    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [November 12, 1996]
    [Pages 2108-2111]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Signing the Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act of
    1996 and an Exchange With Reporters
    November 12, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Vice President,
    and to the members of the administration and especially to the large
    delegation of Members of Congress who are here from both parties. I
    thank you all for coming and for creating this legislation which will
    protect and expand the treasure of our national parks.
        This legislation affirms our solemn commitment to say, from one end
    of our Nation to the other, we will be good stewards of the land that
    God has given us. This bill will create or improve almost 120 parks,
    trails, rivers, historical sites in 41 of our 50 States.
        It turns the Presidio, a former military post in San Francisco, into
    a sanctuary of nature and history by establishing a nonprofit trust to
    manage the Presidio's property. It gives us a blueprint for national
    parks that one day will be able to sustain themselves without Government
    funds. I thank Senators Boxer and Feinstein and Representative Pelosi
    for their work on this.
        The legislation preserves the Sterling Forest on the New York-New
    Jersey border. This new park, just 40 miles from New York City, will put
    nature within reach of millions of families of all backgrounds. It will
    safeguard a watershed that provides clean drinking water for the people
    of New Jersey. It will show that a forest that was left for dead a
    century ago can be brought back to life and protected today. I thank
    Senator Bradley and Senator-elect Torricelli and Representative Hinchey
    especially for their work on this.
        The legislation will establish the Tallgrass Prairie National
    Preserve in Kansas. Four hundred thousand square miles of this prairie
    covered our continent when Lewis and Clark made their great journey.
    Today, only a tiny fraction of it remains. This bill will help to
    restore 11,000 acres of this uniquely American landscape with its 9-
    foot-tall grass and rich plant and animal life. I'm pleased to say that
    it will also give the State of Kansas its very first national park. I
    thank Senator Kassebaum especially for her work on this, as well as
    Secretary Glickman, who supported this project when he was a Member of
    Congress.
        The legislation does much more. It establishes the Selma to
    Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, the 54-mile stretch of
    road that Dr. Martin Luther King walked in 1965 to remind Americans of
    how far we had to travel to live up to our ideals of equality and
    justice for all. And I thank, especially, the man who walked a lot of
    those miles with Dr. King, Congressman John Lewis, for his leadership in
    that regard.
        This bill also gives us the resources to upgrade housing for Park
    Service employees. Many of these dedicated public servants have been
    spending their winters living in 30-year-old trailers that were supposed
    to last only one summer. That's going to change. I must say that one of
    the more rewarding aspects of being President has been visiting our
    national parks and getting to know the people who get up every day and
    put on the National Park Service uniform. It is amazing, the level of
    talent, training, and commitment those people bring to this job and the
    sacrifices, financial and other, that they're willing to accept to do
    the work that they love. But they deserve a better deal. And for the
    service they do to us, I thank the Congress for providing decent housing
    to them.
        I'm also proud of what this bill does not do. It no longer contains
    provisions that would have taken land away from Virginia's Shenandoah
    and Richmond Battlefield parks. It does not open the Sequoia National
    Park in California or the Red Rock region of Utah to development that I
    believe would be destructive.

    [[Page 2109]]

        I also want to say, finally, that I hope we can see more legislation
    like this in the next 4 years. This bill is a model of how we ought to
    work together. This bill had strong Republican support; it had strong
    Democratic support. We said we were going to put our national treasures
    beyond partisan politics and put the people of America, their future,
    and their environment above that. And I was very gratified by it, and I
    want to say again to the Members here and to those who are not here who
    played a leading role in this legislation, it is a model of how
    democracy ought to work.
        So now I want to sign the bill. I want to say that I ask Congress to
    continue to work with me in this same spirit, to protect the
    environment, to strengthen the community right-to-know protections, to
    toughen punishment for polluters, to clean up two-thirds of the existing
    toxic waste sites by the year 2000. We can meet these challenges if we
    work together in the future, as we did to pass this terrific piece of
    legislation.
        Thank you very much.

    [At this point, the President signed the legislation.]

    Second Term Transition

        Q. Mr. President, how close are you to naming a new Secretary of
    State, and will former Senator George Mitchell be the nominee?
        The President. I haven't made a decision. I'm working on it. I'm
    working on a lot of appointments now, and I will do it when I'm ready to
    do it. It's a very important decision.

    Bipartisanship

        Q. Mr. President, what will you say to the congressional leaders,
    especially the Republicans, when you meet with them this afternoon to
    encourage this idea of bipartisanship?
        The President. Well, I think the first thing I'd like to do is to--
    it'll be the first chance I have to thank them in a room together for
    what happened in the last 6 or 8 weeks of the last Congress, where you
    had Senator Kassebaum and Senator Kennedy's bill pass, a number of some
    other health reform legislation passed. We had the minimum wage, small-
    business pension, adoption tax credit legislation passed, the welfare
    reform legislation. It was a remarkable period of incredibly productive
    legislation, and that shows what we can do when we work together. And I
    would just encourage us to do that, beginning with balancing the budget
    and the campaign finance reform. But there are lots of other things we
    have to do. So, basically, today I just want to reaffirm my commitment
    to try to re-create that spirit and keep it going.

