    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [November 3, 1999]
    [Pages 1954-1958]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Returning Without Approval to the House of Representatives
    Appropriations Legislation for the District of Columbia and Labor,
    Health, and Education Programs and an Exchange With Reporters
    November 3, 1999

    Shootings in Honolulu and Seattle

        The President. Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that I join
    with all Americans in expressing shock and profound sorrow at the
    shootings which have occurred over the last 2 days in Honolulu and
    Seattle. I have been briefed on both situations. The Federal Government
    has offered all appropriate assistance to local officials. Our thoughts
    and prayers are with the victims and with their families.

    Veto of Appropriations Legislation

        Yesterday I returned from Oslo, Norway, where, with American
    support, Israeli and Palestinian leaders entered a new critical phase in
    their efforts to resolve their ancient conflict. Tomorrow I will begin a
    journey to places here in America that are only just beginning to feel
    the benefits of our remarkable economic recovery, an expansion which, in
    February, will become the longest in the history of our country. I will
    highlight new ideas and efforts that can make these communities and
    those like them all across America new markets for American investment,
    entrepreneurism, and opportunity.
        In the last 7 years, our country has gone from conditions of
    economic distress, social division, and political drift to a nation
    headed in the right direction for the 21st century. But to truly fulfill
    our promise, we must all continue to do our jobs. And Congress, in that
    vein, must produce the right kind of budget, a budget that reflects the
    values of our people, respects the need for Government to live within
    its means, and looks to our future.
        Moments ago I vetoed a bill because it does not meet those criteria,
    a Labor, Health, and Education bill that Congress sent me yesterday. The
    bill is a catalog of missed opportunities, misguided priorities, and
    mindless cuts in everything from education to national defense to the
    environment. It forces school children to pay for the failure of
    Congress to make responsible choices. And it fails to reflect our
    deepest values.
        We value education. Yet this bill fails to invest the right way in
    education. It reneges on last year's bipartisan agreement to fund
    100,000 new, highly trained teachers to reduce class size in the early
    grades. And at the same time, it opens the door for Federal funds to be
    used for private school vouchers. We need more teachers in smaller
    classes in our public schools, instead.
        The bill fails to include my initiative to demand accountability by
    helping school districts to turn around failing schools or close them
    down. And it shortchanges other priorities, from enhancing worker safety
    to expanding child care to immunizing our children, at the moment when
    we have finally reached our goal of immunizing 90 percent of them, to
    protecting Americans from the threat of bioterrorism.
        We value fiscal responsibility. But this bill abdicates that
    responsibility by imposing across-the-board cuts that clearly will
    damage vital priorities, even as the Republican majority has larded the
    budget with wasteful projects.
        For example, Congress would spend hundreds of millions of dollars
    for projects the Pentagon did not ask for. Yet this bill would force the
    military to cut jobs for tens of thousands of soldiers and other
    military personnel. It would mean fewer FBI agents to fight crime, no
    food assistance to tens of thousands of low-income women, infants, and
    children, and less help to master the basics to over 100,000 children in
    our poorest school districts.

