[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[May 8, 1996]
[Pages 705-709]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the Legislative Agenda and an Exchange With Reporters
May 8, 1996

    The President. Good afternoon. Today I want to make a brief 
statement about the work that Congress and I can do together in the next 
90 days. The next 3 months can be a time when we sign into law measures 
that will truly help us to meet our challenges, protect our values, and 
move our country forward together.
    But right now, Congress is facing a logjam. The Democrats and I 
believe we must raise the minimum wage, which is nearing a 40-year low. 
The Republicans want a temporary reduction in the gas tax. There's only 
one fair way to break this logjam. Congress should pass the minimum wage 
increase clean, and if Republicans want a temporary reduction in the gas 
tax, then Congress should pass that clean. That is how we can break the 
logjam and then get on with the other crucial work at hand.
    There's still time for us to balance the budget while protecting our 
basic values. We can reform welfare, cut taxes, double the size of our 
Border Patrol, and make sure our people are able to keep their health 
insurance if they change jobs or if someone in the family gets sick. All 
this legislation is ready to go right now. Much of it passed with broad 
support and by large margins. All Congress has to do is send it to me, 
and we'll be in business. But Congress must send it to me clean.

[[Page 706]]

    I'm very concerned by reports that some Republicans in Congress want 
to ruin these good, bipartisan bills by attaching to them bad proposals 
that shouldn't be there in the first place. They want to load the bills 
up with poison pills, measures the Republicans are inserting in the 
legislation to make sure I will veto it, so they can pretend it's not 
just the poison pill I'm against but the bill itself.
    For example, they know I would sign a welfare reform bill if they 
sent it to me by itself. But they're determined to link welfare reform 
to Medicaid changes that cut coverage to children, to pregnant women, to 
the elderly, and to families with children with disabilities. Or they 
link it to a tax increase on working people by cutting the earned-income 
tax credit.
    They do that in hopes of provoking a veto, so they can run negative 
ads in the fall accusing me of being against welfare reform. That's what 
I mean by poison pill. It may be good politics, but it's not good for 
the American people.
    So I urge Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich and the Republicans in 
Congress: Keep the legislation free of poison pills. I say to 
Republicans in Congress: Work with me to pass welfare reform, a balanced 
budget, a tax cut, an increase in the minimum wage, health care and 
immigration reform, without inserting deadly, poison-pill provisions. 
Join me in 3 months of progress, not 3 months of partisanship.
    Let me be clear. If we want a balanced budget, pass it without the 
poison pill of cutting education or the environment. If we want welfare 
reform, pass it without the poison pill of cutting the earned-income tax 
credit and thereby raising taxes on working families, without the poison 
pill of ending guaranteed Medicaid coverage for poor children, pregnant 
women, the elderly, or families with children with disabilities. If we 
want health insurance reform, leave out the poison pill of nationwide, 
unrestricted, permanent medical savings accounts. If we want to raise 
the minimum wage, do it without the poison pill of undermining workers' 
rights. If we want immigration reform, pass it without the poison pill 
that slams shut the schoolhouse door in the face of innocent children.
    Finally, I ask the Republicans in Congress to consider something 
else. This is the first time your party has controlled both Houses of 
Congress at the same time since 1954. What is the record you will 
present to the American people and leave for history? When you have 
worked with me in a bipartisan fashion, we have done positive things for 
the American people: a fine telecommunications bill; tough antiterrorism 
legislation; honest lobbying reform; a budget that gives our country its 
4th straight year of deficit reduction while protecting education, the 
environment, Medicare, and Medicaid. Will this be the record we build 
on, or will you go your own way again, leaving the American people with 
a memory of extremism, deadlock, and Government shutdowns?
    It's no secret to anybody that this is an election year, but there 
will be plenty of time for all the politics in the world after we do the 
work we were sent here to do. So let us treat these next 3 months as the 
end of the legislative session and not as the beginning of the election 
season.
    Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress, I 
ask you to abandon the strategy of veto in favor of making this a season 
of progress.
    Q. Now, you know that your statement will be taken as a very 
political one, but are you really saying that you will sign a bill to 
repeal the tax cut if it doesn't have the minimum wage, or will you veto 
it otherwise?
    The President. What I'm saying is that we have a logjam here. I 
believe the price of fuel should come down, and I believe it will come 
down. The price of oil has dropped about $3 a barrel since I announced 
the modest release from the petroleum reserve and the Energy Department 
announced its actions, and then, independently, the Justice Department 
announced its actions. There is still some backlog in the refinery 
capacity, and that's going to take some time for it to manifest itself 
in prices at the pump.
    But if they want a temporary reduction in the gas tax, the way to do 
it is to end the logjam, give us a clean vote on the minimum wage 
increase. We should increase the minimum wage and pass their temporary 
reduction of the gas tax. But you know, raising the minimum wage is very 
important to a lot of us and, more importantly, it's very important to 
millions and millions of working Americans.
    And we have got a logjam here, so I have once again come forward and 
said, ``Okay, I'm willing to do my part to break the logjam. Let's do 
both.'' And that's the right thing to do.

