    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [October 13, 1995]
    [Pages 1585-1592]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Business Council in Williamsburg, Virginia
    October 13, 1995

        Thank you very much. The last time I was with the Woolards we were
    in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the Grand Tetons. And this outfit would
    have been highly inappropriate there. I felt more at home, but I saw Ed
    tonight and I kind of--I'm jealous of the beautiful shirt. I want to
    know where you got it. [Laughter] I'm so glad to see all of you. I know
    some of our administration members have been here--Secretary Rubin, who
    feels right at home.

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    I still can't believe Bob Rubin is a Democrat. [Laughter] He told me not
    very long ago we were going to have to change the currency to avoid
    counterfeiting. And I said, ``Well, all right.'' And he said, ``But I
    want to start with $100 bills.'' [Laughter] So that's where we started.
    I have reviewed a little bit about who spoke here today and what they
    said, and, Ed, if Hugh Sidey really said that, he must have been awful
    tough on the people who are running against me. [Laughter]
        I want to talk to you tonight about, obviously, about the major
    controversy presently raging in Washington about the balanced budget.
    But I want to try to set the stage for what this really means and what's
    really going on. And I'd like to begin with what I think is the most
    important thing, which is what kind of country we live in and what kind
    of country we wish to live in and what kind of country we wish to leave
    for our children and our grandchildren. That, after all, is the most
    important thing of all.
        When I sought this job in 1992, I did it because I wanted to restore
    the American dream for all of our people and because I wanted this
    country to go into the next century still as the world's leader for
    freedom and peace and prosperity and democracy. Because I really believe
    that we're all better off in a country where people have opportunity but
    exercise responsibility, where we strengthen work but we also strengthen
    our families, and where we recognize that the real power in America
    should be at the community level where people work together and where
    they deal with each other directly, instead of through the filters that
    exist between me and Washington and you where you live.
        This is a remarkable period f success for America's economy. All of
    you are doing a remarkable job. We've had a great 2\1/2\ years. And I
    believe there are better times ahead if we make the right decisions.
    It's a time of profound change. We're moving from the industrial to the
    information and technology age. We've moved out of the cold war into a
    global marketplace. We have problems, to be sure, but they're nowhere
    near as great as the opportunities we have.
        When I sought the Presidency, I said that I wanted to do three
    things: I wanted to restore pro-growth economics. I wanted to put
    mainstream values back at the heart of our social policy. And I wanted
    to give America a modern Government that was more entrepreneurial and
    smaller and gave more authority to the State and local governments, to
    the private sector, and operated more as a partner with others to build
    a better America.
        I said then, and I believe I have been true to this, that I wanted
    to see new ideas injected into our political life, everything from
    welfare reform to national service to empowerment zones for our inner
    cities to the reinventing Government program that the Vice President has
    done such a good job with. I said I would make a good-faith effort to
    move beyond the partisan labels that had divided people so much in the
    past. And believe it or not, I have done my best to do that. It's a lot
    harder in Washington than it is in the State capitals and the cities of
    the country, but it can be done and it will be done again, I believe, in
    the next few weeks.
        I also believed then and I believe more strongly now that in a time
    of change, it's important that the President make decisions based on
    their long-term impact as opposed to their short-term benefits or
    burdens.
        Now, if you look at the last 2\1/2\ years, you must all be very
    proud. Our country has produced 7\1/2\ million jobs, 2\1/2\ million new
    homeowners, about 2 million new small business owners, the largest
    number of new small businesses in such a time period in the history of
    the United States, a record number of new self-made millionaires. Trade
    has increased in the last 3 years from 4 percent in '93, 10 percent in
    '94, and it's going up 16 percent this year--our exports. The deficit
    has come from $290 billion a year down to $160 billion a year.
        Of course, there are still problems. In any period of profound
    change, there tends to be a big disruption and a significant problem of
    income inequality. We have that in America. We need to get more energy
    and growth back into middle class families' incomes. We have still some
    isolated areas in our country that have not felt the benefits of this
    recovery. And I believe that the budget proposal now in Congress would
    undermine our economic growth in the future unless it's modified
    significantly, and I'll say more about that in a moment.
