    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 6, 1996]
    [Pages 171-177]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Governors' Association Conference
    February 6, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Governor Thompson, Governor Miller,
    fellow Governors and friends. It is always good to be back here, and I
    very much appreciate what you said, Governor Thompson. I must say, I
    also enjoyed standing outside in the hall and listening to the last
    three or four speakers discuss the last resolution. It made me homesick
    and proud that I once was a member of this body.
        Let me begin, Governor, by congratulating you on the work that you
    have done on Medicaid, on welfare, and on a number of other issues. And
    let me also thank the lead Republican and Democratic Governors who
    worked on the Medicaid issue. I see you around this table. You were good
    enough to work with us in the White House to keep us up with what you
    were doing, to enter into intense discussions with us, and I'll have a
    little more to say about it in a minute. But this is, in any case, a
    very impressive accomplishment that all of you have voted for a new
    framework that will preserve the guarantee of health care coverage to
    the people who need it and give the States the flexibility they need to
    operate the program.
        Let me also say, in general, this Governors' conference has, I
    think, been in the best tradition of the National Governors'
    Association, as people have worked together in good faith across party
    lines to find real solutions to real problems.
        I'd also like to express my appreciation to Senator Dole for what he
    said earlier here today, and the genuine spirit of cooperation that he
    evidenced in his remarks, I must say, was also evidenced in the more
    than 50 hours we have spent together in discussing the budget. And, like
    him, I believe we will get a budget deal. I didn't like everything he
    said about wanting to spend some more time around the White House next
    year. [Laughter.] But then again, I was a little concerned the other
    night when Gary Morris was singing at the White House, and I discovered
    that Governor Thompson and Governor Engler and Governor Voinovich were
    checking out Al Gore's office. [Laughter] But it's good for America,
    this kind of competition.

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        I also want to say, Governor Branstad, I was encouraged to hear
    Senator Dole say he thought we'd get a farm bill pretty soon. We've got
    a 15-year high in wheat prices and about an 18-year high in bean prices,
    and corn is about 3.60. We need a farm bill, and we need to strike while
    the iron's hot so we can keep this going.
        This has been a good meeting for you, and it's been a good day for
    me. And yesterday and the day before, when you were at the White House,
    were good days, because I always enjoy working with the Governors.
        As I said at the dinner, I think the framers would be pleased by
    this great debate in which we are engaged in Washington and in which you
    are also engaged. It goes beyond the very important questions of what
    government should do in our society and what we should not do, to the
    question of which level of government should do certain things and how
    they should be done. This movement is part of the sweeping changes now
    going on in our society.
        We see that the changes in how we work and live together in a world
    that is dominated by information technologies and the markets of the
    global village are changing the way everybody does business. And I'd
    like for you to take just a minute before we get back into the substance
    of the issues that you've been working on to step back and look at the
    context in which this debate is taking place.
        We are living in a world that includes dramatic changes in the
    nature of work, principally defined by work becoming more and more
    identified by the content of ideas and information and less with
    physical labor. We have changes in the nature of work organizations:
    They're more flexible, they're less bureaucratic, and often they're
    smaller. It's interesting in that all the new businesses that have been
    created--new jobs that have been created in our country, for the last 15
    years the Fortune 500 companies have reduced their aggregate employment
    in each of those years. In the last 3 years, however, small businesses
    owned by women alone have created more new jobs than the Fortune 500 has
    laid off--changes in the nature of work organizations.
        And finally, there are dramatic changes in the nature of markets,
    both financial markets and markets for goods and services. They are more
    instantaneous in their movement and more worldwide in their scope.
        Now, these changes have given our country, with a strong and diverse
    economy, what I called in the State of the Union a great new age of
    possibility. I believe that. I believe that more of our people will be
    able to live out their own dreams than ever before. But these changes
    have also done what fundamental changes always do. They have led to a
    great uprooting in the patterns of life and work in America. And there
    are new challenges to us to preserve the American dream for all citizens
    who are willing to work for it, to maintain our cherished values and our
    leadership for peace and freedom.
        This is the context in which this debate should be viewed. Look at
    the economic picture. America in the last 3 years has almost 8 million
    new jobs, the lowest combined rates of unemployment and inflation in 27
    years, a 15-year high in homeownership, an all-time high in exports,
    which has in large measure led to those high prices for farm products
    that I mentioned.
