    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [April 27, 1996]
    [Pages 644-650]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Association of Realtors
    April 27, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Art and Michael,
    Robert, Russ, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for the warm welcome.
        Audience member. Go, Bill! [Laughter]
        Audience member. Four more years! [Laughter]
        The President. Let me say that I've been trying to convince the
    Congress it's too early to start all that. So you've got to help me set
    a good example. [Laughter]
        I am delighted to be here and delighted to be with you. I'm
    delighted to be here once again to express my support for your work
    every day, and my thanks for the support you have given to me in our
    common efforts to rebuild this economy and to increase homeownership.
        Spring is the traditional start of the home-buying season, and it's
    a time of hope and, at least for us here in Washington, it came not a
    day too soon. We suffered through a tough winter, and we thought the
    spring would never come. But I was glad to see that in March, that home
    resale activity was up in every region of the country, and there was a
    16 percent jump in single-family home sales last month, compared to
    March of '95. I hope that is a harbinger of a good spring, a good
    summer, and a good year for you and for the United States.
        Art said something--I didn't even have a note on this, I wasn't
    going to talk about it because I hear everybody is not interested in
    foreign policy, but I want to tell you something. You made a remark
    about our common understanding of the importance of homeownership in
    building our democracy. As I'm sure most of you know, I just came back
    from a trip to Korea, Japan, and Russia, and I had an astonishing
    experience in Russia, in addition to being there at a nuclear summit
    where we made some real strides forward in our unfinished work of
    removing any danger of nuclear explosions from the face of our
    children's future. I had an opportunity to meet with 12 leaders from
    very different political factions in Russia, as they are getting ready
    to have another election there for President. And it was fascinating.
    First of all,

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    they had a virtual brawl of an argument right there in front of me,
    which I liked. They behaved just like our politicians do. [Laughter]
    Made me think they were kind of healthy. [Laughter]
        But it was very interesting to see that one of the things that is
    happening to change that country, to make more people more devoted to
    democracy and freedom, is the ownership of property. And it is very
    interesting to see that in the areas where there is more ownership of
    property, where people, for example, own more of their own businesses,
    they're more committed to democracy and to economic reform and to the
    promise of free enterprise, even with all of its troubles as they start.
    And so now they're trying to get more homeowners, more property
    ownership out in the rural areas of the country.
        And I say that just to say a lot of times we just take it for
    granted that once you start a democracy, it's just such a wonderful
    thing we just keep on with it. And we realize that--I mean, we forget
    that this is the oldest continuous democracy in human history, and it's
    not all that easy to start one and it's not all that easy to save one.
    And a lot of times people want to lay down the burden of governing
    themselves and making all these hard decisions and living under the rule
    of law and enduring defeat as well as victory in elections and in other
    big decisions.
        And I was there still watching this very great country, with its
    rich and profound history, essentially still in the process of defining
    what it wishes to be in the 21st century. And it struck me so clearly
    there that giving people a piece of the country for themselves, whether
    it was in the private ownership of a building, private ownership of a
    farm, private ownership of a home, private ownership of a business, that
    is the key to making everybody feel that they can really win, even if
    their side doesn't win every election or if every issue doesn't go their
    way. So that liberty, free speech, and free elections and personal
    liberties should include--indeed, I would argue must include--the
    recognition of private ownership of property in order to make sure that
    democracies can last. I wish them well, and I know that you do, but I
    thought you'd be interested in that.
        We take this country and everything good about it for granted, and
    we take our system for granted. And sometimes we don't even show up on
    election day and we say--nearly every citizen does say--from time to
    time says foolish things like, well, it doesn't really matter what
    happens, and all that. We just think it will go on. But one reason it
    probably will go on is that we all have a piece of America. And even
    people who don't own property still have a piece of America because they
    know they can, they know that we all can participate in this.
        And so when you see the next couple of months unfold in Russia and
    you watch that and you see what happens to their democracy, you ought to
    just think about what they have in common with us. And as they move to
    have more control in their--individuals and families and communities--
    over their future, a lot of it will be because they have a personal,
    private stake in the public future of a free country.
        Four years ago when I sought this job I am now privileged to hold,
    things weren't so good for you or for the rest of the country. Our
    economy was down; unemployment was high; the deficit was exploding; the
    debt had quadrupled in just 12 years. I wanted to change the course of
    this country, and I knew we had to do it, first of all, by getting
    economic growth back by driving interest rates down. And that meant that
    we had to do something about the deficit. But to me it was part of a
    vision that I have about what I want our country to look like in the
    21st century and how I want America to be perceived by all of its
    citizens.
