[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[July 17, 1998]
[Pages 1256-1263]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the American Legion Girls Nation and an Exchange With 
Reporters
July 17, 1998

    The President. Thank you very much. I think I should take Janet 
Murguia with me wherever I go to always introduce me. [Laughter] I think 
she's a great advertisement for Girls Nation. And someday before long, a 
number of you will have these opportunities as well.
    I'd like to welcome your president, Alana Aldag, and your vice 
president, Jennifer Hall, and thank Diane Duscheck and Barbara Kranig 
and the other members of the American Legion Auxiliary for what they do 
for Girls Nation. I hope you've had a very good week in Washington. Some 
of you may know that this week, these 2 days here, the 35th reunion 
class of my Boys Nation group is also meeting here. I happened to turn 
on the television last night to see that Ted Koppel on ``Nightline'' was 
doing a 2-day review of it. And I thought to myself, it wasn't all that 
long ago, but all of us are aging rather gracefully. [Laughter]
    Let me say to all of you, the people I met then, many of whom have 
been my friends over all these 35 years, made me believe that anything 
was possible. President Kennedy spoke to us and made me believe that 
together we could change the world. I think that is certainly no less 
true for you and your generation because you will live in the time of 
greatest possibility in all human history.
    If you think of the revolutionary changes that have taken place just 
in the course of your still relatively short lifetimes: The cold war 
cast a shadow over my childhood; it has ended. Technology has advanced 
at a breathtaking pace, fundamentally altering the way all of us live 
and work and learn. A typical laptop computer today has more computer 
power in it than the world's largest supercomputer did in the year you 
were born.
    Many of the barriers that kept women from making the most of their 
potential and contributing their talents to our society have fallen 
away. Yesterday the First Lady was up in New York commemorating the 
150th anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and 68 other women and 32 
brave men gathering in New York with their statement of sentiments, with 
their 18 objections against men in America, which included the fact that 
they did not have the right to own property--even the clothes married 
women had on their backs belonged to their husbands 150 years ago; they 
couldn't inherit; they didn't vote. And what a long way we have come in 
the last 150 years and in your lifetime.
    I met my wife in law school when it was still a relatively unusual 
thing to find a law school with any significant number of women in it. 
Today, a lawyer in America is 12 times more likely to be a woman than a 
lawyer was in 1963, when I came to Boys Nation.
    Women are earning more college degrees than men; they outnumber men 
in graduate school. Women-owned businesses are growing faster than the 
national economy. Forty-one percent of our administration's appointees, 
including the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services, the Attorney General, the Director of the Environmental 
Protection Agency, the Secretary of Labor, our Trade Ambassador, and 
many others, are women--by far the highest percentage of women in high 
positions in any administration in the history of the United States.
    I look forward to the day when I read in the newspaper that 
America's new President has invited her own Girls Nation reunion class 
back to the White House to gather. In the meantime, we need to be 
working together to strengthen our country for this new century, because 
it is a time of dramatic change.
    Five and half years ago, I came here to move America in a new 
direction based on our old values of opportunity for all, responsibility 
from all, in an American community of all citizens. We took a new 
direction in economic policy and education policy and environmental 
policy,

[[Page 1257]]

