    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [January 12, 1996]
    [Pages 52-55]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Luncheon in Nashville
    January 12, 1996

        Thank you so much, Mr. Vice President, Governor McWherter, Senator
    and Mrs. Gore, and Senator and Mrs. Sasser--they'll do a great job for
    our country in China, I know. Senator and Mrs. Mathews, and to
    Congressman Gordon, Congressman Clement, and Congressman Tanner, and
    former Congressman Jim Cooper is here with us. I'm glad to see all of
    you here. To the mayors who are here, my good friend Wayne Glenn, and to
    other people who are here from all over Tennessee and from all walks of
    life. And Marilyn Lloyd, I think, is here somewhere--where is she?--
    former Congresswoman.
        And let me say to all of you that I sure liked that speech Al Gore
    gave. I want all of you from Tennessee to know that when the record of
    this administration has been written, the consequences of our actions
    may be only apparent to the American people in their positive aspects
    years from now. But one thing is already clear. In the entire history of
    our Republic, the most effective, the most important Vice President in
    American history is Al Gore.
        He has overseen our efforts to reform our environmental laws so that
    we could be better at growing the economy and preserving the environment
    at the same time. He is developing a plan that will have our country
    work in partnership with the private sector to hook up every student in
    America to the Internet with good software, good computers, good
    training, just in the next few years.
        He has managed a permanent relationship with the Prime Minister of
    Russia which has reinforced the positive direction in which we are going
    and which has helped us to lift the cloud of nuclear threat from the
    American people since we've been here. For the first time since the dawn
    of the nuclear age, there is not a single, solitary nuclear missile
    pointed at an American child, and I am proud of that.
        While our friends on the other side talked about not liking big
    Government, wanting to give more power to States and localities in the
    private sector, in a very quiet and straightforward and effective way
    the Vice President has helped us to reduce the size of the Federal
    Government by over 200,000.
        And when you hear your Republican friends back in your neighborhood
    saying that the Democrats are the party of big Government, ask them,
    ``Well, if that's so, why is the Government now the smallest it's been
    since 1965? If that's so, why is the Government, as a percentage of the
    civilian work force, the smallest it's been since 1933? If that's so,
    why are they dismantling 16,000 pages of unnecessary Government
    regulations put in by Republican executives who were there before we
    were? If all that is so, how did this happen?''
        It happened because it's not so, because a big part of what we came
    to do was to give you a smaller, more effective Government. But we did
    not go to Washington to walk away from the American people and their
    future, and we have no intention of doing that.
        Let me say, I know that all the publicity in Washington that's
    coming down here to you is all this debate over the budget. And it's
    being kind of, is it a horserace and who's giving up what and are they
    going to get a deal or not, and all that sort of thing. I understand
    that. I just want to take a couple of minutes to try to put that into a
    larger picture.
        You know, when I leave you I'm going to Bosnia. I will see soldiers
    there from all over America, including soldiers from Tennessee. I will
    go to Hungary to see the basing that we're doing there in Hungary. And
    then I will stop in Zagreb, Yugoslavia--Croatia, in the former
    Yugoslavia, where we have a military hospital, some other actions, and I
    will see the President

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    of that country to try to make sure that we continue to work to maintain
    the peace.
        And a lot of people wonder, ``Well, why did the United States send
    soldiers there? I mean, the cold war is over. They're doing well with
    Russia. Why did they do that?'' Well, it's part of my view, at least, of
    where we ought to go as a country. I'd like it if we could just lay down
    all our arms and lay down all our responsibilities. But if you think
    about what the world is going to look like in the years ahead for all
    these children that are here, it really matters if America is the
    strongest force for peace and freedom.
        World War I started in Bosnia. So many troubles are just right there
    around it. If this war was not contained, it could spread and cause many
    of our people to go and lose their lives down the road. Meanwhile,
    hundreds of innocent people, tens of thousands of innocent people, have
    been slaughtered, over a million turned into refugees from their own
    country.
        So we went there to help other countries make the peace. We didn't
    have to go alone, we're only a third of the total force, but it would
    not have happened if it hadn't been for the United States. What I want
    you to think about is, by our being involved with other people, we can
    make a difference in the world for our own people.