        I want this country to be a place where everybody who is willing to
    work hard and obey the law has a chance to live out their dreams without
    regard to their race or their region or their station they were born to
    in life. I want this country to be a place that is coming together, not
    being driven apart, even though we're rapidly becoming the most diverse
    democracy in the world. Los Angeles County alone has 150 different
    racial and ethnic and religious groups within one county. But if we can
    come together and meet our challenges based on shared values, instead of
    being driven apart, that's a guarantee of America's strength.
        And I want us to continue to lead the world as the greatest force
    for freedom and peace and security and prosperity, because whether we
    like it or not, we're living in a global economy and we can't run away
    from it. So we'd better try to shape it; we'd better try to have more
    democracies and more people who want to work with us and more people who
    are com-

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    mitted to finding nonviolent solutions to their own problems, as well as
    to the problems that affect us all.
        We've seen it lately in the great debate we've had the world over on
    terrorism. And we know now that in this great open world we're living
    in, with all of its opportunities, the organized forces of evil can
    cross national boundaries. You can have a terrorist that's homegrown, or
    you can have a terrorist that is tied to the forces beyond your borders,
    as we did at the World Trade Center. And every country is facing these
    kinds of challenges.
        So I want all those things for our country. But I know it all begins
    by giving individuals and families the power to make the most of their
    own lives. And we could never have done that unless we started by
    reversing the disastrous fiscal condition of this country by bringing
    that deficit down and getting interest rates down and promoting economic
    growth, while continuing to invest in the things that we all know we
    have to invest in, like education and infrastructure and environmental
    protection and the integrity of our medical programs, so that the
    country can grow together.
        Now, that's what I tried to put together in that 1993 economic plan.
    And this organization supported that, and I will be eternally grateful.
    But it worked. I predicted that if we implemented it we would cut the
    deficit in half and generate 8 million new jobs. Well, last month the
    Congressional Budget Office said that by the end of this year the
    deficit will be less than half of what it was 4 years ago, and we
    already have 8\1/2\ million new jobs. That's something you can be proud
    of.
        This country is enjoying the lowest combined rates of unemployment
    and inflation in what used to be called the ``misery index'' in 27
    years. For 3 years in a row we've had a record number of new businesses
    started and--I like this statistic--a record number of new self-made
    millionaires, not people who were inheriting their wealth but people who
    made it the old-fashioned way in America. Our telecommunications and
    auto industries are once again leading the world. We've halted finally--
    and this may, over the long run, be the most important thing of all--we
    have finally halted a 10-year-long slide in average hourly earnings. And
    most important to you, of course, as has already been said,
    homeownership is at a 15-year high.
        The Government has been reduced in size and it has been reformed so
    that it is beginning to work better and cost less. I'll just give you
    one example. The Small Business Administration has cut its budget by
    over 25 percent and doubled its loan volume. And I'm very proud of that.
    It's the smallest your Federal Government--as you come here to
    Washington this month, it's the smallest it has been since 1965.
    [Applause] Thank you.
        By the end of this year it will be the smallest it has been since
    1963. And yet, we are still working to try to do better. There's been a
    quiet revolution in the relationship of the National Government not only
    to the private sector, but to State and local governments. There's been
    a lot of debate in Washington, for example, about what kind of welfare
    reform legislation we ought to sign. But I think there's a broad
    consensus in America that the welfare system ought to empower people to
    take responsibility for their own lives, not just support people forever
    who ought to be supporting themselves.
        We had some differences here about how that ought to be done. I have
    a very strong conviction that most people--based on my 12 years as a
    Governor, I have a very strong conviction that most people on welfare
    are dying to get off of it if they can be given the ways to work and
    support themselves and they don't have to hurt their kids. So I'm for a
    system that is very, very tough on work, very tough on child support
    enforcement, but is good to the kids, has child care and other support
    for the children. It ought to be pro-work and pro-family. After all,
    most of you had to work and raise your families. Most Americans are
    working and raising children. So what we want is an America where
    everybody can succeed at home and at work. And if we have to choose one
    or the other, we get in a lot of hot water because none of us have any
    more important job than raising our own children well. So that's what
    we're striving for.
        But anyway, you might be interested to know while all this
    hullabaloo about the legislation has been going on, we have made over 50
    agreements with 37 States to get them out from under destructive Federal
    rules and regulations and let them require people who can work to work.
    Seventy-three percent of the people on welfare in this country are under
    welfare reform today, and that's a good thing.

