[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[February 21, 1999]
[Pages 224-231]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Labor Unification Legislative Conference
February 21, 1999

    Thank you. I would like to--first of all, thank you for the 
wonderful, warm welcome--to express my deep respect and support for the 
IAM president, Tom Buffenbarger, and 
all of the IAM officers; the UAW executive VP, Ruben Burks--I know Steve Yokich 
is in Germany now--and all the UAW members here; and the steel workers' 
president, George Becker, and all the steel 
workers here; and of course, everyone up here on the platform with me.
    George Becker would give his voice, his 
heart, and his life for his members. And he nearly gave his voice 
tonight.

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    I came here to do a number of things, but I'd like to start with 
first things first. The first thing I want to do is to say a simple, 
profound thank-you. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for 
the fight you have waged. Thank you for the miles we have walked 
together these last 6 years.
    I also came here to support the merger of these three great streams 
of American labor, joining into a new river of 2 million strong. 
Throughout the 20th century, all three of you have been at the forefront 
in the struggle for human progress in America. The workers at River 
Rouge and Republic Steel shed their blood for more than their own rights 
and their own families. Their sacrifice gave all of us collective 
bargaining and the minimum wage.
    The founders and members of your three unions gave us things all 
working people now take for granted as essential elements in a humane 
society: vacations, health care, pensions, grievance procedures. You 
have continued to lead the fight for all Americans, the fight to create 
Medicare, to civil rights, to protecting our Nation against the Contract 
With America. The UAW, the steel workers, the machinists have provided 
the minds and muscles for a progressive society in our country.
    Now, in this season of renewal and rebuilding for America, the house 
of labor is growing stronger. The creation of a mighty new industrial 
union, not just a merger but a new organization, will set the stage for 
even greater progress for your members and your families and for all the 
rest of America in the 21st century.
    I believe you have an opportunity and, therefore, a duty every bit 
as real as that which was seized by the great generations that preceded 
you a half century ago. The labor pioneers had it hard. They wore their 
scars proudly. They were not always the easiest of personalities. But in 
spite of their contentiousness, I like to think that Walter Reuther, 
Philip Murray, and Thomas Talbot are up in heaven shaking hands at this 
new merger.
    I thank you all for the strong support you have given not only to me 
and the First Lady and the Vice President and our administration but to 
our Democratic Party, especially in 1998. I'll never forget the sense of 
pride I shared on election night with John Sweeney, when he was at the White House, and we realized that for 
the first time since 1822, the President's party had won seats in the 
House of Representatives in the sixth year of an administration. You 
might be interested to know that the last time that happened, in 1822, 
the other party disappeared. [Laughter] We won't be that lucky. 
[Laughter] But it certainly is a good incentive to continue the fight.
    I want to thank you for your commitment to make your voices heard, 
to advance the issues and the candidates that are pro-worker and pro-
family. For 6 years, as George said, we've been on a journey together to 
renew our Nation, to restore the American dream. For decades, our Nation 
was buffeted by the winds of economic change. Wages for working families 
stagnated; working people fell further behind. Beginning in 1993, 
together, we put in place a new economic strategy to put our people 
first. Because of what you have done, America is working again, with the 
longest peacetime expansion in history, the lowest peacetime 
unemployment since 1957, nearly 18 million new jobs, the lowest welfare 
rolls in three decades. And finally, after three decades of stagnation, 
in just the last 3 years wages are rising at twice the rate of 
inflation.
    Things are not all as they ought to be, but clearly, at long last, 
we have begun to move aggressively in the right direction. Together, as 
has already been noted, we stood up against the congressional majority 
that was absolutely determined to strip away the victories and undermine 
the rights of working people.
    I was proud to stand with you also to defeat the ``Paycheck 
Protection Act'' in California. I was proud to stop every piece of anti-
labor legislation sent to me by the Congress. We knew the ``TEAM Act'' 
would undermine collective bargaining, so we said no. We knew the 
Republican comp-time bill would be unfair to working people, so we said 
no. We knew that safe pensions and a strong OSHA are vital to working 
people, so when Congress tried to undermine them, we said no.
