    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 2, 2000]
    [Pages 804-810]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Independent Insurance Agents of America
    National Legislative Conference
    May 2, 2000

        The President.  Thank you very, very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I
    am delighted to be here. And I thank you, President Houston, and I thank your CEO, Paul Equale, whom I see all the time here in Washington pleading your
    cause. And I thank my old friend George Frazier. I heard that introduction. The truth is that only he
    and my mother thought I had a chance to be elected President when I ran.
    [Laughter] But it's nice to have someone like that in your corner.
        I came here today, in part, on a sentimental journey. I couldn't
    hear everything George said, but the first speech I gave outside
    Arkansas as an elected official was in 1977, when I flew to California
    to speak for George when he was president of
    your organization. So, in a real sense, my political career began with
    George Frazier's presidency and ended with my own. And I am delighted to
    be here.
        I also want to acknowledge and thank another member of this group
    from Arkansas, my friend Lib Carlisle, who
    agreed to become chairman of the Democratic Party when I was reelected
    Governor in 1982. I told him that it would just be about a half-a-day-a-
    week job. The truth was he had about a half a day a week left to devote
    to this job. And I'm surprised as a result of his public service that he
    could afford the airplane ticket up here. [Laughter] But I am delighted
    that he and all of you are here.
        I also want to say I'm glad I got here for a few minutes of Senator
    Hatch's speech. Believe it or not, we're good
    friends. [Laughter] And it's nearly ruined him in the Republican caucus.
    [Laughter] And so he has to give me a little grief when he shows up. I
    would say in my own defense that it is true that tax receipts--I heard
    him talking about the tax burden--it is true that tax receipts as a
    percentage of national income are up. But the reason is, unemployment is
    low and incomes have grown so much. The actual percentage of income
    being paid by middle income families is the lowest it's been in over 35
    years. So I think that's worth pointing out.
        I also would say, on the education issue--I heard what he said about
    burden of regulations--the Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, who was Governor of South Carolina for many years,
    has cut two-thirds of the regulations and paperwork burdens on local
    school districts that

    [[Page 805]]

    existed when we became the new administration in 1993. And in fact, our
    administration, even though we've had to promulgate some new regulations
    over the whole Federal Government, has gotten rid of more regulations,
    some 16,000 pages of them, in every Federal agency than were eliminated
    in the previous 12 years. And we have the smallest Government since
    1960. So I think the record will look pretty good on that score.
        But I also want to say I appreciate the fact that Orrin Hatch has worked with me, particularly, to try to
    encourage the orderly confirmation of judges, when so many people would
    rather not deal with that issue. I've done my best to take that out of
    politics, and I think it's important.
        I want to thank you for several things. If I could begin, I want to
    thank you for what you do every day when you're not being politically
    active. I want to thank you for what you do day-in and day-out to give
    personal insurance service to people across this country. I want to
    thank you for the work you're doing to modernize insurance, to build a
    presence on-line and in E-commerce. And I want to ask you to continue to
    help to preserve the privacy of your clients in the face of this new
    technology.
        On Sunday I went to Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti,
    Michigan, not too far from Detroit, to talk about the promise of the
    Internet age and the challenges to our privacy, including our financial
    privacy, that it presents. And I think it's very, very important that we
    maximize the possibilities of technology without giving up the American
    people's right to determine what basic information is or is not in the
    hands of people that they don't know and whom they have not approved to
    receive the information.
        I also want to congratulate you for diversifying this organization,
    by reaching out to the National African American Insurance Organization
    and by appointing the first woman to your board. The First
    Lady, particularly, thought that was
    a good idea. [Laughter]
        And I want to thank you for the quality of representation you have
    here in Washington. We have not always agreed over the last 7 years, but
    I have always been impressed by the straight talk and the honest, open
    effort that I have seen from your organization to try to work out
    difficulties, work out genuine differences. And when we have worked
    together, we have done some very good things indeed.
        We've worked together to get our economy moving again. When I became
    President, we had a $295 billion deficit. It was scheduled to be nearly
    $400 billion this year. The debt of the country had quadrupled over the
    previous 12 years, and I knew there was no easy way to get rid of it. So
    we passed an economic plan in 1993 that took us about 70 percent of the
    way there, and then we passed a bipartisan balanced budget in 1997 that
    had big majorities in both parties in both Houses supporting eliminating
    the deficit entirely.
        We've now run the first back-to-back surpluses in over 40 years, and
    this year we'll make it three in a row. The United States this year is
    going to pay off $216 billion of our national debt. That is the largest
    debt repayment in American history. This will bring the 3-year total to
    $355 billion, and it's further evidence, I believe, that the country
    ought to have a bipartisan economic strategy of paying off the debt and
    investing in our people, in education, in science and technology, and in
    opening new markets at home and abroad.
        Four years ago you put yourselves on the line for the Kennedy-
    Kassebaum bill. I want to thank you for that. Your support has made a
    difference all across this country, and I am very grateful. Again, we
    had not only the Democrats, Vice President Gore, and I but substantial
    Republican support. And we reached agreement, and it made a difference
    for ordinary Americans. And I'm very grateful.
        It seems to me that this year the large question before the American
    people is, what are we going to do with these good times? What will we
    make of them? You can probably recall some time in your own life or your
    own business when you've gotten into a little bit of trouble, not
    because things were so tough but because things seemed to be going well,
    and therefore, there were no consequences to breaking your concentration
    or taking a little time to stop thinking about tomorrow.
        And I feel very strongly--and I think I can say this with some
    credibility since I'm not on the ballot, and most days I'm okay with
    it--[laughter]--but I think I can say, to me, the importance of this
    election is that America now knows that we can solve problems together.
    We know we can make real progress. When I became President, if I had
    said in my Inaugural

