[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.

[[Page 1955]]

    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

[[Page 1956]]

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

[[Page 1957]]

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

[[Page 1958]]

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.