[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
[September 26, 1995]
[Pages 1489-1492]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Teleconference Remarks to the United Mine Workers
September 26, 1995

    Thank you. Thank you, President Trumka, for that great introduction, 
and thank all of you for that wonderful welcome you just gave me. I got 
to know your president, Rich Trumka, well in 1992, when we were 
campaigning together in Pennsylvania, and I learned that we have a lot 
in common. He's a kid from a small town, born just after the end of 
World War II. He still likes fifties rock and roll. He's the first 
person in his family to go to college and to law school. And when he 
first ran for president, nobody but his mother thought he had a chance. 
But he kept plugging away in that modest, low-key way of his, and look 
where he is today. I'm also glad to be where he is today, and with him. 
I also want to acknowledge another friend from 1992, who helped show me 
around West Virginia, your vice president, Cecil Roberts, and your great 
secretary-treasurer, Jerry Jones, of Illinois. I'm sorry I couldn't be 
with you in person, but I am there in spirit.
    From your founding 105 years ago, the members of the United Mine 
Workers have always been the shock-troops of American labor. And I'm 
proud we're fighting today for the same things. If your brave founders 
could be with you today, they'd find another time of great change and 
great challenge for American workers. At the end of the 19th century, 
when your union got started, America was first entering the industrial 
age. Now we're the world's leading industrial power, and we're moving 
full-speed ahead into the global economy. Once again, we're challenged 
to make great decisions, decisions that will shape the lives of our 
children and our children's children.
    The industrial age brought us great opportunities, to be sure, but 
it also brought us child

[[Page 1490]]

labor, the sweatshops, the company towns and the company stores, and the 
working men and women in our factories who grew old before their time 
with injured bodies and broken spirits. That's why we built strong 
unions in our country and we built a caring Government to help Americans 
make the most of their own lives and to protect them from abuses from 
which they could not protect themselves. The unions build the middle 
class, and the middle class built America on the American dream.
    Now we find ourselves at another moment of great change. Even as we 
still depend upon the industrial might of coal miners and other workers, 
all of you know we're moving into an age characterized by information 
and technology and this new global economy that links more of us 
together economically but also presents extraordinary new pressures on 
ordinary working people everywhere.
    Our challenge is to recognize and embrace new ideas to preserve our 
vision for the future, a vision of high opportunity where the middle 
class is growing and the under class is shrinking, people have the 
opportunities to live up to their own God-given abilities, and families 
and communities have the ability to solve their own problems. We've got 
to hold on to that vision by holding on to the values which have always 
made this country great: freedom and responsibility, work and family, 
opportunity, and the idea that we are, as my friend Governor Chiles of 
Florida said the other day, we are a community, not a crowd.
    Now, a crowd is a collection of people who occupy the same space, 
just elbowing one another until the strongest and most powerful win, 
without regard of what happens to the others. A community is a group of 
people who occupy the same space, who believe that they're going up or 
down together, and that they have responsibilities to one another. The 
United Mine Workers has helped to keep America a community, and I thank 
you for that.
    You know, that's what this budget debate is really all about in 
Washington, whether the America of the 21st century will be a community, 
as we want it to be, or a crowd, as so many in the Republican majority 
in Congress want it to be. We need to stop looking for ways to be 
divided and start looking for ways to reach common ground and higher 
ground. We've got to be forward-thinking enough to stand up for the 
future, even if it's not popular in the present. But we've got to be 
sensible enough to hold on to those core values which have made this 
country what it is.
    The debate about the balanced budget is the biggest case in point. 
Let me be clear, I strongly favor balancing the budget to lift the 
burden of debt off our children and to strengthen our economy. But I 
think we have to do it in a way that is consistent with those basic 
values. We've got to give people a chance to make the most of their own 
lives. We've got to strengthen our families; we've got to protect our 
children; we must honor our parents. We have to do things that will grow 
the middle class and shrink the under class, not increase the insecurity 
of working families.
    These are the values we ought to be making decisions on about the 
budget. In my judgment, the congressional budget that the Republican 
majority has offered violates those values. We, the American people, 
need to be a part of this. We need to ask them basic questions. When we 
look at their budget, do we really want to support a budget that will 
deny 300,000 elderly people the right to be in the nursing homes they 
have today? Do we really want to eliminate all those quality standards 
for nursing homes? Can't anybody remember what it was like to go in 
those places when there were no quality standards? Do we really want to 
tax 17 million working families, increasing taxes on them to the point 
that many of them will be put back into poverty, even though they're 
working, and take that money and give a tax break to upper income people 
who don't need it and most of whom haven't asked for it?
    Do we really want to say to a woman whose husband has to go to a 
nursing home that ``in order for your husband to qualify for any 
Government assistance, you have to sell your car, your house; you have 
to spend all your life savings; you have to be totally impoverished''? 
Do we really want to make it harder for poor young children to get off 
to a good start in school? Do we want to make it harder for our schools 
to have smaller classes and computers, even in the poor areas? Do we 
want to make it more costly for young people to get college loans?
    Do we want to make fewer and fewer scholarships available so that 
more and more young people won't go to college and won't get good jobs 
with growing incomes? And do we want to let corporations loot their 
pension funds and compromise the retirement of their workers' fu-