in welfare policy, in health care policy, in crime policy, and foreign 
policy.
    We also articulated a new role for Government. We tried to break 
through the debate that had then dominated Washington for nearly 20 
years, some people saying Government could solve all our problems and 
others saying Government was the source of all of our problems. I had 
been a Governor for a dozen years, and I thought the argument was 
frankly ridiculous. I thought that neither extreme was true. And we have 
sought to create a Government whose primary role is to create the 
conditions and give people the tools to solve their own problems and 
make the most of their own lives and build good lives, good families, 
good communities, and a strong country.
    The results have been, I think, quite good. America has the lowest 
crime rate in 25 years, the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, the 
smallest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years. We're about to 
have our first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years, the lowest 
inflation rate in 32 years, and the highest homeownership in the history 
of the country. We have also opened the doors of college to virtually 
every American through our HOPE scholarships and other tax credits for 
college education, through a better student loan program, through more 
work-study positions and more Pell grant scholarships.
    We have added 5 million people who are children to the ranks of 
people with health insurance; we are in the process of doing that. We 
have the highest rates of childhood immunization in history. We have 
worked hard on the environment, and the water is cleaner; the air is 
cleaner; the food is safer. There are fewer toxic waste dumps, and we 
have put more land aside to preserve forever than any administration in 
the history except those of the two Roosevelts.
    We started the AmeriCorps program and now have had almost 100,000 
young people, like you, just a little older than you, serving in their 
communities, earning money for college, making America a better place. 
With our America Reads program alone, which is designed to get young 
college students to go in and help make sure all of our third graders 
can read independently by the end of the third grade, we now have 1,000 
colleges participating.
    While all this has happened, we've actually reduced the size of 
Government. The Federal Government is now the smallest it has been since 
I came here to meet President Kennedy 35 years ago. So I believe that 
this country is moving in the right direction.
    Now, I think one of the great decisions facing the American people 
now is what to do about this. I like the fact that there is a good sense 
of well-being in America. I like the fact that, after over 20 years of 
downhill movement, public confidence in Government and the role of 
Government in our lives is going back up again. I like that very much. 
But I feel very strongly, and I predict that if you just read the paper, 
I think you can see, I think, support from my point of view that is a 
grave mistake to say, ``Okay, things are going well in America, and we 
don't need to do much. We should relax now.'' Why? For two reasons. One 
is, you will see, the older you get, no condition lasts forever. The 
good times don't last forever--but neither do the bad ones, and that's 
the good news. [Laughter]
    Secondly, we are living in a very dynamic time. We are enjoying the 
success that we are enjoying today partly because the American people 
have been very aggressive, because, you know, we live in a country where 
citizens deserve most of the credit. What we have done to get these 
impressive numbers again is to create the right conditions, the right 
environment, the right incentives for the American people then to take 
advantage of it and go forward. But we have to--this is a very dynamic 
time. And there are all kinds of difficulties and challenges out there.
    So, for America to sit back now would be a great mistake. When times 
are good but dynamic, that's the time to bear down, to take on the big 
challenges, the long-term challenges, the things that will affect your 
lifetime when you begin to have children and you begin to do your work 
and you begin to take full responsibility for the welfare of the 
country. What are those things? Let me just mention a few of them.
    Number one, I am the oldest of the baby boomers, the largest 
generation of young people ever in--to grow up, except the generation of 
which you are the oldest. That is, we--for the last year, for the first 
time since I was in high school, we had a bigger group of children in 
kindergarten through 12th grade than the baby boom generation. Now, what 
does that mean?

[[Page 1258]]

It means, among other things, that if we continue to retire at present 
trends and the birth rates continue as they are and the immigration 
rates continue as they are, by the time all of our baby boomers retire 
we'll only have about two people working for every one person eligible 
for Social Security. And that is unsustainable. Medicare would be 
unsustainable.
    So what's the answer? The answer is to find a way to preserve these 
fundamental programs that have lifted the elderly out of poverty and 
given dignity and strength to our professed family values in a way that 
does not bankrupt our children and grandchildren. Everybody I know my 
age is obsessed with the idea that we must not have the cost of our 
retirement be lowering your standard of living, be undermining your 
ability to raise your own children.
    Now, if we're going to have a surplus, we ought to make sure we've 
got a long-term plan to save Social Security before we squander that 
surplus on tax cuts, which may be very popular in the short run but 
which may leave us with a terrible problem that will cost us a lot more 
than you could ever get in a small tax cut by the time you have to be 
taking responsibility for your parents' retirements and your children's 
education. And we should do it now when times are good and we're 
projecting a surplus.
    Number two, we should recognize that while we have the best system 
of higher education in the world, no one believes our schools are yet 
the best in the world. And we should take advantage of this moment to 
make sure all American young people have access to world-class education 
with higher standards, with technology that hooks up every American 
classroom to the Internet and all the riches that it holds by the year 
2000, with smaller classes and with more access to more constructive 
choices through things like the charter school movement, which is very 
prominent in many of your States.
    Number three, we should recognize that the environmental challenges 
we have are real and global. If there is anybody here from Florida--and 
I'm sure there is--if you--all the rest of us have been watching those 
fires. I went down and saw and flew over those areas that have been 
burned up. Florida had the wettest fall and winter than they had ever 
had. They had the driest spring they had ever had, and then the month of 
June in Florida was the hottest month in the history of the State, 
hotter than any July or August; and in Florida, that's saying something.
    There is ample evidence now that what my wonderful Vice President 
has been saying for years and years and years is true, that the climate 
of the globe is warming at a rate which is unsustainable, which will 
lead us to more extreme weather conditions. We now have records going 
back over 500 years which we can use to measure what the temperature was 
on this planet. The 5 hottest years ever recorded have been in the 
1990's. Nineteen ninety-seven was the hottest year on record; 1998 is 
going to be hotter if it continues.
    A big part of the problem is the way countries get rich with their 
use of energy. We have to prove--and by the way, we can prove--that we 
can grow the economy and improve the environment at the same time. The 
young people of this country, without regard to their other differences 
of region and political party and philosophy, by and large are much more 
committed to this proposition than older people are. Young people--I 
find even young people in grade school are just instinctive 
environmentalists. We are depending on you to provide the phalanx of 
brainpower and voting power to move America to the proposition that we 
can preserve our environment and grow the economy.
    Next, we have to prove that we can bring the benefits of this new 
economy to people who don't have it yet. Believe it or not, there are 
still some urban neighborhoods that have unemployment rates above 10 
percent, some above 15 percent, while the national unemployment rate is 
below 5 percent. If you talk to the delegates here from North Dakota 
where they're having a collapse of farm prices in the aftermath of a 
terrible, terrible set of natural disasters all through the high plains, 
it's hard--you could walk down the street in a lot of towns in North 
Dakota, and they'd have a hard time believing we've got the strongest 
economy in a generation. If any of you have ever been on a Native 
American reservation that doesn't have a lot of money from gaming 
enterprises, you know that there are still an awful lot of the first 
Americans who have received no tangible benefit from this economic 
growth. Now that the economy is strong, we should be working to 
implement strategies that will bring this growth to them to make sure 
that all Americans feel that they're a part of our future.