        The auto industry leads the world again. We've had 700,000 new jobs
    in construction. We're number one in the manufacture of
    telecommunication satellites, and each of the last 3 years our people
    have set successive records for the formation of new businesses and for
    the creation of new self-made millionaires, not people who were given
    their money but people who made it with the opportunities that were
    there for them in this country.
        This is a remarkable thing. But it is also remarkable that, for the
    first time in our history, all this occurred while more than half of the
    American people didn't get a raise and felt increasing insecurity about
    job loss or the loss of health care or pension benefits or the ability
    to educate their children.
        Yesterday I had a conversation with an old friend of mine from a
    Western State who is a marvelously successful person now in his own
    right. And by pure accident of history, 40 years ago and more, he and
    his brother and I attended the same little brick grade school in my
    hometown in Arkansas. He's a terrific success; he's had a great life.
    His brother made a great success of his life, but at the age of 49, he
    has already been laid off twice from two different companies simply
    because the companies were bought by other companies, not because he was
    unproductive, not because there was something wrong with him, not
    because he didn't do what he was supposed to do in life.

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        The other day I got a letter from a friend of mine that I keep in
    touch with, a man I went to grade school with. He came from a very poor
    family. He was the first person from his family who graduated from
    college. And he told me that after 9\1/2\ months of looking he had
    finally gotten another job. He was an engineer with a Fortune 500
    company, who at the age of 49, along with two other 49-year-old
    engineers, was laid off. They had children to educate, things to do. And
    this is also a factor of this great churning economy. So we have to see
    this economy in terms of all of its possibilities and its continuing
    challenges, which presents a paradox.
        You can imagine what the ordinary person feels going home at night
    after work and turning on the television and hearing how great the
    economy is and then filtering it through their own personal experience.
    It just depends upon whether their experience conforms to the
    statistics, whether they really buy it. Our challenge is to figure out
    how to set and keep in motion all these wonderful changes and shape them
    in a way that makes the American dream available to everybody again.
    It's a great challenge, but we can do it.
        If you look at the world, you see the same thing. America has been
    very fortunate, not only in the trade numbers I mentioned but to play a
    role in leading the world toward peace and freedom and greater security,
    not only in the obvious places like Northern Ireland and the Middle East
    and Bosnia and in Haiti, where tomorrow for the first time in the
    history of the country they will have a peaceful democratic transfer of
    power, but in reducing the threat of nuclear weapons, extending the Non-
    Proliferation Treaty, passing START II, trying to get a comprehensive
    test ban treaty this year.
        But at the same time we know, and we have seen in our own country,
    that there are new threats of our security that are a function of the
    age of possibility, where people can move around in a hurry, where
    people can get information on the Internet about how to build bombs,
    where anybody can be a neighborhood terrorist because of the high-tech
    information you can get as long as you've got a computer, where someone
    in Tokyo can break open a little vial of poison gas and kill hundreds of
    people.
        So we have new challenges, even as we become more secure. And we see
    it in terms of what's happened to our ability to maintain our basic
    values. I am profoundly encouraged that the crime rate, the welfare and
    food stamp rolls, the poverty rate, and the teen pregnancy rate, and
    even the divorce rate, are down in the last couple of years. I think
    that is a very good thing for America. But let's face it, we all know
    they're still too high. And we all know that we pay a price together
    because they are.
        So I say to you that as we debate this great transformation of
    government, the question we really ought to keep in our mind is: Are the
    changes we're making going to contribute to making the American dream
    available to all our people? Are we going to accelerate all the
    wonderful things that have brought us this age of possibility and meet
    the challenge? Are they going to help people to solve their own
    problems? Are they going to help families to solve their own problems?
    Are they going to help communities to work together to solve their own
    problems?
        That, it seems to me, is the great question of this age. Government
    should change just like all other big organizations that are changing
    because the demands are changing, the objectives are changing, we are
    doing what the framers intended us to do. And in the exercise you have
    performed here in the last 3 days, by getting together and working hard
    and dealing with these tough issues and always trying to consider what
    the human impact of the changes was going to be, you have done what the
    framers knew we would have to do from time to time if our great country
    was going to endure.