[[Page 1491]]

ture? How can we forget--it was just a couple of years ago--when we had 
all these pension funds going broke? Just last December, I signed a bill 
that we passed through the last Congress to save the pensions of 8\1/2\ 
million American workers and stabilize the pensions of 40 million more. 
Now, do we want to go along with the congressional budget plan to let 
corporations go and make that same mistake all over again and to loot 
their pension funds legally?
    Now, this budget does all those things. Those are the choices. If 
you want their budget in 7 years, with their tax cut and their 
assumptions and their plan, those are the choices in that budget. But 
there is another way. I have offered Congress a plan that balances the 
budget without destroying education, without undermining our commitment 
to the environment, and without violating our commitments to working 
families, the elderly, and our children.
    The budget debate forces us to answer a simple question: Do we want 
a Government that upholds our values as a community and stands on the 
side of working people, struggling to build better lives for themselves? 
I think the answer is yes. And that is exactly what I have been working 
to do.
    Two and a half years ago, you sent me to Washington to generate 
jobs, increase income, shrink the under class, grow the middle class, 
give America a better, stronger future. Since I started my job, our 
economy has created more than 7 million new jobs, 2\1/2\ million new 
homeowners, 2 million new small businesses. Unemployment is down 20 
percent. We're also cutting the deficit. You know, the deficit was $290 
billion when we started. It's down to $160 billion now. That's a 40 
percent cut, a cut for 3 years in a row, the best performance since 
Harry Truman was President.
    But you know better than anyone that we have a lot more to do to 
make sure America keeps working for and not against working families. 
That's why I fought for the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act. 
That's why we gave a tax cut to 14 million working families with incomes 
under $28,000. That's why I support an increase in the minimum wage. 
That's why I proposed a new ``GI bill'' for America's workers, to give 
people a check or a voucher when they're unemployed or underemployed, so 
they can take the money and take it to a local community college or any 
other training program for up to 2 years to get the kind of training 
they decide they need.
    When people lose their jobs in this country today, too often the 
rest of our people walk away from them. And that's wrong. Our 
administration is pro-family, pro-worker, and pro-union. Right after I 
took office, I got rid of my predecessor's antiworker, antiunion 
Executive orders that weakened unions from public service to private 
industry.
    With an Executive order this spring, our administration said in no 
uncertain terms that we won't allow companies that do business with the 
Government to permanently replace striking workers. We want to make sure 
that if you're forced to exercise your right to strike, you won't be 
fired for it. Make no mistake about it, we believe collective bargaining 
is a right and firing striking workers is wrong.
    I've often spoken about how America has to keep faith with the 
people who work hard and play by the rules. That means we must honor our 
obligations to those who risk their lives to go beneath the earth and 
mine our coal. Your workplace is unique. It can change in an instant 
from one of safety to one of danger. That's why we need to keep the Mine 
Safety and Health Administration and maintain it as a separate agency.
    Under the outstanding leadership of Secretary Reich and Davitt 
McAteer, MSHA is enforcing the law, protecting workers, and saving 
lives. You know better than anyone that in the 25 years since Congress 
passed the Mine Safety Act, the deaths in the coal mines have decreased 
by 77 percent. Now there are those in Congress who want to destroy MSHA, 
to limit inspections in unsafe mines and leave miners out in the cold 
who dare to blow the whistle and stand up for safety.
    Well, there are no coal mines in Washington, DC, and here, sometimes 
the voice of big money can shout down the voice of the people. That's 
why it is so important when United Mine Workers miners and Rich Trumka 
come to the Capital, as they did, to tell why saving MSHA is literally a 
matter of life and death. And that's why I will fight and fight against 
any bill to cut or gut MSHA.
    Keeping faith with people who have worked hard all their lives also 
means protecting coal miner retirees' health care, as guaranteed in the 
Rockefeller act, also known as the coal act. The coal act is our 
country's solemn covenant with

[[Page 1492]]

more than 100,000 retired miners and their families to protect their 
health benefits and their peace of mind. It is not a matter of 
partisanship. This act was signed into law by President Bush and is 
supported to this day by the major coal companies.
    Yesterday, you heard the author of that act, Senator Jay 
Rockefeller, explain how it is threatened and how it must be maintained. 
Today, let me tell you, we're going to fight to preserve your health 
benefits as guaranteed in the coal act.
    Let me close by saying that I understand what's at stake as we fight 
to protect the health and safety of coal miners. When I was a young 
lawyer in Arkansas, just out of law school, back in the early 1970's, I 
handled several black lung cases for retired coal miners who could 
breathe only with great difficulty after a lifetime in the mines.
    Some of the folks from MSHA found a letter that was found on the 
body of a coal miner who died in a mine explosion in Tennessee. Although 
a barricade held out the bad air for over 7 hours, the trapped miners 
eventually succumbed to the suffocating gas. Here is what the miner, 
Jacob Vowell, wrote to his wife, Ellen:
    ``Ellen, darling, goodbye for us both. We're all praying for air to 
support us, but it's getting bad without any air.
    ``Ellen, I want you to live right and come to heaven. Raise the 
children as best you can. Oh, how I wish to be with you. It's 25 minutes 
after 2. There are a few of us alive yet. Oh, God, for one more breath. 
Ellen, remember me for as long as you live.
    ``Goodbye, darling.''
    That letter was written 93 years ago. Today, thanks to the United 
Mine Workers, a better America, and the grace of God, our miners are 
working in greater safety and living with greater dignity.
    The future of our Nation depends upon rewarding the efforts of 
people like you with safety, prosperity, and dignity. You and your 
families and the millions and millions of working families like you, you 
are heart and soul of the American dream. We have to keep working 
together not just to preserve what's been won but to continue to fight 
for better jobs, better wages, and more justice.
    The 21st century can be America's greatest time. Our children and 
our grandchildren can enjoy more freedom, more opportunity if we do what 
is right. But we can't let the people in Washington who are trying to do 
it, turn back the clock. We have to keep America moving forward, strong, 
proud, and united, in the words of your own banner. Let's stay that way 
and march into the 21st century victorious for the values of ordinary 
Americans.
    God bless you, and thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke by satellite at 2:15 p.m. from Room 459 in the 
Old Executive Office Building to the United Mine Workers convention in 
Miami, FL.