[[Page 1259]]

    Just two more things, quickly. Over the long run, we have got to 
prove that we can be one America. I like it--I look around this room; I 
see all of you come from different racial and ethnic and religious 
backgrounds. That's a great, great advantage to America in a global 
society, a global economy.
    Look around the world at all of the problems we have that are based 
on racial, ethnic, and religious differences. Why did those three little 
children have to die in that firebomb in Ireland a few days ago? Because 
somebody just cannot give up the idea that they ought to fight until the 
end of time over their religious differences. Why can we not achieve a 
lasting peace in the Middle East? What is at the root of the problem in 
Bosnia, in Kosovo? Why did hundreds of thousands of people die in Rwanda 
in a matter of days in 1994? All over the world you see this. If America 
wants to do good in a world like that, we must be good at home. We must 
be able to live in all of our communities like you're working and living 
together here. And you can lead the way on that.
    It is very important that we continue, finally, to be engaged in the 
world. That's why I went to China, even though some people said I 
shouldn't: not because we agree with everything the Chinese do but 
because we respect the progress they have made in the last several years 
and because they are going to be the biggest country in the world. And 
it is much better if we work with them to try to build the kind of world 
we want than if we're forced into a situation of continuous conflict and 
estrangement. And I feel a moral obligation to you and your future and 
your children to try to create that kind of world. But first, the power 
of the American example is important, and you must never forget that.
    Now, against that background, you need to evaluate everything we're 
doing here. How are we doing to keep America working today; are we 
dealing with the long-term challenges of the country? Every issue should 
be evaluated in that context.
    One of the things that's most troubling to me is that we have the 
best health care in the world, but we don't have the best health care 
system in the world, and we don't have the healthiest people in the 
world, partly because of institutional problems. One we've been talking 
about is the necessity to pass the Patients' Bill of Rights so we get 
the benefit of managed care without the burden of having accountants 
make decisions doctors should make in the medical area.
    Another big problem we have--it's probably the most prominent health 
problem your generation faces--is the problem of, epidemic of teen 
smoking, with 3,000 young people starting to smoke every day; 1,000 will 
have their lives shortened as a result of it. More people die from 
smoking than accidents and murders and AIDS and other unrelated maladies 
put together in this country. So it is a very, very serious problem.
    I have been working very hard now for a long time to pass 
legislation that will raise the price of cigarettes, give the FDA the 
authority to regulate tobacco as a drug, stop the marketing of 
cigarettes to teenagers, launch new antismoking research and education 
drives, protect the tobacco farmers and their communities, and use the 
money to pay for health care and medical research, education, and child 
care, and any tax cuts that the Congress wanted to pass, so it didn't 
affect our surplus and our commitment to save Social Security.
    Now, right now, our legislative drive has been stalled in the face 
of a $40 million advertising campaign by the tobacco companies that has 
been unanswered by the public health advocates because they don't have 
that kind of money. But the facts are clear, and if we keep working, I 
think we will prevail on the issue. Why? Well, the main reason is the 
evidence that the tobacco companies themselves have given us about the 
dangers of smoking and their strategy. We now have, as a result of all 
these lawsuits, internal tobacco company documents that show that even 
as they publicly denied that nicotine was addictive, they conducted 
secret research in their labs, devised secret marketing strategies in 
their boardrooms to addict children to smoking for life, and they knew 
exactly what they were doing.
    How do we know it? Again, look at the documents that they, 
themselves, have produced in the court cases. These documents tell us in 
the tobacco companies' own words how children and minorities became the 
primary targets they saw as new customers. There are memos admitting in 
plain English, for example, quote, ``The base of our business is the 
high school student.'' Memos saying, quote, ``Creating a fad in the 14- 
to 20-year-old market can be a great bonanza.'' And even as they 
insisted that young

