    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [September 17, 1996]
    [Pages 1589-1591]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1589]]

    Remarks Announcing Pension Portability Regulations and an Exchange With
    Reporters
    September 17, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Rubin, and thank you,
    Trisha, for that comment. I want to speak about this at some length but
    let me first of all say I think all of you know that this morning I had
    an opportunity to meet with congressional leadership to review with them
    what we have accomplished in Iraq and where we are going.
        I believe we all agreed that Saddam Hussein's seizure of Irbil and
    movement in the northern part of Iraq after being warned not to do it by
    the United States and the world community required response. The
    response that we gave was one designed to improve the strategic position
    of the United States and our allies, to keep Saddam Hussein in a box,
    and to limit his ability to threaten his neighbors. That is a smaller
    box now because we have extended the no-fly zone. And we have also put
    Saddam Hussein on notice that we do not want him to take any actions
    that would increase the dangers to our pilots.
        So I feel very good today that we did the appropriate thing in the
    appropriate way and that we've gotten the results that we sought. As I
    said, I had a good briefing with the congressional leaders. I was also
    very pleased by the report that Secretary Perry gave on his recent trip
    to the region and the support that our allies are giving the course that
    we are taking now. So I felt good about that.
        Now, let me talk a little bit about what Trisha just discussed. When
    I became President it was obvious to everyone who had looked at the
    trends in the American economy that most new jobs were being created by
    people in small businesses and that many people were moving from job to
    job over the course of their lifetime.
        Now, if we want to create an environment in which all working people
    and their children can prosper in a growing economy, obviously one of
    the things we have to do is to make it possible for people to move from
    job to job and still succeed in supporting their families. That means,
    among other things, we needed to make health insurance portable and we
    needed to make retirement portable and we needed to make retirement more
    accessible for small businesses, for the owners and the employees of
    small businesses. We've been working on trying to do that for the last 4
    years.
        As all of you know, the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill made health care
    policies more portable, that you could take them from job to job and you
    couldn't be denied health insurance because someone in your family has
    been sick. We have worked very hard to make it easier for people to take
    out retirement plans. And today what we're doing is to make those
    retirement plans much, much more portable in ways that benefit both the
    employees and the employers in the small business sector of our economy.
    The message of the new Treasury Department actions today is simple: At a
    time when we are trying to seize the opportunities of a growing economy,
    when 5 million workers with pensions change jobs every year, we have to
    make it easier for them to save.
        Now, as Trisha said, we do have a record number of small businesses
    now. In each of the last 4 years there has been a record of new
    businesses being started. A record number of them are owned by women and
    minorities. We do have lower interest rates and a healthier economy, and
    we've dramatically improved the ability of the Small Business
    Administration to make SBA loans--and I understand you had one when you
    started out--to start people out in small business and to help them.
        Now, let me try to explain exactly what this regulation does. We
    have, as I think all of you know here--when I signed the minimum wage
    legislation there were provisions in that bill that were included in the
    ``Retirement Savings and Security Act'' that I presented to Congress.
    More than half of what I asked the Congress to adopt was in fact adopted
    in the minimum wage law. It does make it easier for small businesses to
    offer pensions; it does let more Americans save for their retirement
    from their first day on the job in whatever kind of employment situation
    they find themselves.
        I hope Congress will pass the rest of the agenda. I hope Congress
    will give us tougher audits to crack down on the misuse of pensions.
    Because of a loophole more than 32,000 large pension plans covering 23
    million Americans are

    [[Page 1590]]

    still not effectively audited. So we have to act to protect these
    pensions. We have seen that this administration, when we know what the
    audits are, will require deficiencies to be paid and will stabilize
    these funds.
        I also want to expand the tax deductible IRA's because they're the
    most portable retirement savings of all. And under our plan, of course,
    people would be able to withdraw from them tax-free for a first-time
    home, for a medical emergency, or to pay for a college education.
        But there are some things we can accomplish without legislation, and
    that's what we're doing here today. First, some people who change jobs
    want to leave their savings with their old employer, perhaps because
    their old job offered better investment choices for their savings plan.
    But some employers restrict the investment options of former employees
    to discourage them from keeping their old retirement plans there. The
    actions we're announcing today ensure that former employees don't have
    all their good investment options taken away so their families can make
    the most of the savings they are making.
        Second, these actions eliminate restrictions that had prevented many
    businesses from accepting an employee's past savings into their
    retirement plans; that's what Trisha is talking about. And that will
    affect far more people. It's far more likely that employees who change
    from one business to another want to bring their retirement plan and are
    not permitted to.
        Because today, if a company takes a new employee's past savings and
    it turns out that the pension plan that the savings were in had legal or
    administrative problems, then the new employer is fully liable to the
    employee and could have its entire pension plan disqualified even though
    the employer had done nothing at all wrong. Under today's Treasury
    actions if a company takes an employee's past savings and takes
    reasonable steps to ensure that the plan they came from was acceptable,
    then the company will no longer be held liable for problems they did not
    know about. As Trisha pointed out, these actions will make it easier for
    businesses to do the right thing by helping their employees save for
    retirement.
        Portable pensions, more savings and investment options, health care
    families can take from job to job, tax cuts for college and job
    training, expanded IRA's, these are ways that we can give all people the
    opportunity to take advantage of a growing economy, especially people in
    the small-business sector.
        As I said, I am very proud of the fact that in the last 4 years of
    this administration in each successive year there have been a record
    number of new small businesses started, but this is an area in which
    there is a whole lot of folks moving around all the time. So today we
    are saying to the 5 million people who change jobs every year from small
    business to small business, ``You've got a lot better chance to keep
    your retirement. You've got a lot better chance to get a retirement.
    You've got a lot better chance to take your retirement plan with you.''
    And that means more security for American families, 5 million of them
    every year.
        Thank you, Secretary Rubin, thank you, Trisha, and I thank the rest
    of our administration for their role in this.
        Thank you.