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        We value a clean environment. But the budget Congress has passed
    would roll back important environmental protections. We value the safety
    of our families and the fact that we now have the lowest crime rate in
    30 years and the lowest murder rate in 32 years. But their budget fails
    to put 50,000 new community police officers in our neighborhoods where
    the crime rates are highest, to keep those rates coming down until we're
    the safest big country in the world. We value peace and freedom and
    security. But their budget would undermine our ability to lead the world
    in pursuit of these goals.
        Some Members of Congress have said they're willing to restore
    funding for one critical effort they left out of the bill that was
    passed, our commitment to the Middle East peace process. That is very
    good but not good enough. We also need a budget that will enable America
    to advance our critical interests all around the world, including paying
    our U.N. dues, continuing America's work to reduce nuclear weapon
    threats in Russia, and doing our fair share of the world's efforts to
    reduce the debt of the poorest nations.
        Now Congress is more than a month behind schedule. I know a lot of
    the Members want to leave town. But the American people want Congress to
    lead first and to do their work first. There are a lot of important
    matters that remain unfinished. Let me just mention a few of them.
        Our Nation continues on this day to be reminded of the horrors of
    gun violence. We need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of
    criminals and children. Congress needs to send me commonsense
    legislation that closes the gun show loophole, bans the importation of
    large ammunition clips, and has child safety locks as a requirement of
    new gun sales.
        To ensure that every American and every health plan has the
    protections they need, Congress should pass the Patients' Bill of
    Rights. To meet the challenge of an aging America, Congress should act
    on my plan to extend the life of Social Security to 2050 and to reform
    Medicare and add a prescription drug coverage.
        To ensure the financial health of our hospitals, nursing homes, and
    other health care providers, Congress must moderate the cuts that
    resulted from the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. To give millions of
    people with disabilities a chance to experience the dignity of work
    without losing health coverage, Congress must send me the work
    incentives improvement act. To give hardworking families a chance to
    share in our growing prosperity, Congress should pass an increase in the
    minimum wage.
        To keep our economy on the cutting edge of scientific and
    technological change, Congress must extend the research and development
    tax credit, and it should expend others, as well, such as our welfare-
    to-work tax credit, which has helped to give us welfare rolls that are
    about half what they were 7 years ago.
        To provide our children the schools they need, Congress should pass
    tax credits to build or modernize 6,000 schools. To shine the light of
    prosperity on communities like those I will visit in the next couple of
    days, Congress must pass the new markets tax credits to give investors
    the same incentives to invest in new markets here we give them to invest
    around the world.
        The budget I sent Congress shows that we can do all this in a way
    that is paid for, doesn't spend the Social Security surplus, allows us
    to pay down the debt over the next 15 years so that we can be debt-free
    for the first time since 1835. So I urge Congress to put partisanship
    aside and work with me to complete the work the American people sent us
    here to do.
        Just before I came here, I had a very good talk with Speaker
    Hastert and Senator Lott. I have not given up and neither have they. We have
    agreed that we will continue to work, beginning this evening, as hard as
    we can to try to resolve the differences that remain between us. If we
    do that, if the Democrats and the Republicans in the House and the
    Senate work with the White House, we can still make this a very good
    legislative session for the American people and, again, set ourselves on
    our way to a new century of promise.
        Thank you very much.

    Budget Negotiations

        Q. Mr. President, it sounds like from what you say that there's
    really been very little progress. These are the same issues we've been
    talking about for a while. How would you rate the budget talks so far,
    and is there any chance that it's going to get done before your trip to
    Europe?
        The President. Well, let me just say this: On several occasions I've
    had the feeling that we had an agreement and that some of the leaders in
    the Republican Party wanted to make an

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    agreement, and then they were, in effect, undercut. And so I think that
    if we were allowed to working with the chairs of the appropriations
    committees and the other appropriate committee chairs, I think we could
    reach agreement.
        But we will never reach agreement unless there is honorable
    compromise. That is always found in the center. So I feel--I sympathize
    with their position because whenever we make an agreement, then there's
    an attempt by some in the Congress to pull them back to the right. But
    we have to find agreement in the center.
        I will say again, I had a good talk with Senator Lott and Speaker Hastert, and
    I am committed to working with them. And I told them that I understood
    they wanted to leave town, and I was not trying to keep them here. But I
    was trying to finish the job the American people sent us here to do and
    that I and our people would be prepared to work virtually around the
    clock to get an agreement that is consistent with what I pledged to the
    American people and what I believe that they want.

    World Trade Organization Talks With China

        Q. Mr. President, what is the status of the WTO negotiations with
    China? Have you made a new offer to the Chinese, or do you still want
    the deal that you almost had back in April?
        The President. Well, a lot of people have said we had an agreement
    in April, and we walked away from it because there was opposition from
    the American labor movement. I've read that a hundred times. That is
    absolutely not true. Number one, we didn't have an agreement, and number
    two, let me remind you of what the climate was at that time. It wasn't
    because of what the labor leaders were saying. Some of the very people
    now who want the WTO agreement with China, at that time were banging
    away at China on a whole wide range of issues, which all of you remember
    very well. So I don't want to go forward implying that we had an
    agreement before because we didn't. And the Chinese say we didn't.
        Now, I have, as has been reported in the press, I have made an
    effort to restart these negotiations. I have told President Jiang that I think we ought to go forward. But I don't
    believe that I can facilitate a successful resolution of this by
    discussing the details in any way. I won't agree to anything I don't
    believe is in the interests of the American people. That's all I can
    tell you.
        And I think that it is in the long-term interests of our people and
    in the interests of an open China--that is a responsible partner in a
    world in which China will be at some point in the 21st century, if it
    keeps growing, the biggest economy in the world--that they be part of
    the rule-based system of global trading and investment.
        So I hope that we can work it out. And I'll do my best. I do want to
    say that if we could work it out, I am completely committed to trying to
    get passed in the Congress permanent normal trading status for China.
    And I do believe that we can prevail now. I think there's a sense in
    both parties that this is a very large issue that is important for our
    Nation's long-term security and economic well-being. And I will do what
    I can to achieve it.