        I think the policies of this administration have made a contribution
    to that economic record by reducing the deficit; by expanding trade
    through NAFTA and GATT and taking all those outdated cold war controls
    off of our high technology exports; by concluding over 80 trade
    agreements through the efforts of Ambassador

    [[Page 1587]]

    Kantor, including 15 with Japan alone; by investing in technology,
    research and development, and defense conversion; and by working with so
    many of you to manifest the real commitment to the education of all
    Americans, more money but also higher standards, higher expectations,
    and more accountability in education.
        If you look at the question of our social problems and whether we've
    been successful in putting middle class values into our approach, you
    can all be somewhat hopeful there. The crime rate is down in almost
    every place in America. The murder rate is down. The welfare rolls are
    down. The food stamp rolls are down. The poverty rate is down. The teen
    pregnancy rate has gone down for 2 years in a row. Americans are
    reasserting their beliefs in old-fashioned personal, family, and
    community responsibility. And it is beginning to work.
        Yes, we have some problems. We still need to pass a national welfare
    reform plan, I believe. We still need to avoid the tendency that's now
    alive in Congress to believe that all you need to do on the crime
    problem is to put people in jail and we don't need anything to do with
    prevention and giving our young people something to say yes to. But
    basically we are moving in the right direction to reassert and reinsert
    into American life mainstream values.
        And I believe the initiatives of our administration have played a
    role in that: The crime bill, which is putting 100,000 more police on
    the street, keeping repeat offenders off the street; passing the Brady
    bill; passing the assault weapons ban; doing things that enable our
    local communities to help prevent crimes. I think it's making a
    difference.
        I believe the work we've done in what the New York Times called ``a
    quiet revolution'' in welfare--our administration has given 35 States
    over 40 separate approvals to get around Federal rules and regulations
    to move people from welfare to work. When the Congress wouldn't pass the
    bill, we just decided to reform welfare State by State, community by
    community. We have offered all 50 States within any 30-day period a
    complete relief from any number of Federal rules and regulations if they
    will present a comprehensive plan to move people from welfare to work
    without hurting their children.
        I think when we almost doubled the family tax credit that President
    Reagan said was the best antipoverty program the country had ever come
    up with, so that we can now say that anybody who works 40 hours a week
    and has children in the home will not live in poverty, that was a major
    step toward rewarding work and family and helping us to reform welfare
    and get people out of welfare into the work rolls.
        I think the national service program is an important advance. We
    celebrated its first year yesterday with a young woman from Kansas City
    who's working her way through college from an inner-city neighborhood in
    Kansas City with a project of young volunteers who have closed 44 crack
    houses in Kansas City in the last year. And this is the kind of thing
    being done by these young people all over America, whether they're
    building houses with Habitat for Humanity, tutoring kids in rural
    Kentucky where they have increased the grade level in reading by
    threefold in one year, or helping to fight the crime problem.
        All these things manifest our values. And something I know that
    means a lot to all of you, we have tried to give the American people a
    more modern Government. The size of the Federal Government tonight when
    I left Washington was 163,000 smaller than it was the day I became
    President. It's the smallest Federal Government since John Kennedy was
    President. We will reduce it by another 110,000 in the next 2 years, no
    matter what the Congress does with this budget. This Government as a
    percentage of the civilian nonfarm payroll is the smallest Government
    the United States has had in Washington since 1933.
        Now, those are facts. We've reduced 16,000 pages of regulations, cut
    the regulations of the Small Business Administration by 50 percent, the
    regulations of the Education Department by 40 percent. Next year, the
    paperwork time that businesses spend fooling with the Environmental
    Protection Agency will be down by 25 percent.
        More important than all that to me, I think our Government's working
    better. The Small Business Administration has cut its budget by 40
    percent and doubled its loan output. The Export-Import Bank is helping
    small businesses that never knew what it was before to sell their
    products all around the world. The Commerce Department and the State
    Department have done more good for American businesses overseas than any
    Commerce Department and State Department in modern history. And every
    one of you who has worked with them knows that

    [[Page 1588]]

    that is the absolute truth. We are moving forward to give you a
    Government that works.
