reached after critical
    consultations with the Service Employees International Union. This
    agreement is an important breakthrough in continuing to provide critical
    care as well as saving thousands of health care jobs. As part of the
    implementation process, we're committed to working with the SEIU to help
    to protect the jobs and benefits of health care workers to ensure the
    provision of high-quality care. I also want to thank the State officials
    who've been extremely helpful in developing this solution. The State
    will be instrumental in working with the county to implement the plan.
        I should mention that this plan underlines why we cannot afford the
    so-called Medicaid reforms that pulled billions of dollars out of
    critical health care facilities without any idea of what the
    consequences will be. Most of all, let me say that I am very pleased
    that the patients, the communities, and the workers and all of their
    families will not have to suffer the impacts of a crisis shutdown of
    county hospitals and clinics and that the county will continue to be
    able to maintain an appropriate safety net for those who depend upon
    these facilities for their health care.
        Let me again thank everyone for their work on this and say that I am
    very pleased that we were able to be of assistance. I'm glad to be here
    with the county board of supervisors and with Mayor Riordan. And I'd
    like to now ask the chair, Gloria Molina, to come forward for whatever
    remarks she would like to make.

    [At this point, members of the county board of supervisors made brief
    remarks.]

        The President. If I might, just listening to the county supervisors
    talk, it occurred to me that, for the benefit of the people in this
    county and in this State who are interested in this problem, I ought to
    make two general points. First of all, this is an example of the kind of
    teamwork we need to solve the transitional problems, the many kinds of
    transitional problems that are plaguing the United States today as we
    move into a different kind of economy and a different kind of world.
        They don't necessarily have a partisan tinge. They really require
    people to be creative, to be willing to embrace new ideas, to remember
    what the fundamental mission is, and to achieve that mission. And I want
    to applaud the people here who have spoken today for the way they work
    together across party lines. We need to do more of that in Washington
    right now in this budget process.
        The second thing I want to emphasize to the people of this county--
    and this is true, by the way, to a greater or lesser extent in every
    State in this country and in very rural areas as well as more urbanized
    areas--you heard one of the

    [[Page 1449]]

    commissioners say that one in three people in this county is uninsured.
    Well, one in three people in this county is not unemployed. Most
    uninsured people today are working people. And the reason the Medicaid
    program is so important is that it provides places like Los Angeles
    County with that extra amount of assistance, even though it's targeted
    to the poor, that helps them to keep their public health clinics and
    public hospitals open to deal with what is an increasingly difficult
    problem in America, which is working families without health insurance.
        I tried to fix that last year, and my proposed solution didn't find
    favor. But if we're not going to have a comprehensive solution to it,
    then the only other alternative, if you believe as I do that you can't
    simply turn working families away when their children are sick or when
    the breadwinners are sick, the only alternative is to place greater
    emphasis on public health clinics and hospitals that can help with
    primary and preventive care as well as with people when they get very
    ill.
        So this is a very important model, this restructuring that will take
    place over the next few years. And it won't be easy for them. But what
    they're trying to do is absolutely critical, given the fact that another
    million Americans every year who are in working families are without
    insurance. It would have been criminal to permit all of these clinics to
    close and all this crisis to develop, not just because of the very
    poorest people in this county but because of the working families on
    very limited incomes who don't have insurance.
        And that's a national issue; it's not a Los Angeles County issue.
    And if it can be solved here with the restructuring, a lot of people all
    over America will be learning a lot from what you're doing, and the
    working families of our country will be better served by it.
        Thank you very much.

    Debt Limit Legislation

        Q. Mr. President, what does that say about the spirit of cooperation
    and problem solving: Speaker Gingrich says that he won't bring a debt
    limit bill to the floor of the House unless you agree to the Republican
    budget tax cuts.
        The President. Well, a lot of things have been said, you know. All I
    can say is that it's important for me to try to keep the rhetoric down
    and to keep calm. But I will say this: The United States has never
    failed to recognize its obligations to pay its debts. And the failure to
    raise the debt limit has nothing to do with holding the deficit down or
    balancing the budget. It is basically saying you're going to be a piker
    and welsh on your debts, and the United States has never done that. And
    it would be irresponsible to do that.
        And let me emphasize that if the United States were to refuse to
    raise its debt limit, the real consequence to the Speaker and to the
    Republican majority in Congress would be to dramatically raise the risk
    that their own budget plan would fail because what would happen
    immediately is people would start to charge us more interest on our
    debt.
        And most of the leaders in the Congress were around in the 12 years
    that we quadrupled the national debt. I wasn't there. But I can tell you
    today that our budget would be balanced but for the debts run up in the
    12 years before I showed up in Washington. And if we don't--if we didn't
    raise the debt limit, the only practical impact would be, since we
    eventually would have to pay our debts, is that interest rates would go
    up, more and more of our budget would go to interest on the debt. It
    could raise our interest rates for a decade, and it could wreck their
    own budget plan.
        So I just don't believe in the end that they will do that. There's
    going to be a lot of verbal back-and-forth between now and then, but it
    would be so irresponsible and it would undermine their own objectives,
    that I can't believe that it would happen.
        The United States is a good citizen. We don't welsh on our debts,
    and we're not about to start doing it now.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:20 a.m. at the Santa Monica Airport. In
    his remarks, the President referred to Burt Margolin, legislative
    strategist, Los Angeles County.