    After 12 years in which my predecessors exploded deficits and 
quadrupled our national debt, all the while talking about a balanced 
budget and accusing my party and our friends in organized labor of being 
the big, irresponsible spenders, we actually balanced the budget and did 
it in the right way, while nearly doubling our investments in the 
education and training of our people, and having big increases in things 
like medical research.

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    We're in the second year of surpluses, with years and years more 
projected in the future. America is working again. But as I said in my 
State of the Union Address, this is not a time for complacency. For one 
reason, as all of you here know, especially the steel workers, we are 
living in a very dynamic and somewhat troubling international economic 
environment where things can change overnight. For another, in a world 
that is changing this fast, we have to take advantage of this moment of 
prosperity to deal with the big challenges facing America in the 21st 
century. We cannot rest until America works for every American, until 
prosperity extends to every working family in every community. America 
must do more.
    Among other things, we must remain a great industrial nation. So I'd 
like to talk to you tonight about three aspects of our challenge. First 
of all, before the baby boomers retire, and with life expectancy 
increasing at a dramatic rate, with people over 80 being the fastest 
growing part of our population in percentage terms, we must use this 
moment and this surplus to save and strengthen Social Security and 
Medicare for the 21st century.
    Now, here in Washington there is now a great debate about what to do 
with the surplus and how it should be applied, and whether, to Social 
Security and Medicare. I won't take time tonight to talk about the 
competing visions of Social Security and how we should deal with that, 
but I will work with you on that. What I want to talk about is, what 
should be our first priority with the surplus? I believe it should be to 
save Social Security and Medicare, and in so doing, to pay down the 
national debt that was quadrupled in the 12 years before I took office.
    Now, I am pleased that even though we will have our disagreements 
about what to do with Social Security, the Republican leadership in 
Congress has agreed that we should set aside 62 percent of the surplus 
to save Social Security. I think it's important that we do it in the 
right way: We should put 75 years of life on the Trust Fund; we should 
do something about elderly women whose poverty rate is twice the rate of 
seniors; and we ought to lift the earnings limit so that seniors who 
want to work can do that.
    Now, unfortunately, we do not agree on whether to set aside another 
15 percent of the surplus to save Medicare. Of course, we will have our 
disagreements about how Medicare should be reformed. I think it should 
be reformed and kept solvent for 20 years, and also, we should add a 
prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. And I don't want to 
kid you. I think because of the numbers of people that are going to 
retire in the baby boom generation, and because we're all living longer, 
and because of medical advances which at least in their early years are 
more expensive, we will have to make some further reforms in Medicare, 
even if we do what I want.
    But if we set aside 15 percent of the surplus for the next 15 years 
for Medicare, we can at least guarantee that it's all right till 2020. 
If we don't, we'll be faced with possible changes in Medicare that could 
undermine the universality of the program and its absolute reliability 
for seniors and for the children and grandchildren of seniors who don't 
have to pay those out-of-pocket medical expenses. So this is a huge 
issue.
    Now, our friends in the other party say that we ought to just reform 
Medicare and maybe shift some of the costs to seniors--who may not be 
able to afford it--and maybe get away from Medicare as a defined benefit 
program. I am against that. I do not want to see Medicare turned from a 
defined benefit program into a defined contribution program.
    But think of what we can do if we set aside part of this surplus, 
which will allow us to pay down even more of our debt and put 20 years 
on the Medicare Trust Fund's life, and then we can figure out how to 
make what other changes need to be made to strengthen the program and 
how to add the prescription drug program.
    Now, that will cost more money in the short run, but over the long 
run, adding the prescription drug benefit will cut down on doctor 
visits; will cut down on hospital costs; will cut down on critical care 
costs, because with all these advances in medical research, people will 
be able to stay healthier. The best way to cut down on the cost of the 
Medicare program is to keep seniors healthier for longer periods of 
time, and the medicine will help us to do that.