        The automobile industry has been working with us in partnership to
    produce a clean car. It is a big deal. Nineteen ninety-five was the
    hottest year for the planet Earth since the present temperature system
    was devised. China is growing rapidly. If everybody in China winds up
    with a car and you don't want the atmosphere of this Earth to burn up,
    we had better find an efficient way of moving people around. And this is
    the sort of thing that we're trying to do.
        Now, let me tell you this; this will probably surprise you more than
    anything. Every year, Business Week--hardly an arm of the Democratic
    Party or of my administration--recognizes outstanding businesses for
    performance in various categories. This year in the category of service
    to consumers by telephone, the winner was not L.L. Bean or Federal
    Express but the Social Security Administration of your Federal
    Government. So I think that we have made a contribution to modernizing
    the Federal Government. It's smaller. It's less bureaucratic. It is more
    entrepreneurial. It still has dumb things in the rules, and it does dumb
    things that drive me crazy that I find out about after it's over. But it
    is better than it was before by a very, very long shot.
        The most important thing is, we're trying to help move decisions
    back where people make them. The mayor of Chicago is here. Chicago
    received one of our empowerment zones, a new idea helping to attract
    private investment into inner cities to grow the economy and give people
    a stake in America's future. Chicago received more funds for police not
    because we know how to prevent crime, but they do, if they have the
    means to do it, and funds for prevention to support programs like the
    ones in Chicago that have lowered the crime rate, even though they make
    fodder for congressional speeches like midnight basketball. Better a kid
    on a basketball court than on a corner selling drugs or mugging somebody
    and winding up in jail. We didn't make the decisions; they make the
    decisions at the local level.
        We finally passed a bill to stop mandating costs on State and local
    governments that we don't help them pay for. These are the kinds of
    things that are going on. We are moving in the right direction, your
    country is, and you ought to be proud of it.
        And America has been gratified to be a part of making peace in the
    Middle East, progress in Northern Ireland, the cease-fire in Bosnia,
    making sure that for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age
    there aren't any missiles pointed at Americans or their children
    tonight. North Korea is moving away from its nuclear program, and, by
    the grace of God, we might get a comprehensive test ban treaty on all
    nuclear testing next year. We seem to be headed in that direction.
        Now, what does the future hold? First, we do have to balance the
    budget. It's the right thing to do to take the burden of debt off our
    children and free up capital for private sector investment. I'm really
    proud of the fact that way over 90 percent of the new jobs created in
    this recovery were created not by Government but in the private sector.
    That is exactly what we wanted to happen. So as we reduce the size of
    Government, the private sector is growing more. We have to do it, but we
    have to do it consistent with our values and with our interests.
        The second thing we have to do is to expand trade. We have our
    friends here from the Americas. Mack McLarty, who's here with me, worked
    so hard last December on the Summit of the Americas. And we have worked
    to follow up on that. We believe that our partners in this hemisphere
    are a very, very important part of our future. We believe we have to
    build on NAFTA until we have partnerships with all these democratic
    governments, to reward their moves to democracy, to freedom, to market
    economics with a genuine and respectful partnership with the United
    States.
        In that connection, I say I was very well pleased with the
    remarkable visit I just had with the President of Mexico and the fact
    that they have already paid back $700 million of the loan they received
    through our international financial package ahead of schedule, being
    faithful to their commitment to modernize Mexico politically and
    economically.
        We have to continue to invest in technology and make it our friend,
    not our foe. People cannot afford to be afraid of the technological
    revolution that is sweeping the world. We just have to make sure that
    everybody can have access to it. And we have to give people the tools
    they need to succeed.
        In that connection, let me say I am very grateful for the support
    that we've gotten from

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    the business community for every education initiative of our
    administration, from expanding Head Start to the Goals 2000 program,
    which focuses on national standards and grassroots reforms, to the
    expansion of student loans.