1996 Election

[[Page 707]]

    Q. You seem to be asking the Republicans to put aside politics for 3 
months. Will you ask the Democratic National Committee not to run the 
highly negative ads against Senator Dole that it has been running, and 
say that no Clinton/Gore money will be spent on these types of negative 
ads?
    The President. Well, first of all, I'm not asking the Republican 
committee or Senator Dole to refrain from politics. I'm not asking him 
not to make his speeches. I'm not asking him to refrain from 
differentiating himself from me. I'm not asking them to refrain from 
raising and spending money any way they choose, although I do think we 
should pass the campaign finance reform bill.
    So I'm not asking them to do that. They may do whatever they choose. 
All I'm saying is, when we have worked together in a bipartisan fashion, 
we've gotten progress. We now have huge, broad areas of agreement here. 
And I have never let the areas of disagreement affect my willingness to 
work with them to achieve agreement. And that's all I'm asking. I'm 
asking them to take the same position.

Legislative Agenda

    Q. Mr. President, I'm not sure we got an answer to Helen's [Helen 
Thomas, United Press International] first question, and that is, would 
you sign a repeal of the gas tax if there were no increase in the 
minimum wage? And aren't you just doing the same kind of linkage that 
you have said Republicans shouldn't do all along, even as far back as 
the Government shutdowns are concerned?
    The President. No, because what they're doing here is refusing even 
to give us a vote. And Senator Dole has refused even to give a vote on 
raising the minimum wage, or he wants to put this poison pill in it that 
will undermine workers' rights.
    So the Democrats in the Senate are quite united. They have never 
been treated like this before, and they did not treat the Republicans 
like this before. And they have not abused the filibuster in their 
minority position the way the Republicans did for 2 years solid in 1993 
and 1994. They have not done any of that. But they're saying they are 
sick and tired of seeing millions and millions of American working 
families get the shaft from a refusal to even schedule a vote.
    So what I'm saying is, we've got a logjam in the Congress. The two 
parties are at loggerheads, and I'm offering a way to fix the logjam. 
And that's the way to do it. Let's just vote on both of them clean.
    Q. First, would you, in fact, sign the gas tax bill? And secondly, 
if the minimum wage measure is as important to you and your party as you 
say it is, why did you and your party not propose it when you had 
control of the Congress?
    The President. The reason we didn't is that in the first year--let 
me just say, I have always been on record in favor of minimum wage 
increases that more or less keep up with inflation. But in the very 
first year, keep in mind what I did, we doubled the earned-income tax 
credit and made it refundable and basically put ourselves on a track 
where we're going to take working families with children out of poverty.
    But meanwhile, when it became apparent to me that the minimum wage 
was dropping to a 40-year low, it was obvious we had to increase it. And 
I had no reason to believe that this would be a big partisan issue. I 
mean, even Republicans had been willing in the past to vote for a 
minimum wage increase; it was only when they got into the majority that 
they decided it was a terrible idea. And so I had no reason to believe 
that they wouldn't. We did the first things first: We doubled the 
earned-income tax credit first, and then I asked for an increase in the 
minimum wage.
    Now, I believe that we can still get this done. You know, the last 
time we voted on a minimum wage, there was a Republican President, and a 
lot of Republican Members of Congress voted for it. I don't know why 
they have all suddenly decided it's a terrible thing to do.
    Q. Will you sign the gas tax?
    The President. I have told you what my position is. There is a 
logjam in the Congress. The Senators have made it clear that they want 
to vote on both of them, the Democratic Senators have. They are now 
using the filibuster in the way the Republicans repeatedly used it in 
1993 and 1994. I am offering a way to break the logjam. I will be glad 
to sign both bills. They ought to vote them out clean. At least they 
should give us a clean vote on the minimum wage. That's what I think 
should be done.