[[Page 1260]]

people are off limits for advertising, one company document from 1984 
recommended targeting younger adult smokers as the only source of 
replacement smokers in the future. Well, children are the future of 
America, not the future of the tobacco companies. And that future should 
not go up in smoke.
    These documents contain a treasure trove of information that can be 
used to save lives. Public health experts can design more effective 
antismoking strategies by studying the marketing plans of the cigarette 
companies. Scientists can look to documents for findings that can aid 
their research into nicotine addiction and tobacco-related illnesses. 
And all Americans can understand the role the industry has played in 
hooking our children to the habit of smoking.
    There are tens of millions of pages of these documents. While some 
of them are already on the Internet, most are stored in depositories all 
across our Nation and as far away as England. They aren't easy to find. 
So I've decided to use this moment with you to show you one thing that 
the President can do with executive authority that has nothing to do 
with legislative action in Congress. I am directing the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services to report back to me in 90 days with a plan to 
make these documents more accessible to all Americans, so anybody that 
can get on the Internet can get them all and can understand them all.
    The plan should include a strategy for indexing them and for making 
that index widely available through both the Internet and other methods. 
It should also have a strategy for broad and rigorous analysis of the 
information contained in all these documents. I'm also pleased that the 
Attorney General will file a brief in support of the State of 
Minnesota's efforts to make the tobacco industry's own currently 
existing index to all of these millions of documents available to the 
general public.
    We must lift the veil of secrecy on the tobacco industry so that all 
Americans understand that there is an epidemic of teen smoking and how 
it came about. Let us use the darkest secrets of the industry to save a 
new generation of children from this habit and to help us fight and win.
    This administration and many of our Nation's leaders are working to 
make sure that this challenge, along with these larger, longer term 
challenges that I've mentioned--education, climate change, Social 
Security--do not become intractable problems of your future. I don't 
want your generation of Americans to have to face a problem like the 
magnitude of the deficit that I faced here when we took office,
    I can tell you that the tougher problems are, the harder the 
resolution is, and the more controversial the resolution is, and the 
more painful the price to pay is. We had to make a lot of tough 
decisions in 1993 to get that deficit under control, and a lot of brave 
Members of Congress lost their seats in Congress because they voted for 
an economic program in 1993, the benefits of which were not apparent in 
1994 when they were up. But when we got ready to pass the Balanced 
Budget Act in 1997 on a bipartisan basis, guess what? Over 92 percent of 
the deficit had already disappeared because of what had been done in 
1993.
    The best thing for a smart country to do is to take these challenges 
when they come up and deal with them quickly, looking to the long run, 
not waiting for those things to fester and become infected and become a 
wound in the Nation's psyche. That is what we're trying to do here.
    That's why I think programs like Girls Nation are so important, 
because they enlist people in the work of citizenship as a disciplined 
habit, not as something that you think about when an emergency comes 
along. I hope you will be able to do that to your friends and your 
neighbors and your family members when you go home. I hope you will 
always continue now to help raise awareness of the issues you care about 
and propose solutions to them. I hope you will always continue to lobby 
your elected leaders and to participate until you become one.
    Our democracy is only as strong as its citizens. Think about this 
when you go home: Our Founders did a revolutionary thing. They created a 
whole country based on the idea, at the time totally unheard of, that 
God gave every person in equal portion--every person in equal portion--
the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They said, 
``We've got to create this Government because there's no way we can 
individually protect and enhance these rights. That's why we're doing 
this.''
    And then they gave us--all of us, every American until time 
immemorial--a mission: They said, ``We must work together to form a more 
perfect Union.'' They were really smart, those guys. [Laughter] They 
were really smart. They understood that every generation would have its