        Let me give you another example. We want to fight terrorism. We've
    had terrorism right here in the United States, whether it was homegrown
    terrorism or people coming from other countries to our shores. Because
    we're involved with other countries, we've been able to get some of
    those terrorists arrested in other countries and brought back here to
    stand trial for killing innocent Americans, because we worked with them.
        We know that every day Americans die because of the scourge of
    drugs. Because we work with other countries, just this last year we were
    instrumental with our military and our civilian law enforcement in
    seeing seven members of the infamous Cali drug cartel in Colombia
    arrested, seven--it was unheard of--because we worked with other
    countries.
        Because we worked with other countries to have not only more free
    trade but more fair trade, the exports of American products have
    increased by one-third in the last 3 years to an all-time high. Because
    we work with other countries, people in Nashville and in Tennessee have
    jobs and a better future. And we know if we're going to have a free
    trading system, it has to also be a fair trading system.
        And that's how you need to see this fight over the budget and all
    the accomplishments the Vice President talked about. Our theory is that
    America is a team, that we're going forward together, we're going up or
    down together. If you look at the whole history of our country, you go
    back and read how we got started: We believed in liberty; we believed in
    progress; and we struggled to find common ground, to get together in
    spite of our differences. Those three things are constant in every
    important period in our history. And what we know is unless we get
    together and work together, our liberties can be threatened. And we
    know, unless we get together and work together, we can't make progress.
        I just came from the Peterbilt truck factory here. I'm sure it's a
    source of pride to everyone in Tennessee. They've got backlog orders for
    7 or 8 months. They've added 600 people to the payroll since we came
    into office. I'm proud of that. I'm proud for them. But we didn't do
    anything directly for them. Our job is to give them a framework within
    which they can do well. Why are they doing well? Because they work
    together.
        Now, that's what this budget fight is all about. Should we have a
    country in which our hatred of Government says the market should control
    everything, everybody for themselves, winner take all? Or should we have
    a country that says we love the market system, we love the free
    enterprise system, but we know that winners work together, and we want a
    country where everybody has a chance to win? That's what this is about.
        The congressional leaders now agree that I have submitted to them a
    budget which would be balanced in 7 years, by their scorekeeping. They
    sent me a little letter which I hold up all the time. They agree. The
    issue is not, will we balance the budget; the issue is, how should we do
    it?
        Look, folks, I hate this deficit. Our country never had a permanent
    deficit until the 12 years before I became President. We never had that,
    never. It was in those 12 years when the debt was quadrupled. And our
    friends on the Republican side say, ``Well, the Democrats controlled the
    Congress.'' That's not true. In the first 6 years when most of the
    damage was done, they

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    controlled the Senate and the White House, and they had effective
    control of the House of Representatives. And they put us in the hole
    we're still digging out of.
        Now, when we came in, we cut the deficit in half in 3 years. They
    said--you need to know, when you talk to your friends about this budget
    debate, the Federal budget would be balanced today with a surplus--today
    with a surplus--but for the interest payments we pay on the debt run up
    between 1981 and the end of 1992. Only in those 12 years.
        Now, I want to be fair. We have really worked hard together. We
    spent 50 hours together, the Vice President and I, the Republican and
    the Democratic congressional leaders. We found we did agree on a lot of
    things. One of the things we've agreed on is over $600 billion, way over
    $600 billion, in savings over the next 7 years, more than enough to
    bring our budget into balance and enough to still have a modest tax cut.
        We don't have an agreement because of the things we disagree on.
    They think we should cut Medicare more than I think we should cut it. I
    think $400 a couple for elderly people--[inaudible]. If we don't need it
    to balance the budget, I don't think we ought to take it. We don't know
    how much can be taken out of these rural hospitals and rural nursing
    homes without doing damage to them. We have to save some money, but
    we've got to be careful.
        The Medicaid program is not so widely known as Medicare. But there
    are millions, millions of children, poor children, many of them in poor
    working families, who depend upon it. Our middle class families have
    their parents in nursing homes depending on it. A lot of middle class
    families have disabled children who get a little help from Medicaid. It
    keeps them from going broke while they care for their children. And
    people say, ``Oh, you know, the Democrats, they're pandering to the
    elderly.'' Bull! [Laughter] Bull!
        If the savings that the Vice President and I have proposed are
    enacted into law, they will represent the biggest savings ever achieved
    in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. We know we've got to do better.
