    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [December 12, 1996]
    [Pages 2192-2193]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the Airline Safety Initiative and an Exchange With Reporters
    December 12, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Good morning. I will be very brief, but I
    do want to make a couple of remarks. I want to thank the Vice President,
    first of all, and the people who have worked with him for their
    unflagging efforts to improve airline safety. I want to thank Secretary
    Pena and Mr. Hall and Ms. Daschle and the other members of the
    administration who have worked on this.
        I want to especially thank the airline executives who are here for
    announcing their plan to ensure that their U.S. carriers have smoke
    detectors in their cargo holds whenever they leave the ground. This is
    further proof of what we can achieve when we work together.
        This is a critical part of our long-range plan to make Americans
    more secure and to make sure our skies are safer. After the TWA
    disaster, the Vice President's commission worked around the clock to
    develop an action plan for aviation safety. Just a month later, we made
    nearly every one of their recommendations the law of the land: state-of-
    the-art bomb detectors in our major airports, a dramatic increase in FBI
    agents assigned to counterterrorism efforts, background checks and FBI
    fingerprint checks for airport and airline employees, improved mail and
    cargo inspection, and more bomb-sniffing dogs.
        I said in October that we cannot make the world risk-free, but we
    can reduce the risks we face. By putting smoke detectors in every cargo
    hold of these carriers, we take another step to make our people and our
    skies safer.

    [[Page 2193]]

        And again, let me say I congratulate especially the carriers who are
    here. I thank them for their leadership and for working with us, and I
    thank the members of the administration, beginning with the Vice
    President.
        Thank you very much.

    Director of Central Intelligence-Designate

        Q. Mr. President, is Tony Lake in trouble, and will you go to the
    mat for him?
        The President. No, and yes. [Laughter]
        Q. You don't think he has any problem in terms of the--[inaudible].
        The President. No. Well, we reviewed that, and I think--I believe
    the essential facts of the matter have been reported in the press. And
    the Counsel's Office and others reviewed the facts as they have been
    presented--I believe they have been accurately presented in the press,
    although I did not personally read the story this morning, and we
    believe that it is not a disqualification.

    Balanced Budget and Protecting the Poor

        Q. Mr. President, your embrace of the political center seems to
    concern many traditionally liberal Democrats who are afraid this
    priority of balancing the budget is going to hurt poor people. Yesterday
    the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Representative Donald
    Payne, was expressing this kind of concern. How do you guarantee that
    fuel for poor people, subsidies, that housing subsidies, that your
    determination to balance the budget is not going to come on the backs of
    the poor?
        The President. Well, that's what we're working through right now.
    We've been working through that for the last 4 years. Every year in the
    last 4 years we've had to send a budget up to the Hill, and we've worked
    on a budget that would continue to reduce the deficit in a way that
    would be fair to all Americans.
        And I would just say, first of all, there's some evidence here:
    After 4 years we've cut the deficit by 60 percent. There are 2.1 million
    fewer people on welfare and about a million fewer children in poverty
    than there were the day I took office. Poverty had the biggest drop
    among children in 1995 in 20 years. We have the lowest poverty rate
    among elderly people and African-Americans since the statistics have
    been kept.
        A big part of that is a strong economy. If you want to reduce
    poverty, you've got to have more jobs being created, you've got to have
    the economy being stronger.
        But secondly, we have to be exceedingly sensitive--I don't want to
    play games here--we have to be exceedingly sensitive to what policy
    judgments are made so that we don't do the rest of the work of balancing
    the budget on the backs of poor children especially, who are essentially
    defenseless in protecting themselves. We have to be very, very sensitive
    from here on in. And I assure you, we're working on that.
        And Congressman Payne, whom I know well and respect very much, I'm
    sure will be vigorously pressing the interests that he discussed
    yesterday in all of our budget talks together. But we're working hard on
    this budget to avoid that.

    Airline Safety

        Q. Mr. President, with the fire detection systems that you're going
    to have in these planes, is it not far enough? Don't you need
    suppression as well, to put out fires when you're at 10,000 feet, simply
    knowing about----
        The President. Would you like to answer that?
        The Vice President. I would. There are fire suppression systems
    installed on all new airlines. And it is true that the original NTSB
    recommendation was for both detectors and suppression equipment. The
    difficulties in implementing the retrofit for suppression systems is
    significantly greater than the difficulty with detector systems. But the
    industry has agreed to work with us vigorously to find solutions for
    this challenge, and we're pressing forward on it.
        Q. How much will it cost the industry?
        The Vice President. A lot. [Laughter] About $400 million. And it is
    a significant commitment that they're making. No one should
    misunderstand the fact that it was not easy for these companies to make
    the decision that they are announcing here today. This is a significant
    step forward. In the absence of a rule, they're doing it voluntarily,
    and every company here has joined together. And so it's an important
    step.
        Q. Are airline tickets up?
        The Vice President. Not because of this.
        The President. Thank you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:45 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House.