[[Page 1261]]

own challenges. They understand the work of liberty would never be 
over--they understood all that. They understood it all, and they gave us 
a permanent mission.
    And keep in mind, they created a limited Government, which means 
that in this country, the most important players will always be the 
citizens. As great as the leaders are, and all the monuments you've seen 
to our great leaders around this city since you've been here this week, 
none of them could have accomplished anything if the people hadn't said, 
``Okay, we agree; we'll do our part.''
    So again, I say, you've had a remarkable opportunity this week to 
learn more about how your country works. You have, yourselves, been good 
citizen servants by doing it. You've had a chance to manifest your love 
in America and your belief in America. For the rest of your life, I hope 
you'll do what you can to make our Union more perfect.
    Good luck, and God bless you. [Applause] Thank you.
    Now, I'm just going to go sign this order, and I'm going to ask your 
president and vice president to stand with me, and then I'm going to 
turn the microphone over to them. Come on.

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

    Q. Mr. President, do you think that the court ruling can----
    The President. I'll answer questions, but let's do--let us finish 
the program, and then I'll answer a few questions. That'll be fun for 
them; they'll see a little press conference here. [Laughter]
    Okay, you've got the floor.

[At this point, Jennifer Hall, vice president, 1998 Girls Nation 
Session, made brief remarks and presented the President with a Girls 
Nation sweatshirt.]

    The President. That's wonderful. Thank you.

[At this point, Alana Aldag, president, 1998 Girls Nation Session, made 
brief remarks and presented to the President legislation passed by the 
1998 Girls Nation Senate.]

    The President. This is the largest legislative package that's passed 
in Washington so far this week. [Laughter] And I thank you very much. 
Thank you. I will have our people review this for good ideas. [Laughter]
    Now, go ahead. Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International], 
first--we'll take two or three questions. Go ahead.

Court Rulings on Secret Service Agent Testimony

    Q. Well, do you think that the court rulings are jeopardizing the 
duties of the Secret Service?
    The President. Well, they believe--that is, the Treasury Department 
and the Secret Service, based on their experience not just with me but 
with all the Presidents, in the institutional memory of the Secret 
Service--they believe that. And so, they are determined to pursue it, 
and the Attorney General has agreed to represent them in that. But that 
is their professional judgment. I have decided that it would be 
inappropriate for me to express an opinion, and I have not done so. And 
I believe that I should stay out of it. But they have a very strong 
professional opinion about it, and they are pursuing it.
    Q. But you have an opinion, surely.
    The President. I do have an opinion. I have an opinion. I have a 
legal opinion, and I have a personal opinion, but I think that's not--I 
think it's important, and I think it would be completely inappropriate 
for me to be involved in this. I want the American people to understand 
that, notwithstanding what some have said and others have implied, this 
was a decision that came out of the Secret Service about which they feel 
very strongly. And these people risk their lives to protect me and other 
Presidents in a professional way, not a political way. They have strong 
convictions. They have manifested those convictions. The Attorney 
General has determined that there is sufficient legal merit in their 
position that they ought to be represented, and they are pursuing their 
case, which they have a right to do. I believe that they should speak 
for themselves, and I should not interject myself into it.
    Q. Mr. President, I wonder if you could respond to the ruling 
yesterday by the Appeals Court, and specifically the opinion of one 
judge when he said that the White House had effectively declared war on 
the Independent Counsel--
    The President. I think you have to consider the source of that 
comment. And that is simply

[[Page 1262]]

not true. The judge should--can have a right to his legal opinion about 
what the Treasury Department and Justice Department said, but I have 
told you that this case is about their professional judgment about 
what's necessary to do their job. And I have not--neither I nor the 
White House has been involved in it in any way, shape, or form--nor will 
we, nor will I complicate it by commenting further on what he said.
    Q. But in a larger sense, you don't believe that the White House 
is----
    The President. Well, in a larger sense, I am spoken for on that by 
Mr. Kendall. I think the facts speak for themselves. I think--again, I 
say you've got to consider the source of that comment.
    Press Secretary Mike McCurry. Last question.