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        But I want to talk to you today about the paradoxes of this good
    news, because you have all seen the paradoxes. You know, for example--I
    mean, if I had told you this 3 years ago, let me ask you if you would
    have found it hard to believe--if I had said to you, look, you support
    my economic plan and in 3 years and 4 months we'll have 8\1/2\ million
    new jobs, we'll cut the deficit by more than half, we'll have the lowest
    combined rates of unemployment and inflation in 27 years, highest
    homeownership in 15 years; but wages for the bottom half of the work
    force would be more or less stagnant, about what they were 15 years ago,
    and there will be places in our inner cities and rural areas that won't
    have any new investment, and there will be a lot of people that look
    like me, 50-year-old white guys, that will be being downsized at big
    companies just when they're trying to send their kids to college, and
    they won't know what to do and how to get another job paying anything
    like what they were making, and there will be a lot of women and people
    of color going through the same thing, but there are a lot of these big
    companies--and they'll be out of work for a while--and we'll cut the
    inflation rate in health care dramatically by having more competition,
    but we'll still have a lot of people who won't be able to get health
    insurance because they work for small businesses and it's too expensive,
    or because they can't take it from job to job with them--you'd say,
    well, that doesn't make sense, it doesn't compute.
        The reason it's happening is that we're going through the period of
    most profound economic change we've been in 100 years, since we've moved
    from farm to factory and from the country to the city, as a general
    rule. Now, we're moving from a cold war set of regional economies in the
    world to a global economy, and every kind of work is more dominated by
    information and technology, including yours, than it was 5 or 10 years
    ago. If you were to go home with me in Arkansas at planting time or
    harvest time you'd see people driving around in farm equipment with
    computers, maybe with software in it that they designed themselves.
        So with all these changes, what has happened? A lot of work that
    used to be done by a lot of people can now be done by a few people. And
    all organizations need fewer people passing orders down and information
    back up. And there's an enormous mobility in technology and money and
    information and management. And that's what's creating all these
    incredible opportunities for people that I just reeled off. But if you
    happen to be on the wrong side of it on a given day, it can also
    dislocate your life.
        And it happened 100 years ago. When we became an industrial country,
    there were people who came in from the country and went to cities and
    got jobs in factories and overnight became middle-class citizens--for
    the first time in their lives could afford to have their own home and
    send their kids to good schools and have a decent retirement, maybe even
    take a vacation for the first time. But there were also tens of
    thousands of people living in tenement houses in these cities, virtually
    without the means to support themselves, because when you have this kind
    of upheaval you have some bad along with the good.
        And what we have to do is to find a way to grow this economy fast
    enough to keep America generating these new jobs, but also give people
    the chance to raise their families in dignity, to get incomes up, to be
    able to afford to buy their own home, to be able to have access to
    education for a lifetime if they have to change jobs and access to
    health care they can carry around with them from job to job and access
    to retirement savings that they can carry around with them from job to
    job, so that we can compose family life and community life and still
    keep the American job machine growing.
        That is the challenge of the moment, and you will play a big role in
    that. I think you understand that. That is what I hope so much that in
    this election year we can have an honest debate about. We don't need
    another stale debate about yesterday's issues, or this one's an alien
    and the other one ought to be disqualified and all that kind of stuff.
    We ought to actually have an honest discussion about which path to the
    future we're going to take, because no great country has solved this
    problem. Indeed, no other country has done anything nearly as well as
    the United States has in generating new jobs. But we have to say, even
    with all these jobs, we need to have a really permanently growing
    economy that is pro-family and pro-community and that gives everybody a
    chance to live up to their dreams. That is the challenge we all face as
    Americans today.
        Now, I believe that homeownership is a big part of that. You know
    that and I do, too. So we ought to balance the budget, but I don't

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    think that we should do it in a way that undermines the ability of
    people to own their own home. If we can simplify the Tax Code, I'm all
    for it. But I don't think we ought to adopt a flat tax that will raise
    taxes on everybody making less than $100,000 a year and put
    homeownership out of the reach of all the people in those categories.
        Your president has already mentioned that the last time I spoke to
    you in Anaheim in 1994, I asked you to work with Secretary Cisneros to
    develop a national homeownership strategy that will take us up to two-
    thirds of the American people in their own homes, 8 million new
    homeowners by the end of the century. And we are well on our way to
    getting there because of the 56 major housing and finance groups that
    have joined us. I want to thank you for that.
        I also want to thank you for your support of FHA, and I want to ask
    you to continue to support it. Again, there's always an argument for
    doing anything that will save money to help us to balance the budget.
    But we don't want to do anything that will undermine our ability to grow
    the economy. And if you want hard working people on modest incomes to
    have a chance to be pro-work and pro-family, lower income people have
    got to have access to buy modestly priced homes. That's why we shouldn't
    do anything to wreck FHA. And I hope you'll stay with us on this.