        In the State of the Union, I tried to outline what I think our major
    challenges are, and let me just briefly recount them here. I think as a
    people--not the Government's challenges, our people's challenges--to
    build stronger families and better childhoods for all of our children;
    to open educational opportunity for every single citizen, for children
    and for adults for a lifetime; to develop a new economic security for
    all families that are willing to work for it in a way that supports the
    dynamism of this economy and doesn't undermine it; to make our streets
    safer and take them back from gangs and drugs; to make crime the
    exception rather than the rule in America again; to provide a cleaner
    and healthier environment for today and tomorrow in a way that grows and
    doesn't shrink the economy; to maintain our leadership for freedom and
    peace in the world; and especially for us

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    to reinvent, to change our Government so that it works better and
    inspires more trust.
        I believe the central lesson I have learned here in the last 3 years
    is that the genuine debate in America is not between big Government and
    small Government. We already have the smallest Government we've had
    since 1965. It's 205,000 people smaller than it was the day I took the
    oath of office. We're getting rid of 16,000 of the 86,000 pages of
    Federal regulations; we may get rid of more. It's not between Government
    and markets. We know there has to be a mix. We know the market can't
    solve all problems, and we know when the Government tries to solve them
    all it only makes it worse.
        The central lesson I have drawn from the experiences of the last 3
    years and from observing what is happening in our country and throughout
    the world is that what works in the world is what works around this
    table, that while we can't go forward with the idea that the government
    can solve all of our problems, we must not go back to an era where
    people were left to fend for themselves.
        We cannot solve the complex problems of the modern world unless we
    work together in a genuine spirit of community, where everybody does his
    or her part, and where we sharply define what the role of government is
    and what the role of the Federal, State, and local governments are, what
    the role of the private sector is, what the role of people in their
    family lives is, where we all try to work together to enable people to
    make the most of their own lives and grassroots communities to rise up.
        That is the central lesson that I draw from every experience I have
    had as President. And that is the perspective I bring to the work that
    you have done. We know that one-size-fits-all government doesn't work.
    We know that the American people are not about to get rid of all
    government, and they shouldn't. And we do know, I believe, that we can't
    go back to fend-for-yourself, winner-take-all society.
        Our National Government shouldn't try to do everything. There are
    some things that we should do, that we do directly. National defense is
    the best and clearest example, and our military does it better than
    anybody else in the world and better than they ever have. We do have, it
    seems to me, when we have national challenges, a responsibility to
    articulate a clear national vision, set goals, challenge people from
    every walk of life to meet the goals, and then do what we can to empower
    them to succeed.
        In other words, sometimes what we have to do is define the ``what''
    and let others, as much as possible, determine the ``how.'' That's what
    the crime bill does. It was clear to me when I became President that
    there was something terribly wrong when the violent crime rate had
    tripled in the last 30 years and the size of our police force had only
    gone up by 10 percent.
        It was obvious, if you went to communities all over the country,
    that there were places where the crime rate was going down, and the one
    thing they all had in common was a clear, disciplined, operating
    community policing strategy. So we passed a crime bill that said we're
    going to have a goal of putting 100,000 police on the street. You apply
    for the money and get it, but we're not telling you who to hire, how to
    train them, how to deploy them, what kind of community groups they have
    to work with. You decide.
        So the Governor of Kentucky and I were in Louisville the other day
    looking at one of the community policing operations there driving the
    crime rate down. I was in Manchester, New Hampshire, looking at one of
    the community policing operations that's driving the crime rate down.
    Every State here has communities where the crime rate is going down. One
    of our major news magazines had a cover story with the commissioner of
    police of New York City talking about the crime rate going down. It
    said, have we found a way to turn the corner on crime? That is the kind
    of partnership we ought to have.
        I believe Goals 2000 fits that mold. The Federal Government's
    education programs are far less prescriptive now than they were in the
    years I served as the Governor before I came here as President. Goals
    2000 is consistent with the work done by Governor Romer. It says that we
    should have national standards, States should agree to meet them, but
    States and the school districts should decide the ``how.'' And we should
    give people resources and help to let them decide how, not the Federal
    Government.
        We have also tried to work with you in particular, as Governor
    Thompson said, with the unfunded mandates law, with the dozens of
    waivers, and with the common efforts we're now making not only to get
    rid of the Boren amendment but to get rid of a lot of other Federal
    requirements that cripple your ability to spend

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    your time and your money helping your people to deal with their
    challenges.