    I believe the American people should have some tax relief out of 
this surplus, but I think we should save Social Security and Medicare 
first. Then I think we should focus the tax relief on helping working 
people and the middle class begin to save from their first day on the 
job, so they will have a piece of this enormous

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wealth that America has enjoyed in the last 6 years. That's what our USA 
accounts, our Universal Savings Accounts, will do.
    So the choice the American people will face is our plan, which 
invests the surplus for tomorrow and focuses the tax relief on working 
families and the need to save, and theirs, which spends a lot more of 
the surplus today. Ours favors savings; theirs favors consumption. Ours 
focuses tax relief on the middle class, and theirs--well, theirs is a 
Republican tax plan. [Laughter]
    I think at least this administration and our leaders in Congress 
ought to be entitled to the benefit of the doubt, based on the 
performance of the economy in the last 6 years. Their economic theory 
gave us 12 years of rising deficits and declining incomes. Our economic 
strategy has given us growth and surpluses. When I took office, the 
national debt had risen to one-half our annual income. If we adopt my 
plan for the surplus, in 15 years, it will be just 7 percent of our 
annual income. That's the lowest it's been since right before we entered 
World War I in 1917.
    What that means in practical terms to you is that when I took 
office, we were spending over 14 cents of every dollar you paid in taxes 
just to make our interest payments on the debt. In 15 years that will be 
down to 2 cents on the dollar. The rest can be spent on you and your 
children and your future. And within 18 years, the United States of 
America would be debt-free.
    Think of it: If we just have the discipline to do the right thing--
and I'll say more in a minute why it's good for the economy--we could 
save Social Security for 75 years, save Medicare for 20 years, and get 
the United States of America out of debt. I think that is the right 
thing to do.
    But I don't want to pretend that their plan won't sound good, sound 
sweet, and sound simple. All I ask you is to look at the performance of 
our country in the last 6 years and give us the benefit of the doubt and 
support us. Let's save Social Security. Let's not let Medicare be 
dissolved. Let's not let it be changed fundamentally in its character. 
And let's pay down this debt to keep America's economy strong.
    Now, the second thing we have to do is to keep the economy growing 
and to deal with crises as they occur. We have to have a strategy to 
keep the global economy working for Americans, as well as to increase 
the economic development here at home.
    For the first 5 years of my Presidency, 30 percent of our economic 
growth came from increasing exports, and manufacturing employment in 
America increased. But last year, because of the global financial 
crisis, which has left Russia, most of Asia, in a deep recession, and 
has slowed growth dramatically in most of Latin America, the 
manufacturing sector in our country was hit very hard. We saw many, many 
jobs lost, and we know many more than those that were lost are still 
threatened. Industrial America is hurting now.
    I have worked hard to limit this global financial crisis, to try to 
right the things that are out of whack, to help our trading partners 
return to economic growth in a healthy way so that they could buy our 
products instead of dump on our markets. We need a 21st century 
financial and trading system that limits the cycle of boom and bust, 
that strengthens social safety nets, that works for ordinary working 
people and their families in every country. In short, the United States 
must lead a crusade to put a more human face on the global economy.
    While we are doing that--and I expect to spend an enormous amount of 
time this year working on that, so that we can reduce the likelihood 
that we'll have years in the future like the last year has been--we 
cannot let other economies' difficulties be a justification or an excuse 
for them to violate trade laws and engage in unfair trade practices.
    Make no mistake about it. It was not economic difficulty and the 
declining value of currency which made foreign goods cheaper, which 
precipitated the present crisis in steel. This was not an ordinary 
economic event. We know it was the result of unfair trade practices. We 
have used tools that are unprecedented in this kind of dispute to 
respond.