        Last June, Secretary Cisneros and I were joined by representatives
    of this partnership, including people from your organization, at the
    White House. We announced 100 specific actions that we can take to make
    homeownership more affordable, to target underserved populations, to
    educate those who haven't considered becoming homeowners. Now, we've now
    got this national homeownership rate, at the end of the first quarter of
    1996, up to 65.1 percent. That's the highest rate since 1981 and the
    sharpest increase, as you heard earlier, in 30 years. We can make it. We
    can get up to two-thirds of the American people in their own homes by
    the end of this decade.
        Beginning next week, HUD and FHA will launch the next phase of this
    effort, a grassroots outreach and education campaign designed to help
    millions of new Americans become homeowners. The cornerstone is a new
    toll-free number to provide instant information on the wide variety of
    home-buying help that HUD offers. We're going to launch a series of
    home-buying seminars in schools in over 20 markets across the country,
    to bring together real estate professionals, lenders, governmental and
    nonprofit organizations to help potential first-time buyers gain an
    understanding of the process. Outreach and PSA's will show how FHA can
    open the door to homeownership.
        I don't need to tell you about how important that is. And again, I
    want to thank you for helping. But let me say that the most important
    thing we can do to help you is to continue to grow this economy. And the
    most important thing that we can do to continue to grow the economy is
    to keep the interest rates down by finishing the unfinished business of
    balancing the Federal budget in a way that is consistent with our values
    and our long-term economic interests.
        Now, yesterday I signed a bipartisan budget that will cover the
    Government's operations for the rest of this year. We fought about it
    for 6 months. But I would have gladly signed the budget I signed
    yesterday on the first day of the new budget year. It was a year of
    intense and heated debate, but finally the Republicans and the Democrats
    in the Congress and the White House came together and we crafted an
    agreement that is good for the American people.
        First, the budget I signed for this year keeps the deficit on a
    downward path. We're now cutting the deficit for the 4th year in a row
    for the first time since Harry Truman was the President of the United
    States. The budget cuts billions of dollars in spending and eliminates
    outright over 200 Government programs. I bet you don't miss a one of
    them. [Laughter] You know, while I was a Governor, every 2 years I'd
    eliminate a government agency just to see if anybody complained. And I
    never got the first letter. [Laughter]
        But let me say that the budget we adopted also upholds our values
    and keeps my pledge that this budget honors our commitments to our
    elderly, to our children, and to our future. It invests enough to keep
    environmental protection going in a responsible way. It invests enough
    to keep our commitments in education and to keep opening the doors of
    college education wider, to keep striving for higher standards in
    education, to keep more kids coming into these Head Start programs. It
    does the right thing there. It protects the integrity of the Medicare
    and Medicaid programs while understanding

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    that we have to do things to lower the inflation rate in them. That's
    what it did for this year.
        Now, this is just a one-year budget. When you hear us talk about the
    balanced budget up here, that's a multiyear budget plan. And now it's
    time to finish that job. Earlier this year I proposed a plan to balance
    the budget, and Congress' own economists have now certified that it will
    do so in 7 years. The Republicans in Congress have their own balanced
    budget plan that is now different from the one that I vetoed several
    months ago. If you laid my plan and their plan side by side, you would
    find enough cuts in common to both plans to balance the budget and still
    provide a modest tax cut, stuff we have agreed on already in common
    spending reductions. The ingredients, therefore, for a balanced budget
    are clearly at hand.
        Are there other things we disagree on? You bet there are. We
    disagree about the details of how Medicare should be changed. We
    disagree about certain specific things in the area of environmental
    policy. We have big disagreements about whether we should abandon our
    commitment to put 100,000 police on the street--I don't think we
    should--or whether we should cut back on a college loan program that's
    making the loans more affordable to our kids. I don't think we should do
    that.
        But if you're just talking about balancing the budget, there is more
    than enough savings in common to both these plans to do that and provide
    a modest tax cut right now. All we need to do is to sit down and make
    the agreement. And I made it clear that I want to meet with the leaders
    of Congress as soon as possible. I'm willing to meet with a big group of
    lawmakers or a little group of lawmakers, with the leaders or the
    followers or the caucuses or the bipartisan groups or any group of them.
    When Senator Dole suggested last week, perhaps in jest, that he thought
    the two Presidential candidates ought to sit down and work it out, I
    accepted within 10 minutes of hearing the offer. I'll do it any way. We
    can cut it flat around. There's not that much difference, anyway. But
    the fact is that we ought to do it. We should not have a work stoppage
    here in April because there's an election in November. We ought to stay
    at the job and get the job done.