        And just a couple of days ago--I know the Secretary of Labor said
    this earlier, but I want to emphasize this because it achieved almost no
    public notice, largely because there were only two votes against this
    bill in the Senate, and when there's no controversy, it is often deemed
    not important. But with no controversy, a couple of days ago, the United
    States Senate adopted what I thought was one of the most important new
    ideas that I advocated in the State of the Union message: the ``GI
    bill'' for America's workers, consolidating 70 separate, marginally
    impacting Federal training programs into a big fund and saying to
    unemployed people, we will just send you a voucher, we will send you a
    voucher if you lose your job and you can immediately take it to the
    nearest community college and begin to start your life again.
        Now, that's very important. A lot of you pay a lot of unemployment
    tax. The unemployment system today is not relevant to the times in which
    we live. When the unemployment system in America was developed, 85
    percent of the people were called back to the jobs they were laid off
    from. Today, 85 percent of the people who are laid off are never called
    back to those jobs. If we want people to feel secure about the future,
    to have a stake in the future, we have to increase their sense of
    empowerment about it. That's what this ``GI bill'' for America's workers
    will do. It's a very important idea, and we ought to stick with it and
    support it and properly fund it.
        Now, let me say something in all candor. To have--if we're going to
    continue to move forward in a time of change, you have to expect the
    leadership of the country to do what you have to do in a time of change,
    and that's to make decisions that are unpopular in the short run because
    they're right over the long run. Now, I have found as an elected
    official that everybody is for that in general, but they're against it
    in particular. And let me just give you some examples of the kind of
    things I've faced. I bet I've done five things that have made everybody
    in this room mad in the last 2\1/2\ years, at least five. But I want to
    give you a few.
        When I became President I knew, based on my conversations with Mr.
    Greenspan, with people in the private markets, with others, that if we
    could reduce the deficit at least $500 billion in 5 years, we'd get a
    big drop in interest rates and a big boom in this economy. I knew that.
    And I knew, conversely, if we failed to do it that we would continue to
    lengthen the sluggish economy which I confronted when I took office. So
    I made up my mind, come hell or high water, we were going to reduce the
    deficit $500 billion. In the first week I showed up in Washington, the
    leaders of the minority in Congress, who are now the majority leader and
    the Speaker of the House, told me that I would not get one vote for my
    budget no matter what I did, not a single, solitary vote. The policy was
    going to be ``just say no.''
        As a consequence, I had to raise your taxes more and cut spending
    less than I wanted to, which made a lot of you furious. All I know is,
    we got a huge drop in the interest rates and a big boom in the economy,
    and most everybody who paid more made more than they paid. And it was
    the right thing for the United States. It was wrong for them to refuse
    to cooperate with me, but they were richly rewarded for it later on. But
    our country is better off because we passed a deficit reduction plan
    which, over a 7-year period, is about as big as the one we're debating
    in the Congress today. And that's what got this country going again. And
    we did it without cutting education or investment in technology or the
    environment or our future.
        I'll give you another example that affects the mayor here. When we
    were debating the Brady bill to require people to wait 5 days before
    they got a handgun, and the assault weapons ban, all my political
    advisers said, ``Don't do this; this is crazy.'' And I said, ``Why do
    you think it's crazy?'' And they said, ``Because everybody that's
    against this will vote against everybody who's for it, but all the
    people that are for it, they'll find some other reason to oppose you.''
        That's why things don't get done in your country, because organized
    interests and their intense opposition always overcome the generalized
    feeling of good will, which is not manifest in the same intensity of
    support. But you know what? Last year 40,000 people with criminal
    records did not get handguns because of the Brady law. And it was the
    right thing to do.

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        And I am tired of picking up the newspaper and seeing kids that are
    honor students in school getting shot down standing at bus stops by nuts
    with assault weapons. And by election time next time, every hunter in my
    State will know that nobody lost their hunting rifle and it was all a
    big canard, there was nothing to it. But people are alive today because
    those decisions were made.
        The teenage smoking initiative--the same thing. Same folks came and
    said, ``Oh, don't do this. By the time the tobacco companies get through
    working on you, they'll convince every tobacco farmer in North Carolina
    and Tennessee that you're going to drive them in the poorhouse; they all
    vote against everybody with a ``D'' behind their name; they will bury
    you. And everybody in America that agrees with you will find some other
    reason not to support you. This is dumb politics.'' Well, it might be.