    The Secretary of Commerce speeded up 
consideration of the dumping cases. We just announced that both Japan 
and Brazil have been dumping steel into our markets. We've put them on 
notice that the surge in exports is unacceptable, and this means that 
anyone who imports steel from Japan or Brazil must pay large deposits or 
post substantial bonds to the U.S. Customs Service. Paying these duties 
will likely reduce further unfair steel imports from these countries.

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    We've also made it clear to Korea in no uncertain terms that they 
cannot fill the void with unfair trade practices, and so far they have 
been responsive, though we'll continue to watch it closely. As you know, 
we're in negotiations with Russia on a comprehensive agreement to reduce 
their steel exports to the United States.
    The goal of all these actions is to get imports back to their pre-
crisis level when our steel industry was competing just fine with 
everybody in the world. And again, if we have a fair policy and we don't 
have unfair penetration, that will happen. Now, I know that for a lot of 
hard-pressed plants, workers, families, communities, these trade laws 
work too slowly. But we are accelerating the pace at which they will 
work to the maximum ability to do so. December numbers show a 32 percent 
decline in steel imports across the board, a 67 percent decline in hot-
rolled steel.
    Now, I would just like to make one observation about that. For all 
those people who said that all these imports were just the product of 
ordinary economic activity and, therefore, we shouldn't do anything, the 
fact that they could cut hot-rolled steel exports from their countries 
to us 67 percent in one month pretty well destroyed the argument that it 
was ordinary economic activity that led to them in the first place.
    In the case of Japan, we have made it clear that if their exports 
don't return to pre-crisis levels, we're prepared to take appropriate 
action, including self-initiation of trade cases, something that is 
almost unprecedented. I will work very closely with you as we move 
forward. This has been a tough year for the steel workers and for many 
other manufacturing workers. We need to do more. And we will keep at it 
until we turn the crisis around.
    The challenge we face, however, goes beyond steel. We have to make 
sure that the world economy works for everyone. As George said in his 
opening remarks, we've had some disagreements about this in the past. 
Trade has divided Americans for a long time. I want you to know, 
however, that I am determined to do whatever I can to find common ground 
on this issue that will enable labor and business, environmentalists and 
government in the United States to work together.
    I support open markets because it has given us higher incomes and 
more jobs, and for the first time in anyone's memory, now the United 
States has the lowest unemployment rate in the industrialized world, 
even lower than Japan. No one can remember a time when that was the 
case. It's been a very, very long time.
    Now, the right kind of trade is good for working families. And when 
a financial crisis hits our trading partners, we can see the devastating 
effect it has on them and on others here at home. But again I say we 
can't allow international economic competition or adversity elsewhere to 
become a race to the bottom here at home or in any other country.
    My goal has got to be to level the world up, not level it down. That 
means we have to press for more open markets that have stronger 
safeguards for workers, not weaker ones, for health and safety, for 
children, for a clean environment. A trade that honors the rights of 
workers and the dignity of work, that respects core labor rights. We 
have to do that.
    We should do more not only through the trade framework but with the 
international labor organizations to raise labor standards around the 
world and to lead the world community to conclude a treaty that bans 
child labor everywhere in the world.
    Now, if we save Social Security and Medicare, if we can keep the 
economy going in the midst of all these troubles, the third thing that 
we have to do is to make sure that the economy works for all of our 
people and that adversity can be quickly overcome. If we can't do it 
now, when will we ever do it? That's why we ought to increase the 
minimum wage again. Ten million working families need it, and we ought 
to do it.
    That's why we should expand the family and medical leave law to 
cover 10 million more workers and their families. It is not broad enough 
in its coverage. If we can't afford it now, when will we ever get around 
to doing it?
    And that's why we have to recognize, also, that there are people in 
this country, in urban communities and rural areas, who have not felt 
any upturn in the last 6 years. That's what my new markets initiative is 
all about.
    You know, we have all kinds of devices to help encourage Americans 
to invest in developing countries overseas, that aren't present here. 