        Again I say, while you're here I hope you will urge us--you don't
    have to take sides in all the details. You don't have to say, the
    President is right. But I hope your voice will be loud and clear that
    the time is now, not next year, now, to pass a genuine, compassionate,
    but tough bipartisan balanced budget plan to keep these interest rates
    coming down and this economy growing. You will benefit from it, but so
    will all the rest of America.
        Let me say this: In spite of all the fights that we have up here,
    this budget agreement that I signed was not the only good thing that's
    happened in the last year and 4 months coming out of the Congress. But
    they all have something in common. Just a few days ago, I signed an
    antiterrorism bill that will dramatically increase the capacity of your
    Government to fight terrorism. A few weeks ago, I signed a
    telecommunications bill which will create hundreds of thousands of new
    high-wage jobs in the telecommunications industry and keep America
    leading in many sectors of that important part of our economy. Just a
    few days ago, the United States Senate passed 100 to zero the Kassebaum-
    Kennedy health care reform bill which simply says you ought to be able
    to keep your health insurance if you move from job to job and you ought
    to be able to buy it, even if someone in your family has been sick.
    That's what it says.
        Now, all those things, those good things that have happened that I
    laud the congressional leadership of the other party for supporting,
    have just one thing in common. Every one of them has one thing in
    common. They were passed with bipartisan support, and they were
    negotiated in good faith between the President and the Congress. In
    other words, we put the public interest over short-term political
    advantage. And because the right thing was done, everybody was better
    off. Now, that is what we ought to do on this budget.
        I remember once in the heat of the cold war, President Kennedy said
    in his Inaugural Address, ``Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let
    us never fear to negotiate.'' That is my message to the Congress. Let's
    get to work and do this job for the American people.
        Beyond the budget, I want you to know--a lot of you clapped when I
    talked about the Kassebaum-Kennedy health care bill. The Senate version
    passed 100 to nothing. Why? Because it's a clean, simple bill designed
    to achieve those two objectives. The House version of the bill was far
    more controversial. Why? Because there were certain specific interests
    that wanted

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    other things in the bill. They honestly believe it would be good for
    America. A lot of the rest of us don't think it would be good; we think
    it would do more harm than good.
        My question to you is, since you all clapped for the two things and
    they passed 100 to nothing, I urge you again, say to the Congress: Pass
    that bill clean; don't clutter it up with things we disagree about.
    These are big things. This will help millions and millions of people.
    Pass a clean, good bill that has bipartisan support that will help
    everybody in America. It will be good for America. There's no politics
    in it if we all do it together. That's the right thing for the country
    in health care and in the budget. And I ask for your support for that as
    well.
        Let me say in closing that I ask you again to ask yourselves, what
    do you want America to look like in the 21st century? What are you
    working for? What do you want your children and grandchildren to feel
    like when they get up every morning? What kind of world do you want them
    to live in?
        If you want them to be able to live out their dreams if they're
    willing to work hard for it; if you want them to live in a country
    that's still the strongest force in the world for peace and freedom and
    security; if you want them to live in a country where we meet our
    challenges together, no matter how diverse we are, because we share the
    same values, then we have to keep in mind two things. First of all, we
    have to give every American the capacity to make good choices and be
    rewarded for work; everybody's got to have the ability to do it. There's
    a lot of talk about empowerment in Washington. It's a buzzword today. I
    love that word, but it means more than choice. It means the ability to
    seize the choice you want to make. And the second thing we've got to do
    is to do it together.
        We are moving into a new age. The old categories in which we divided
    ourselves do not give us easy answers to these new challenges. As I said
    before, there's not a country in the world that's solved the problem of
    economic growth--that gives everybody a chance to participate in it,
    that deals with the downsizing, the areas that don't get investment, the
    stagnation of wages among people that don't have a lot of education.
    We're trying to come to grips with that.
        But we cannot do it in the old, highly intensely partisan way. That
    is doomed to failure because we are moving into a new era. We have to
    break new ground. We have to be willing to give up on some of the things
    that we used to hold onto, and grab onto each other and work together
    and solve these problems. And we have to be animated by the vision we
    have of what we want America to look like. Homeownership has to be a
    part of it. A growing economy has to be a part of it. A more unified
    sense of our ability to work together through our diversity has to be a
    part of it. But it begins by saying we have to put the public interest
    ahead of short-term politics. I ask for your support as Americans for
    that goal.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:45 p.m. in the ballroom at the Sheraton
    Washington Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Art Godi, president,
    Michael Graeper, public policy forum chair, Robert Galiano, public
    policy forum vice chair, and Russ Booth, 1996 president-elect, National
    Association of Realtors.