        We have tried to run this smaller Federal Government better,
    stepping up the fight against illegal immigration at the border and in
    the workplace, collecting record amounts of child support, cutting the
    student loan default rate almost in half, doubling the loan volume at
    SBA while we cut the budget by 40 percent, adopting customer service
    standards for every Federal agency. And I'm really proud of the fact
    that one of the major business magazines just last year which gives
    awards every year to corporations in America that serve the public the
    best--in the category for best service over the telephone, competing
    with L.L. Bean, Federal Express, and a lot of other things, the winner
    last year was the Social Security Administration. I'm proud of that. We
    are trying to give the American people a Government that is smaller,
    that costs less, that works better, and that works with you.
        The first thing we need to do now is to finish the work of balancing
    the budget. We all know there's plenty of blame to go around for what
    happened in the years before we started working on this 3 years ago. I
    am proud that the deficit has been cut in half in the last 3 years. It
    is obvious that we need to finish the job. It is also obvious that this
    is a job that will never be finished, at least not in our lifetime,
    because when baby boomers, people my age and younger, begin to move
    toward their retirement years, the demographic changes in America will
    impose great new challenges on the budget, and this work of keeping our
    budget under control will have to be done year-in and year-out for a
    long time to come.
        But we do know that based on the work we have already done, there
    are savings common to both the Republican plan, the plan that I have put
    forward, that amount to about $700 billion, more than enough to balance
    the budget and enough to meet my criteria of protecting the Medicare and
    Medicaid programs, our investments in education and the environment, and
    providing a modest tax cut.
        We know that there are a lot of policy areas where we do agree, as
    well as some where we don't. I wish, on the whole, that the American
    people could have watched Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich and Mr.
    Armey and Senator Daschle and Mr. Gephardt and the Vice President, Mr.
    Panetta, and I over these last 50 hours of discussions we've had,
    because we tried to do things the way you try to do them here. And we
    were able to identify significant areas of agreement.
        Whichever Medicare program is passed, for example, it will be a
    program that estimates that we can slow medical inflation in the
    Medicare program below the projected rate of medical inflation in the
    private sector by aggressive incentives to seniors to move to managed
    care. With all the other differences of opinion, that is still there.
    However the final Medicaid program comes out--and I think you have gone
    a long way toward influencing that today in a positive and constructive
    way--we are going to slow the inflation rate in Medicaid well below the
    projected rate of health inflation in the private sector, because of
    giving you greater flexibility to move toward managed care and to do
    other things as well.
        This is encouraging. So I believe the first thing we have to do is
    to finish this job. We cannot in good conscience, even though this is an
    election year, have a work stoppage between now and November. We have to
    go on and finish the work of balancing this budget. Let me say again, I
    was very encouraged by what Senator Dole said today. That is exactly my
    impression of where things are, and I believe we will get an agreement,
    and I look forward to continuing our efforts there.
        I also believe we can get an agreement on Medicaid. You have done a
    lot of work which will help us immensely in that regard. You have always
    said that you could run this program better if you didn't have your
    hands tied and you didn't have to ask Washington's permission every time
    you wanted to do something.
        We have known for a long time that the initial good impulse of
    supporting the Boren amendment was a mistake. We have known for a long
    time that you shouldn't have to ask the Federal Government every time
    you want to change your payment schedule to providers and every time you
    want to put in a new managed care program or make some other change. You
    have come up with a proposal that enables you to have that kind of
    flexibility and still preserves the Nation's ability to guarantee
    medical care for poor children, for pregnant women, for people with
    disabilities, and older Americans. This is a huge step in the right
    direction.
        As you know from our discussion yesterday, I still have some
    concerns. As you have acknowl-

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    edged, we have to get any proposals scored by the Congressional Budget
    Office, we have to clarify--at least I need some clarification on some
    other issues which we discussed yesterday in terms of the definitions of
    disability and making sure that there will be someplace where a clearly
    enforceable right is held for people with regard to the benefits to
    which they're entitled.
        And there are some other issues that we just didn't discuss because
    we didn't have enough time, like how the people who are now getting
    Medicaid help to pay their Medicare premiums will be able to continue
    that so they don't lose their Medicare coverage. But I am convinced we
    can work these out, and I am very encouraged by the work that you have
    done.
        Let me also say that I think there is one other thing we ought to do
    on health care, and I'd like to ask for your help on that, even though
    it's something that has to be done here in Washington. If we cannot
    follow the other advanced economies of the world and ensure that
    everybody has health insurance, at least we ought to be able to ensure
    that everybody has access to health insurance. There is a bill in the
    Senate now, sponsored by Senator Kassebaum of Kansas and Senator Kennedy
    of Massachusetts, which would simply say that insurance companies cannot
    deny coverage for people because somebody in their family has a
    preexisting condition. And people can keep their insurance if they move
    from job to job; they can't be cut off.