    But we studied that issue for 14 months. We found out two companies knew
    for 30 years what they were doing and kept on doing it and didn't own up
    to it. We found out that there were still deliberate attempts to
    advertise to young people. And most important, we found out that 3,000
    kids a day start smoking and 1,000 of them are going to die sooner
    because of it. I don't know what you think a thousand kids a day are
    worth, but to me, that's the kind of America I want to live in, where
    another thousand kids a day have longer, better, fuller lives because
    somebody doesn't sucker-punch them into doing something they shouldn't
    do while they are still children. So it may be unpopular, but I think it
    was the right thing to do.
        The same thing--something where most of you agree with me, I think--
    the affirmative action issue. Everybody said, ``Oh, you don't need to--
    you need to be against this; we need to stop this.'' But there is still
    racial discrimination in America, folks. When five Federal law
    enforcement officials can't even get served in Denny's, there's a
    problem there. And I could give you a lot of other examples.
        I don't favor unfair preferences or quotas or reverse
    discrimination. Our administration has actually joined lawsuits against
    reverse discrimination in States. But everybody has to be considered in
    this country. The great meal ticket we've got for the future is that
    this is the most diverse, big, rich country in the world. Los Angeles
    County has 150 different racial and ethnic groups in one county. In the
    global village, it is a manna from heaven. But we have to learn to live
    together and work together with common values and a common chance to
    succeed. So we said, let's mend affirmative action, but let's don't end
    it. And I hope and believe it made it possible for the people who lead
    large companies in our country to follow the same policies.
        I could give you lots of other examples, but you get the idea. When
    you're going through a period of change like this, you can't even
    predict what's going to be popular.
        Last night we celebrated one year of the restoration of democracy in
    Haiti. Well, when we threw the dictators out of Haiti, hardly anybody
    was for it. But it was the right thing to do. You can't let dictators
    come to the United States and stand in the shadow of the Statue of
    Liberty and promise they're going to leave and then go home and keep
    killing people in the street and never even blink an eye. The United
    States couldn't do that.
        When we helped our friends and neighbors in Mexico, most of you
    probably supported that. But the day I made the decision, there was a
    poll in the paper that said by 81 to 15 the American people were opposed
    to that. Half the people in the country who were for it were in the room
    at the time I decided to do it. [Laughter] But it was the right thing to
    do, because they're our neighbors, because they want to do the right
    thing, because they have the capacity to grow and become our strong
    partners and generate opportunities for you and incomes and jobs for
    America, because our real future here, no matter what happens to the
    movement toward free trade, is with our friends here in our backyard, in
    our neighborhood.
        So I would ask all of you as people who have to make difficult
    decisions to expect people who lead your governmental institutions to do
    the same thing and to be perfectly willing to be held accountable for
    the consequences of them.
        And that brings me to the budget issue. Let me say what this is not
    about, this squabble in Washington. It is not--I say again--it is not
    about balancing the budget. There are two plans to balance the budget,
    both of which have been blessed as perfectly credible by every neutral
    observer.
        Our plan would, now we know, would balance the budget in 9 years and
    continue to increase investment in education, research and develop-

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    ment, technology, and the environment. It would invest enough in things
    like the Commerce Department, the State Department, and our aid programs
    to maintain our world leadership, which is very important. You see what
    happens when we have a chance to exercise it. It would lengthen the life
    of the Medicare Trust Fund just as much as the Republican budget. It
    would slow the rate of medical inflation but not as much as their
    budget. Why? Because nobody I know in the health care field believes
    that we can take $450 billion out of Medicare and Medicaid over the next
    7 years, based on what we now know, without causing serious problems to
    the medical schools of the country, to the children's hospitals of the
    country, to the ability of the elderly poor to get into nursing homes or
    their middle class children to have them there and afford to educate
    their children, and devastating problems to our ability to care for the
    over 20 percent of America's children who are so poor they qualify for
    medical assistance under the Medicaid program.