    Violence in American Life

        Q. Mr. President, when you were briefed as you were today on yet
    another shooting, be it in a workplace or a schoolyard, do you believe
    that this has just become something fundamental and inevitable in
    American life, or is there something that can be done to alter the
    dynamic?
        The President. Well, I think there are a lot of things that can be
    done. But let me say, if you go back over the last 20 years, we have had
    periodic outbursts of shootings where more than one person was killed.
    But let's not forget, 13 of our kids get shot every day, killed every
    day. And just because they die one and two at a time in distant places
    or tough neighborhoods, we don't--and I'm not criticizing you, we're
    almost enured to it. I don't think we understand fully just how much
    more violent the United States is than other countries. That's the point
    I'm trying to make.
        And I don't want to diminish the agony of these two incidents that
    are truly awful or what happened at Columbine or all the other schools.
    But I think we have to acknowledge the fact that we have been willing to
    tolerate a much higher level of violence than we should have.
        Now, the good news is, in spite of these terrible incidents, we have
    the lowest murder rate in 32 years, the lowest overall crime rate in 30
    years. If you want it to be lower, you have to do more of what we have
    been doing. You have to put more community police on the street; you
    have to do more work in the schools to teach children to avoid violence;
    and you

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    have to do more to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
        What we are doing--and I don't mean we, the Federal Government; I
    mean we, the American people, starting with the police on the street and
    the community leaders--is working. We should be not desperate here; we
    should be determined. But every time one of these things happens, all I
    can say is what we are doing is working, but we haven't done it enough,
    and we need more efforts in the directions that we're going. We do not
    have to tolerate this level of violence.
        There will never be a time when any society can guarantee that no
    one will ever kill anybody else. And we have, as all of you know, well
    over 200 million guns in our society right now; nobody knows exactly how
    many. But we can do much, much more, without interfering with people's
    hunting and sporting rights, to keep guns out of the wrong hands. And we
    can do more to put more police on the street. We can do more to work
    with our children. And we have to do all of that.
        But there is no silver bullet here. If people are really upset about
    it, they should ask us to do what has brought us to this point. If you
    compare it now with 7 years ago, we're in better shape. If you compare
    where we are now with where any other country in the world would find a
    tolerable level of violence, we are not in good shape, and we have to do
    more.

    African and Caribbean Basin Trade

        Q. Mr. President, now that the Senate has overcome the delaying
    tactics, do you expect the African trade bill and the enhancement of the
    Caribbean Basin initiative to be passed during this term?
        The President. I certainly hope so. There is strong bipartisan
    support for both of those things. It's a way of our being good
    neighbors; it's a way of our being responsible partners; and it's very
    good economics for the United States over the long run.
        I would just point out that, with regard to our neighbors in the
    Caribbean and Central America, they have actually suffered an unintended
    consequence of the agreement we made with Canada and Mexico because
    there were preferences given to Mexico that did not go to them. And so
    we ought to at least put them on equal footing.
        We can do that without being unfair to our Mexican neighbors, but
    we've got to be good neighbors with the people in the Caribbean and
    Central America. We don't want to put them in the position where the
    only way they can make a living is to be transit points for the
    drugrunners of the world. And this is very important.
        And the Africa trade bill, the potential that has to reward the
    Africans that have good government and are following market economies is
    enormous. Some of you went with me on my trip to Africa. And I would
    hope that you came out of it with the same feeling I did. You go to a
    place like Uganda, which has had the biggest drop in AIDS rates of any
    country in the world, I believe, over the last 5 years, showing you what
    competent, well-organized, well-directed countries can do because the
    people are intelligent, they're innovative, they can do all kinds of
    things. And we have a big future in Africa, and I think that we owe it
    to the American people, as well as to our world responsibilities, to
    pass both these things.
        I hope they will pass. I was elated that the Senate voted to invoke
    cloture and to proceed to the bill, and I'll continue to push it.

    1999 Elections

        Q. Mr. President, if in the elections last night, the Democrats and
    Republicans each can claim a bit of a victory, how do you analyze those
    results?
        The President. Well, of course, I feel very good about it because of
    what has happened; Mississippi was truly historic--and several other
    places. And I also feel good because in the places where the Republicans
    won, they won by running on education, on health care, on economic
    development, on progressive issues, and entering into a constructive
    contest of ideas to try to build a dynamic center in America. That was
    the analysis even across the river here in Virginia, where, basically,
    the Democrats did well in northern Virginia, the Republicans did well
    elsewhere.
        But if you look at the--what is the debate about, and it seems to me
    that the real message coming out of this was that the people who offer
    positive programs that bring people together and move people forward are
    going to get a good hearing from the voters. I think that is the
    message. And that is the message that we ought to keep in mind here as
    we try

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    to bring these budget negotiations to a successful conclusion.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:40 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to President Jiang Zemin of China.