    We know we can't keep letting health care costs go up at 3 times the
    rate of inflation. We know we have to support these health care
    providers that are giving folks more choices if they want to go into
    managed care networks. We're all for that. But I say we should not do
    more than we know the system can take. We should not hurt any seniors
    that we know we can avoid hurting.
        And keep in mind, this is not just an issue of elderly people. If
    you make it more difficult for people to have their parents in nursing
    homes and they have to spend more money on that, where will the money
    come from to send their children to college? If you make college loans
    more expensive or you have fewer scholarships, where will the strength
    in our economy come from 10 years from now when we know we need more
    young people going to college?
        Look, we're all in this together. That is the central issue. And I
    will say again, my plea to the leaders of Congress--just as I pleaded
    with the Democrats to bend over backwards to meet the Republicans
    halfway, just as we have worked hard to do that--is we need to pass a
    plan to balance the budget because it will drive interest rates down,
    it'll make it easier for business people to go get a loan, easier to
    expand payrolls, easier to keep economic growth going. We need to do
    this.
        But we are going to have some disagreements. What we need to do is
    to agree on everything we can, identify the disagreements and tell the
    American people that it's their business, it's their future, and they
    should resolve those disagreements in the election. But to put off
    balancing the budget because we have some disagreement over the size and
    shape of a tax cut, over changes at the margins in the Medicare program
    that can make huge impacts but aren't necessary to save the money we've
    talked about, over big cuts in education and the environment, that's
    wrong. We should not put this other business off.
        You know, we have a system--this is not a parliamentary system. If
    we were having this kind of fight in Great Britain, for example, we'd
    just call an election 5 weeks from now, and you all would decide what
    you want, and I'd either go home or they'd do it our way or vice versa.
    That's the way we'd do it. This is not a parliamentary system. We can't
    have a work stoppage in Washington until November. It is inexcusable; it
    is unacceptable.
        We ought to go back there and say, ``Look, we've agreed on enough
    money to balance the budget. We've agreed we can provide at least a
    modest tax cut to people for childrearing and education. We can help
    small business some with their pensions and with some other things.

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    Let's get after it and do it and get it behind us and then go on and do
    politics.''
        But again I will say, the reason we have to balance the budget is
    because we misplayed this for 12 years. This was misplayed by our
    country. And the politicians, to be fair to them, were more or less just
    doing what the people wanted. Nobody was ready to take any tough
    decisions. We have obligations to each other. We owe these kids a better
    future, just like we owe our parents a decent health care system.
        Now, that's the difference. I do not want to see America become a
    country full of possibility, with record numbers of new successful
    people every year, but more and more people falling behind. I think
    we're better when we're a team. I'm going to go see those military
    folks. Why are you so proud of them? You may not know the name of a
    single person over there, but you know they're going to do a good job,
    don't you? Why? Because they're a team, because they work together. You
    know they're going to do a good job.
        Let me tell you, the only thing that surprised me about the Vice
    President's speech? It took him about 7 minutes to get around to rubbing
    it in about Tennessee winning a bowl game. [Laughter] Now, Tennessee has
    a great quarterback. But they didn't beat Ohio State with their
    quarterback. They beat them with the quarterback, the other 10 people on
    offense, the other 11 people on the defense. Right? If Ohio State scores
    three touchdowns instead of two, your great quarterback loses a game.
    Right? Teamwork! Why do we forget it when it comes to our public
    decisions?
        That's what this whole issue is about, folks. We can balance the
    budget; we can keep this economy going; we can keep the good trends in
    our life going, keep the crime rate and the welfare rolls and the food
    stamp rolls and the poverty rolls coming down, which is what is
    happening now and I'm proud of that. But we can only do it if we
    remember that this country got here because at our most important moment
    we came together. That's what we're fighting for.
        God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:25 p.m. at the Opryland Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Ned Ray McWherter, chairman, Tennessee Clinton/
    Gore Reelection Committee; former Senator Albert Gore, Sr., and his
    wife, Pauline; U.S. Ambassador to China Jim Sasser and his wife, Mary;
    former Senator Harlan Mathews and his wife, Patsy; Wayne E. Glenn,
    international president, United Paperworkers International Union; and
    Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin of Russia. A portion of these remarks
    could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.