U.S. Trade Deficit and Asian Economies

    Q. Mr. President, the trade deficit in May was up around $15 
billion. Are you willing to overlook that while the Asian financial 
crisis plays itself out?
    The President. Well, I don't think--no, I don't think we should 
overlook it, I think it ought to prompt us to action. But let's 
understand why the trade deficit is so large. The trade deficit is large 
because we live in an integrated global economy, and our economy has 
been strong while the Asian economy has been in trouble. What does that 
mean? When their economy is in trouble, the value of their currency goes 
down. What does that mean? That means that compared to yesterday, if 
their currency goes down, their money is worth less than ours in the 
same amounts. That means it becomes--their goods that they sell to us 
become cheaper, and it means our goods that we would sell to them become 
more expensive.
    Almost the entire increase in the trade deficit is due to the Asian 
economic trouble, which is why, since January, I have been saying we 
should make our proper contribution to the International Monetary Fund 
to promote economic reform and economic recovery in Asia. And the fact 
that we have not done so is endangering the livelihood of American 
farmers and American factory workers because we are not making the 
exports, especially to Asia, that we otherwise could be making if those 
economies were coming back. And a critical part of that is our 
contribution to the International Monetary Fund.
    So, we should not ignore it, because, as I said in the State of the 
Union Address way back in January, our welfare is tied to the welfare of 
Asia. We've got 16 million new jobs in the last 5\1/2\ years; 30 percent 
of our economic growth is due to exports. A significant area of export 
growth has been Asia.
    That's why I worked hard to--the other big area of real growth has 
been in Latin America. And what I've tried to do is to head these things 
off. You may remember a couple of years ago when we moved in 
aggressively to help Mexico when their economy was in trouble and a lot 
of people criticized that. But Mexico paid back their loan ahead of 
schedule and at profit to the United States. And they are now a 
functioning economic partner with us again. That's what we need in Asia.
    So, the American people should be concerned about this, but we 
should know that there is a disciplined answer. We need to restore 
growth in Japan, restore growth in Asia, and our major goal here for our 
own action should be to pay our fair share to the International Monetary 
Fund so we can support economic recovery, so they can afford to buy our 
products, and so there's some greater parity in the prices of our 
products. Meanwhile, what you see is a product of the strength, not the 
weakness, of the American economy.

Tax Cuts

    Q. What do you think of the Speaker's proposal to use this budget 
surplus for big tax cuts?
    The President. I think, first of all, let's remember how we got 
where we are. We got the strength of our economy to the point where it 
is now by being determined to bring down the deficit until we balanced 
the budget, by expanding trade to sell more American products around the 
world, and by investing in education, in training, in technology, in 
scientific research. Those are the engines of our economic recovery.
    Now, we have not had a balanced budget for 29 years. And now, before 
we've had the first year, the first year of a surplus, to be talking 
about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a tax cut based on 
projected surpluses that may or may not materialize, before we have 
spent the first dollar to save Social Security so that you aren't going 
to have to support your parents in a way that diminishes your standard 
of living, I think is a mistake. So I'll go back to my position: I think 
we should save Social

[[Page 1263]]

Security first. Let's show the American people this balanced budget. 
Let's show the American people this surplus. Let's try to keep this 
economy going and get our growth going, and when we have passed a plan 
to save Social Security, let's see what it costs and then make a 
decision on the tax issue.
    We don't want to count our chickens before they hatch. Now, the end 
of the fiscal year here is September 30th. And it's now projected that 
we'll have a $63 billion surplus, and I earnestly hope we do. But it 
wouldn't do any harm to rack one up before we start spending it. We had 
29 years of deficits. Between 1981 and 1983--in 12 years alone, we 
increased by 4 times the total debt of the United States. We quadrupled 
the debt of the United States in 12 years that we had amassed in the 
previous 200. It won't do us any harm to take one year and enjoy the 
fact that we've balanced our books, ran up a surplus, and planned to 
save Social Security. That will not do us any harm. It will keep our 
economy stronger, and it's better for America's future.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:30 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Diane Duscheck, 
director, 1998 Girls Nation Session; Barbara Kranig, national president, 
American Legion Auxiliary; ABC News anchor Ted Koppel; brothers Richard, 
Mark, and Jason Quinn, who died in a firebombing attack on their home in 
Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, on July 12; Judge Laurence H. Silberman of 
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia; and attorney 
David E. Kendall.