One of the things that I have proposed is an ``American Private 
Investment Company,'' modeled on our Overseas Private Investment 
Corporation, that would enable us to give both tax credits and loan 
guarantees to people who

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would invest in high unemployment areas in America, to put in new plants 
and new businesses, to create new markets and new jobs.
    Let me just give you an example of how it would work, because I'm 
going to need your help to pass this. New York City--while America has a 
4.4 percent unemployment rate, the unemployment rate in New York City is 
about 9 percent. Now, when you consider how low it is in some places in 
New York City, that means in a lot of big urban centers, it's well over 
10 percent. If this whole plan passes, and a group of people got 
together, for example, under these laws that I have proposed, to spend 
$300 million and open a plant in a high unemployment area in Brooklyn or 
the Bronx, or they wanted to--to use Congressman Rangel's favorite 
example--they wanted to rehabilitate Yankee Stadium instead of moving it 
away and hire construction workers who live in the Bronx to do it--
suppose they wanted to do that. Under our plan, if this law passes, they 
put up $300 million; the first $100 million, they get a 25 percent tax 
credit for. The second $200 million, they'd have a loan guarantee for, 
which means they'd only have $75 million at risk for the $300 million 
investment.
    That's a good deal. The best untapped markets for American business 
are here in America, and it will lower everybody else's threshold of 
anxiety; it will create economic opportunity. It's good for the steel 
workers. It's good for the machinists. It's good for the auto workers, 
because if those people have jobs, they'll buy more of everything. And I 
want you to help me pass it.
    I also ask you to help me strengthen our education system, to finish 
the job of cutting class sizes by putting 100,000 new teachers into our 
schools, to pass our proposal to build or modernize 6,000 schools.
    And I ask you to do something that will be quite controversial. I 
hope you will support me in this. Every 5 years, we pass an 
authorization law which sets the terms under which we give our tax money 
back to public schools. And it's about $15 billion a year now that we 
give to schools to help them do their work. We now know--from teachers, 
from principals, from parents, from students themselves, from worlds of 
research--what works in the schools and what doesn't. We know that every 
problem in American education has been solved by somebody somewhere. But 
we know something else: Our kids, a representative sample of our kids--
represented by race, income, and region--scores at the top of the world 
in the 4th grade math and science tests, drops to the middle of the 
world by the 8th grade, and is nearly at the bottom by the 12th.
    Now, those children do not get dumber as they get older. That means 
we are not doing well enough by them, and we have to do better. We have 
to make sure all these kids can read well when they're in elementary 
school no matter what their family background or where their folks came 
from.
    So I say, we need to change the terms in which we give out this 
money, not because the Federal Government makes it up in a room 
somewhere but because the schools have told us what works. We ought to 
end social promotion, but we ought to do it by saying we want to end 
social promotion, but we don't want to declare the kids failures because 
the system's failing them. So we ought to provide more funds for summer 
school programs, for after-school programs, for tutors--keep the kids 
out of trouble, off the streets, in the schools learning, but make sure 
they know something when they go from grade to grade.
    The teachers organizations have asked us repeatedly to make one 
requirement that every school has not only a written, reasonable 
discipline policy but can prove it's being enforced. That's important.
    They ought to identify schools that are failing and turn them down 
or shut them down. Every State that's done this has found that they 
hardly have to shut any schools down, because they get turned around 
once they know that they're going to be shut down unless they do turn 
around.
    These are elemental things that have worked in community after 
community after community. I think parents ought to get a report card on 
every school, every year, that their children are in. I think if we do 
these things, you'll be amazed at the results we'll have 5 years from 
now, when we have to reauthorize this aid again.
    But this will be real controversial. Some people will say it's too 
tough on the kids that come from poor backgrounds. I think that's 
selling them short. They can do just fine, if they have good schools. 
And I'll tell you something, if they get out of school without a good 
education, the world's going to be real tough on them. And so we need to 
help them.

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    And then some of our friends in the other party will say, ``Well, 
here's the President trying to micromanage the schools. We just want to 
give them the money. We're not trying to tell the schools what to do.'' 