        We do have to slow the rate of medical inflation. I've been working
    at this for 2 years. We do have to bail out the Medicare Trust Fund. But
    we have to recognize that we have to listen to the people who do this
    for a living and have some sense of the practical implications of how
    much we can cut. My budget has a tax cut, but it's smaller than the
    congressional one. The congressional budget balances the budget in 7
    years. It cuts education, research and development, technology,
    investment in the environment. It drastically cuts back on our ability
    to exercise world leadership through the Commerce Department, the State
    Department, and the aid programs. The tax cut they offer is bigger, and
    there's a big tax increase on the lower income working poor--a big one.
        I think one of our values ought to be to grow the middle class and
    shrink the under class. I think it's not a very good idea, on the edge
    of the 21st century, to grow the under class and shrink the middle
    class. That is not my idea of what kind of country I want my child and
    her children to grow up in.
        So, can we resolve this? You bet we can. Here's the practical thing;
    this is what I want to ask you to do. There are four or five big issues
    where there's a lot of money involved. One is, we differ on how much we
    estimate we'll grow. I picked a conservative figure, 2\1/2\ percent,
    because that's what the economy has grown for the last 25 years. They
    said, ``Oh, no, we're not going to grow that fast.'' Well, why are we
    balancing the budget and giving a capital gains tax cut and doing all
    this stuff if we think we're going to get lower growth than we've had
    for the last 25 years?
        I don't want to argue it either way, but I mean, I think my growth
    estimate is not a rosy scenario, it is lower than what a lot of you pay
    for. The blue chip forecast is for a higher economic growth and,
    therefore, more revenues than I estimate.
        Then we are arguing about the rate of medical inflation. Then
    there's the question of whether we should reassign or redesign and
    recalculate the amount of inflation in the Consumer Price Index, which
    determines how much we increase Social Security and retirement. And
    we're talking about the size of the tax cut.
        We can work this out, folks. The only thing I won't do--I will not
    do this--I will not let balancing the budget serve as a cover for
    destroying the social compact, for cutting back on education, wrecking
    the environment, or undermining our obligations to help protect our
    children and treat our elderly people decently, because it is not
    necessary to balance the budget.
        Now, I don't want you to take my side or theirs on any of these big
    questions. Here's what I'm asking you to do. What I want is to get
    together with the Congress and get a budget out that is an honorable
    compromise that is better than theirs and better than mine. That's the
    best kind of get-together, where everybody puts their ideas together and
    you come out with something that's better than what anybody had. I'm not
    the source of all wisdom. But I know this: There's not a single one of
    you looking at the 21st century and the position of your company that
    would knowingly cut back on research and development or investment in
    technology or education and training. You wouldn't do it, not if you
    didn't have to, and we don't have to.
        So all I'm asking you to do is to say, ``Just get together; come up
    with something. If you do it in good faith, it will be better than the
    President's budget, and it will be better than the Congress' budget.
    Because when people get together, that's what they do.''
        I am prepared to make some decisions that I think are right over the
    long run, and I believe they are. There is no earthly reason why we
    shouldn't do this. America needs and deserves

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    a balanced budget. America needs and deserves a balanced budget
    consistent with our values that will give us the kind of world that we
    would be proud to have our children and our grandchildren and their
    children grow up in.
        This country is doing well, and it's going to do better. And a lot
    of it is because of what you are doing. And a lot of it is because of
    what mayors are doing all over the country. And a lot of it is because
    of what plain old American citizens are doing. We are moving in the
    right direction. And there is no country on Earth better positioned to
    do well in the 21st century than the United States of America. And
    ironically, all we have to do to get there, I believe, is to be faithful
    to our basic values and what we know is right.
        That's a commitment I make to you. And I'm asking you tonight to do
    what you can, because you have more influence with most of those folks
    than I do, to make sure that we get together and do this, do it right,
    do it for America, and do it for the future.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:34 p.m. at the Williamsburg Inn. In his
    remarks, he referred to Edgar Woolard, chairman and CEO, E.I. Dupont de
    Nemours & Co., Inc., and author and journalist Hugh Sidey.