[[Page 708]]

Medicare and Medicaid

    Q. Mr. President, your most recent Clinton/Gore campaign commercials 
still speak about Republican cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Speaker 
Gingrich points out repeatedly that these aren't cuts in Medicare or 
Medicaid; these are simply cuts in the projected growth of Medicare and 
Medicaid, which you in your own 7-year balanced budget proposal 
similarly propose. Are you prepared now to stop calling the Republican 
savings in Medicare and Medicaid cuts?
    The President. Let me say this, are you prepared to stop it? Are you 
prepared to stop it? When I came to Washington I was amazed when I 
proposed budgets, that that was the language that was used. The press 
used it. We all learned to use it from the press. I have seen repeated--
years and years of articles saying, cuts in this, cuts in that, cuts in 
the other thing.
    And the question is, if you cut below the rate of inflation plus 
growth, is that a cut? I think it is. Should we say, a proposed cut? If 
you have 27 seconds to talk to the American people, how long does it 
take to say, ``a proposed cut in the rate of increase but a real cut if 
it is less than the rate of increase plus growth''?
    Now, keep in mind, this language has been used around Washington, 
not simply by politicians but by others for a very long time. Most 
average Americans believe that it amounts to a cut in Medicare if 
they're being asked--if they're living on $20,000 and they're being 
asked to pay higher premiums for the same thing they got last year, 
particularly if the premiums go up more than the rate of inflation.
    So if there's going to be a change in the language, we ought to all 
get together and agree on what the language is. The language I am using, 
sir, is no different from the language the Republicans used when 
discussing defense all those years and no different than the press used 
on a regular basis when I arrived here. So maybe we should try to find 
some new language, but it ill becomes the Speaker to say that when I--
you go back and you could probably find reams and reams and reams of 
speeches that he's given about defense and other issues, talking about 
cuts that weren't cuts; they were cuts in the rate of increase.
    So we'll just--I'm trying to be straight with the American people. 
And the truth is that the Republicans wanted to reduce the rate of 
investment in Medicare and Medicaid--we've talked about this in this 
room many times--to a level that was completely unsustainable when we 
started this budget process, and that was going to impose significant 
and unjustifiable burdens on middle class families, working families, 
the old, the young, families with children with disabilities. And I 
still believe that what they're trying to do is not advisable, but we 
are much closer than we used to be.
    The real answer is, they left these budget negotiations at the start 
of their primary season. We were very close together. We were closer 
together than was ever reported in the press. Why don't they want to 
come back and sit down and work together and come up with a balanced 
budget? Once we have an agreed-upon balanced budget, nobody will ever be 
debating this again. Everybody knows we have to have savings in the 
projected levels of spending in Medicare and Medicaid. The question is, 
is what they are trying to do good for Medicare and Medicaid? I don't 
believe it is.
    And they have--I would remind you that they now have a budget which 
acknowledges that their earlier levels of spending were too low. They 
do. They have abandoned their first budget already.

Legislative Agenda

    Q. Mr. President, if you get an immigration reform bill that forbids 
education to the sons of illegal immigrants, would you veto it?
    The President. Well, I am opposed to that, as you know. And so far, 
it's not in the Senate bill. So we're trying to keep it out of the final 
bill, and I will do everything I can to keep it out.
    Q. To answer Terry's [Terence Hunt, Associated Press] question, 
beyond language and beyond your suggestion to break the logjam, having 
just last night talked about the forces dividing society, how will we 
see a change in you to usher in this new era of cooperation you seem to 
be suggesting today?
    The President. First of all, you haven't heard me up there 
condemning the Speaker and Senator Dole in the kind of intense personal 
terms that they have used. You haven't heard that. You have never heard 
me doing that. Secondly, I have--I did not end these budget 
negotiations.

[[Page 709]]

They did. Thirdly, whenever we sign--whenever I sign legislation that 
has bipartisan support, I always give them credit for the work they do 
for America.
    Now, I am not going to hide my differences from them from the 
American people, and I have never asked them to hide their differences 
from me from the American people. I don't ask Senator Dole to suspend 
his campaign or, you know, I don't ask him to stop doing--going around 
saying I was wrong when I fought for the Family and Medical Leave Act, 
which he says all the time, that I was wrong when I stood up for the 
assault weapons ban or the Brady bill, and he led the opposition to it. 
I don't ask him to stop that.
    All I'm saying is, we're supposed to show up for work here every 
day. And we were closer than was even reported in the press in the 
budget negotiations. Now they are adopting a strategy to say that 
``we're going to use the lawmaking process of the United States to force 
the President to veto bills where the main subject of the bill he is 
really for, because we would rather have the veto''--and I think that's 
wrong--or, ``we're not going to permit people to get an increase in the 
minimum wage. We actually want the minimum wage to fall to a 40-year 
low.'' That's what they said.
    So if the Democrats in the Senate are going to one time use the 
filibuster position they have, which the Republicans used over and over 
and over and over again in '93 and '94, to an extent never before seen 
in modern history, more than had ever been done before--if they're going 
to do that, to demand a vote on the minimum wage, I have come here today 
not to play politics with them but to say, here is a way to balance the 
logjam. Let's have a clean vote on the temporary reduction in the gas 
tax. Let's have a clean vote on the minimum wage. Do that. It is the 
right thing to do. It's the right thing for America to do.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:10 p.m. in the Briefing Room at the White 
House.