Well, that would be true if I had just sat in my office one day and come 
up with this and thought it sounded good. This is what the people at the 
grassroots level have said and done and proved works. And it is simply 
wrong for us to keep subsidizing failure when we can invest in success. 
So I ask you to help us.
    Just two other things, very quickly: I want you to help me this year 
do what we didn't do last year and pass a strong, enforceable Patients' 
Bill of Rights. Now, a lot of you know--a lot of you know, or you're 
about to find out in very difficult ways, that after years of moderate 
inflation in health care costs those premiums are going up again, even 
for managed care. And if you're going to pay for health care, you ought 
to be able to get health care. If you need to see a specialist, you 
ought to be able to see one. If you have options for health care, you 
ought to know what your options are. If you're in another town and you 
get hit in an accident, you ought to be able to go to the nearest 
emergency room, not one that's halfway across town. If you're in the 
middle of treatment with a doctor, you ought to be able to continue the 
treatment even if you change health care providers. These are elemental 
things.
    The last thing I want to say, if you want the economy to work for 
everybody--I want to come back to something I said before--I know this 
is an alien concept; if I had been running for President in 1992--and 
many of you did so much for me--and I said, look, you vote for me and 6 
years from now I'll be coming back to you telling you what great things 
will happen if we pay down the national debt, you would have decided 
that I needed a trip to a doctor, not to be elected President. But we 
can talk about that now.
    We want the economy to work for everyone. You don't know what's 
going to happen beyond our borders. I am doing my best to turn this 
situation around, to do everything I can to make sure we don't have 
another year like the year we just had in the global economy, with all 
the trade problems and other things that came down on us. But if, God 
forbid, we continue to have these kinds of problems, don't we want the 
strongest demand we have here at home? Don't we want to be able to--and 
if we do more to protect our markets from unfair trade practices, then 
it still means that we're going to have to generate more economic 
activity here at home.
    If you pay down the debt, what will happen? Interest rates will stay 
down, much lower than they otherwise would, no matter what happens 
around the world. That means lower home mortgage payments; it means 
lower car payments; it means lower business loans; it means lower 
student loans; it means lower credit card payments. It means greater 
investment in the American economy, more jobs, and lower prices and 
higher consumption. That's what it means.
    Now, I do not know what is going to happen everywhere in the world 
in the next 2 years, much less after I'm gone. But I know this: If 
you'll go along with this and you'll help me do this, for the next 15 
years, every single year the interest rates in America and the economy 
in America will be in better shape, no matter what happens, than they 
would have been if we don't do it and we give away this money right now. 
So I ask you to help me do this. This is a right thing to do for the 
United States of America.
    Finally, let me just say there are a lot of changes going on in the 
world. No one can predict the future with any certainty. Tell you the 
truth, it's all worked out a little better, until this last rough patch 
in the road for us, than I thought it would when I was running. But I 
knew we were doing the right things.
    One of the things we know is, if we put the American people first--
if we think about how people can balance work and family, if we think 
about how we can preserve the dignity of work, if we think about how we 
can give every child the right to live up to his or her God-given 
capacity--if we do the right things, then in the tough times we'll do 
better than we otherwise would have, and in the good times we'll soar.
    The American labor movement has helped this country to do the right 
things year-in and year-out, decade-in and decade-out. In joining 
together, I am convinced you have done the right thing for your members 
and their families for the 21st century. And I am convinced that you 
will do the right things for America.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

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Note: The President spoke at 6:45 p.m. in Hall A at the Washington 
Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to R. Thomas 
Buffenbarger, international president, International Association of 
Machinists (IAM); Ruben Burks, secretary-treasurer, and Stephen P. 
Yokich, president, United Auto Workers (UAW); George Becker, president, 
United Steel Workers Association (USWA), who introduced the President; 
and John J. Sweeney, president, AFL-CIO. The IAM, UAW, and USWA had 
pledged in 1996 to unify by the year 2000.