        The bill would also provide incentives for pooling operations to be
    set up so that more small businesses can buy insurance. I know that
    California and Florida in particular have had some very good results
    with efforts in this area already.
        It is a good bill. It has 43 cosponsors, Republican and Democrat. It
    was voted out of the committee unanimously, and it has not been brought
    to a vote yet because of pressures against it. I think it is quite
    important that that bill be brought to a vote. It is one thing we could
    do, a simple bipartisan act we could take, that would increase the sense
    of security for millions of people in working families who are doing
    everything they can to do the right thing in this country.
        Finally, let me say I applaud the work that you have done, again in
    a bipartisan fashion, on welfare reform. I know you haven't--I don't
    think you've voted on that policy yet, but we discussed it some
    yesterday. I've seen some of the changes you've made. I heard what
    Senator Dole said about child care, agreeing with you and me on that.
    That's a very good sign.
        Let me just be as simple as I can about this: I think the objective
    of welfare reform should be to break the cycle of dependency in a way
    that promotes responsibility, work, and parenthood. I believe that our
    objective for all Americans should be to make sure that every family can
    succeed at home and at work, not to make people choose.
        If a family has an adult that succeeds at work by sacrificing on the
    homefront, our country is weaker because our first and most important
    job, every one of us who has children, is to be good parents. If a
    family can only work at home when they fail at work, then our economy
    will be hurt and all of our efforts to promote independence will be
    undermined.
        So everything I have done in this welfare debate has been designed
    with that in mind. How can we design a system that will be tough on
    responsibility, tough on work requirements, disciplined, but that will
    reward family and childrearing as well as movement into the workplace?
    And I think if we all keep that in mind, that we want a country where
    people succeed at work and succeed at home, then we'll come to answers
    in common, like the child care answer that the Governors recommended. We
    will do that.
        In terms of the details of running the program and your not having
    to come to us every time you want a waiver, I could not agree more with
    that. I think there have been--a lot of the good ideas that have come
    out of this in the last 3 years, every one of them, as far as I know,
    has come from the States. If you just--look, let me just mention one
    that I have promoted relentlessly since Oregon and a number of other
    States started trying it, but in the areas where there are not enough
    jobs today, how are we going to get jobs for people on welfare? In the
    areas where the markets are tight, how will we give employers an
    incentive to hire people on welfare? One of the things that you can do
    now but every one of you will be able to do if we pass meaningful
    welfare reform, is to make your own decision to cash out the welfare and
    food stamp benefits and give it in the form of a job supplement to an
    employer to hire

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    somebody to go to work, instead of to stay idle and draw that same
    amount of money.
        There are lots of things like this that can be done. You can do it.
    And I believe we're going to pass welfare reform legislation, and I
    think when you take a stand here today saying that we ought to--that the
    Senate bill was a good bill, I thought, and I thought far superior on
    most points to the one that came out of the conference that I vetoed,
    but it had some problems and the biggest one for most States was the
    child care problem. You have addressed that here. And you have said,
    okay, be tough on people; make them go to work, but don't ask them to
    hurt their children. That's all any American could ever ask. And I think
    when you do that, you're going to give us a real chance to pass welfare
    reform, and I thank you for that.
        So I would say, again, I think you've had a pretty good meeting
    here. I think you have contributed to the climate that will help us to
    balance the budget. You have contributed immeasurably to helping us to
    resolve the impasse over Medicaid. You have contributed to the impulse
    to move to genuine welfare reform. We can do all these things if we do
    them together. Let me say again, every time this country works together,
    every time we reach across the lines that divide us, we never fail. We
    dissipate cynicism; we dissipate mistrust; we dissipate anxiety; we
    dissipate anger every time we do that.
        Abraham Lincoln said this a long time ago: ``We can succeed only by
    concert. It is not `Can any of us imagine better,' but `Can we all do
    better.''' The Governors always attempt to answer that question with a
    resounding ``yes.''
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. at the J.W. Marriott Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to the following Governors: John Engler of
    Michigan, George Voinovich of Ohio, Terry Branstad of Iowa, Paul Patton
    of Kentucky, and Roy Romer of Colorado.