    Troop Deployment to Kuwait

        Q. Mr. President, have you decided to proceed with the planned
    deployment of 5,000 troops to Kuwait?
        The President. Yes. I frankly don't know what the genesis of the
    story in the morning paper was about that. I authorized it last weekend
    and the orders, the deployment orders, were signed last night. There was
    never any back and forth, to the best of my knowledge. I was surprised
    when I read the story today. I asked for an explanation of it and none
    of our people had one because I authorized the deployment last weekend
    and the--as I said, the orders were signed last night.
        Q. When do you expect it to take place?
        The President. Well, you can ask the Defense Department. They're
    doing it in a very timely fashion. They can give you the details.

    Iraq

        Q. As you might expect, the meeting this morning has not quelled
    some Republican criticism of how the situation has been handled. If I
    may just quote--paraphrase for a moment, Senator Lott was wondering what
    had happened to the disproportionate response which Secretary Perry had
    said was coming, and I believe Senator McCain said Saddam Hussein is
    better off than he was 2 weeks ago now that he sort of controls northern
    Iraq. I would like to get your response to that.

    [[Page 1591]]

        The President. Well, let's take them each in turn here. First of
    all, I think the response that we selected was entirely appropriate
    under the circumstances. This will partly answer the second one. Keep
    in--here is what happened; this was a complicated matter. The United
    States and the entire world community told Saddam Hussein, you know,
    don't invade, in effect, the Kurdish communities in northern Iraq; yes,
    they're in your country, but part of the United Nation resolution was
    that you should not repress your people. Now, the situation was
    considerably complicated by the fact that the leader of one of the
    Kurdish factions actually asked him to do it, wanted to make, if you
    will, a temporary marriage. So he did it.
        From our point of view, it still constituted a violation of the U.N.
    resolution; plus which, the United States cannot be in the position
    after years and years and years of dealing with Saddam Hussein in which
    it's obvious that he's always pushing the envelope of saying don't do
    this and then have him do it and we did nothing. I mean, a lot of people
    would say well, ``We ought to just take a pass on this. After all, it's
    just the Kurds. They're divided. He's not invading a country beyond his
    borders.'' But to us it was more serious than that because we didn't
    want to create a precedent in which--which could lead him to believe
    that he could take further action. There is still a lot of debate about
    whether 5 or 6 years ago he was somehow misled by actions of others into
    thinking he could take over Kuwait with no consequences. So we didn't
    want there to be any ambiguity at all.
        Therefore, I believe that--I will say again--I told Senator Lott
    this this morning, my view is that the action we took was appropriate
    because it would not have been appropriate for the United States to send
    ground forces into northern Iraq to try to throw Saddam out of northern
    Iraq. We could have done that, of course, but it would have been at a
    very high price. It was inappropriate.
        It would not have been appropriate for us to take action that would
    have cost the lives of a lot of civilians in that country. What we did
    was appropriate. What we did by extending the no-fly zone is to say,
    ``We want you to understand, we have no intention of permitting you to
    threaten your neighbors. We're going to limit your ability to maneuver.
    The box you are in is now a tighter box.'' I still believe it was the
    right thing to do.
        In terms of northern Iraq, is he in a stronger position today? He's
    in a weaker position in southern Iraq and a weaker position to threaten
    his neighbors. Yes, he has his army deployed in areas of northern Iraq
    that they weren't there a few weeks ago. But I would remind you, there
    are a lot of shifting sands in the Kurdish political scene. And as the
    Secretary of State cautioned the Members of Congress today, if you look
    at where these Kurdish leaders are coming out, I think it is unlikely
    that there will be any profound, lasting benefits to him from what he
    has done in the north.
        I think it is perfectly clear that there are some significant
    disadvantages in the south, in the areas where we have the greatest
    interests, including his ability to threaten either Kuwait or Saudi
    Arabia.
        Q. Sir, Senator McCain said that we would pay a price for not
    matching the rhetoric with action. He was taking issue with----
        The President. Well, my rhetoric has been very careful. I think if
    you go back and look at exactly what I said, I think my actions and my
    rhetoric have been very closely calibrated. I've been very careful not
    to try to run this up the rhetorical flagpole.
        Q. What about Secretary Perry?
        The President. Well, I think Secretary Perry just completed 3 days
    of hard work in the region. He got reaffirmations of support for the
    United States and our policy in every nation he visited from a broad
    range of officials, and I'm very pleased with the work he has done these
    last 3 days.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:17 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Patricia Parson, president and
    chief executive officer, AmerInd, Inc. The Internal Revenue Service
    proposed rule on retirement plan rollovers was published in the Federal
    Register on September 19.