    Health Care Reform

        Q. Sir, Senator Lott, in particular, has said he would like what
    amounts to almost an admission from you and from the Democrats that
    using words like ``cut,'' ``slash,'' ``wreck'' referring to Medicare in
    the ads was, as they put it, demagoguery and unfair. They want you to
    set the record straight, so to speak. Will you cooperate?
        The President. Well, I didn't read what he said exactly in that way.
    I think the--what we objected to, I don't think that it was going to
    come back again anyway. The $270 billion option is not there and no
    longer needed, which is one of the problems with our budgeting process.
    You know, the inflation rate in health care has come down so much
    because of the increase in competition and efficiency that no one any
    longer believes that we need to do that again, I don't believe.
        So the question is whether we can basically take up where we left
    off, where the differences between us were smaller. And I think that's
    just the--we'll just have to talk about how to do that.
        Senator Lott, to be fair to him, has got to have time to meet with--
    he's got some new Members. He's got to have time to meet with his caucus
    to develop a strategy. I think we'll be working together on this. I
    certainly hope we will.
        Q. Mr. President, do you have any views on----

    Bipartisanship

        Q. Wasn't this remarkable period really driven by the fact that
    there was an election coming up and that Republicans didn't want to be
    perceived----
        The President. It does, and I'll compare it to mine. It may have
    been driven by that. But the point is, the people ratified what was
    done, you know. There is no way to read the election results as they
    came out as a repudiation of the last 2 months of the last Congress. It
    clearly has to be seen as a ratification of the last 2 months of the
    last Congress and what was done.

    [[Page 2110]]

        And so it shouldn't take--you know, I'm not always as quick on the
    uptake as I ought to be, but it shouldn't take me another year and a
    half to figure that out. I have a fresh memory of what happened, and I
    think that's the way the Members will receive it as well.
        Q. Trent Lott says the first move is up to you on Medicare. Are you
    ready to make the first move?
        The President. Under the rules, I have to present a budget, and I'm
    certainly prepared to present a budget. But in the end, we will still
    have to reconcile. You know, we don't want to get into that--I don't
    agree with every characterization that was put on our economic program
    in 1993; I think that's why we're in the shape we're in today. We've got
    that interest rate down, went forward. But there's no point in us going
    back and litigating what we thought of each other's programs that we
    didn't agree with. We need to focus on how we can reach agreement now.
        We're in this boat together and we have to paddle it together. And
    that's what the American people want. We've got to remember that the
    American people are in the boat with us, and we're not nearly as
    important as they are and their future. And so it's time for us to each
    pick up our paddle and row. And I think that's what we'll wind up doing.

    Balanced Budget Amendment

        Q. Mr. President, would you consider supporting a balanced budget
    amendment, given the change in the Republican Senate?
        The President. Do I expect the Congress to support it?
        Q. Well, no. Would you consider supporting it, given the change in
    the Senate now?
        The President. You know, my problems with it always were--you know,
    I lived under one as a Governor, and we produced 12 balanced budgets,
    and I'm trying to get back to a balanced budget system here.
        My problems with a constitutional amendment were always more a
    question of how to manage the larger economic problems of the country.
    The Nation's budget is different from a State, and I just want to make
    sure that if we have one, it needs to be clear in terms of how--and it
    needs to really give us the possibility of dealing with a recession. You
    don't want to wind up with a Congress someday in a recession raising
    taxes or throwing unemployed people off health care because they're
    trying to get to a balanced budget. Then you could actually wind up
    making the deficit worse.
        If it sets a framework and says that in the 21st century in the
    economy we're going to be living in, other things being equal, we ought
    always to be balancing our books, I agree with that. I just don't think
    you--we may tie our hands more than we will achieve. So what I'm going
    to focus my energies on is getting the balanced budget. I don't have a
    vote in the Congress. My voice counts, presumably, but I don't have a
    vote. But I do have the responsibility to help the American people get
    the balanced budget, and that's what I'm going to focus my energies on.
        Q. So you don't reject the amendment out of hand?
        The President. Well, what I--I don't believe we need it, and it
    can't be an excuse--for a long time I was afraid it would be an excuse
    to throw the burden on somebody else by the Congress, because by
    definition you have to have it down the road. It takes awhile to ratify.
    But my belief is that you--I don't believe that we need it, but if we
    have it, it ought to be able to be implemented in a way that actually
    works and gives the country what it needs to manage a recession because,
    you know, we won't always have--someday down the road we'll have another
    bad patch in the economy. I mean, we just know that's going to happen.
        You know, you don't have--no one has a total trouble-free life; no
    country has a trouble-free economy. Someday down the road--and we just
    don't want an amendment to wind up making our recession worse and
    causing us to do things that are counterproductive that you would never
    do in a recession. In a recession you would never raise taxes, and you
    wouldn't throw people who are unemployed through no fault of their own
    off of health care eligibility because you were trying to balance the
    budget.
        So that's the only thing I'm--if the escape hatch is good, then
    we'll manage it the best way we can. The American people--we're a very
    practical people. We'll find a way to deal with the amendment if the
    amendment--the thing I want us to do is, if you look at this global
    economy, look how much more economic activity was generated in America
    when we lowered the deficit and lowered interest rates, and it totally
    overwhelmed the contractionary effects of reducing the deficit by
    holding spending

    [[Page 2111]]

    down. And we would be better off in this kind of economy always
    targeting a balanced budget unless there is a substantial recession, in
    which case we don't want to raise taxes on people when they don't have
    as much money as they should anyway. That's what I'm worried about.
        So that's why I'm telling you I'm going to be working on putting a
    balanced budget in there. If we get it, if we can get the Congress to
    pass a plan that will achieve that, we'll have the desired economic
    effect, short term and long term, and then whatever happens with the
    amendment will happen.
        Q. Thank you, Mr. President.
        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:18 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White
    House. H.R. 4236, approved November 12, was assigned Public Law No. 104-
    333.