[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.