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    Address in 1993, ``You know, if you will just stick with me folks, in 7
    years we'll have 3 years of surpluses, and we'll be in a position to get
    this country out of debt for the first time since 1835,'' you would have
    said, ``He seems like a nice young man, but we have a delusional person
    in the White House.'' [Laughter] If I had said, ``The crime rate will
    come down 7 years in a row, and we'll cut the welfare rolls in half,''
    you wouldn't have believed that. If I had said, ``We'll find a way to
    work with the private sector to improve the quality of our air, water,
    and land and still have the longest economic expansion in history,'' you
    might not have believed that. So we know now, because of the success our
    country has had, that if we work together and we set common goals, we
    can achieve them. The level of skepticism or cynicism that was present
    in 1992, because of the difficulties that we've had for some years, is
    simply not there anymore. But the question now is, what are we going to
    do with a truly magic moment of prosperity?
        And I won't repeat the whole State of the Union Address here, but I
    just want to mention two issues to you. First of all, we have to keep
    the economy going. It makes so much else possible. I did a police event
    the other day here in the District of Columbia, and I complimented them
    on having the lowest murder rate in over 30 years and the lowest crime
    rate in nearly 30 years, a big decline in gun violence, and all the
    things they've done. We've helped them put several hundred police on the
    street. And on the way out, this police officer said, ``Well, thanks for
    all the nice words, but the economy didn't hurt.'' It's very important
    that we do that.
        We already have the longest economic expansion in history--by far,
    the longest without any kind of war involved, but including all the ones
    which mobilized the country for wartime. So how do we propose to keep
    this going?
        I personally believe it's very important that we continue to pay
    down this debt. Why? Because Americans finance a lot of their purchases
    through personal debt. We finance a lot of new equipment and business
    expansion through business debt. The personal savings rate in America is
    too low, and I would like to see it go up, and I would support
    initiatives in the Congress to try to help it increase. But meanwhile,
    when we pay down the national debt, it increases the overall savings
    rate of America; it keeps interest rates down; it makes money more
    available--the Government is putting money back into the economy instead
    of taking money out--and it works as an effective tax cut when you pay
    the debt down.
        The fact that we have gotten rid of the deficit and paid down the
    debt, according to the latest economic analysis I saw, saves the average
    homeowner about $2,000 a year in lower mortgage payments and interest
    rates being lower than they otherwise would, and a couple hundred
    dollars a year on car payments and a couple hundred dollars a year on
    college loan payments. And of course, the availability of capital for
    business expansion is profoundly important. So I hope in the midst of
    all this debate this year, you will try to sort through whether, when
    it's all said and done, whether the commitments made by various people
    all add up and we can continue to do that.
        Secondly, I think it's important, when we ask ourselves, how are we
    going to keep this economy going, that we continue to expand the base of
    America's customers. A nation in that sense is not much different than
    your enterprise. If you want to keep expanding, you've got to have
    somebody buying what you're selling. We have 4 percent of the world's
    population and 22 percent of the world's income. So it should be
    obvious. You don't have to be an Einstein to figure out you've got to
    have more markets all the time in that sort of environment.
        In that regard, there are two initiatives before the Congress today
    that have bipartisan support, and at least one--maybe both, but
    certainly one--that have bipartisan opposition. The first is the
    proposal to bring China into the World Trade Organization. That may not
    be something that you think is of immediate concern to insurance agents,
    but since you care so much about the economy, it's very important.
        China's going to get into the World Trade Organization whether we
    vote to give them normal trading relations every year or not. And the
    deal we negotiated with them does not give them one bit of increased
    access to our markets but gives us huge increased access to their
    markets.
        If you saw the deal, you would ask why they signed it. The reason
    they signed it is, you can't get into the World Trade Organization
    unless you're willing to trade. So they have a more closed economy; they
    sell a lot of stuff to us; our biggest trade deficit now usually is with
    them. And they have to open their markets.

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    And we negotiated a very strong deal that will mean more jobs, more
    businesses, more investments for America. And from a national security
    point of view, it would, in my view, be a very, very unwise and
    precarious move to say that the United States doesn't care whether
    they're a part of the world community or not. You don't have to agree
    with another country on everything to say you prefer to trade with them
    than have an arms face-off with them and constant conflict with them.
        So it's in our national security interests, but it's necessary to
    keep our economy going. There's 1.2 billion people over there, and
    increasingly, more and more of them will be able to buy what Americans
    can sell. And as people sell more over there, they'll have more to buy
    insurance with. It's very important. [Laughter]
        The second thing that's important is that we should not forget that
    there are people and places in this country, many of them served by
    members of this organization, that have not fully participated in this
    economic recovery. And to some extent, there are local reasons for that,
    that have to be dealt with at the State and local level. But there are
    things we can do here nationally, and there is a substantial bipartisan
    effort to pass some version of what I have called for 2 years my new
    markets initiative, to basically go to places like the Mississippi Delta
    or Appalachia or inner cities or upstate New York or the Native American
    reservations--to go in there and say, first, we're going to put in the
    infrastructure of growth.
        I was in rural North Carolina the other day, and the Governor and I
    announced that his telephone companies were going to give broadband
    access to every rural community in North Carolina, which will enable a
    lot of businesses that are otherwise physically isolated to do Internet
    transactions that otherwise would not be available to them.
        When I was on the Indian reservation, Shiprock, in northern New
    Mexico the other day, the Navajo reservation, I learned that 70 percent
    of the people there did not have telephones. I was introduced by a 13-
    year-old girl who had won--a brilliant young girl
    who had won a computer in a contest. And she couldn't log on to the
    Internet because there wasn't a phone line in her home.
        We forget that a lot of our fellow citizens have not participated in
    this economy. And so we announced there that we were going to be able to
    provide basic phone service to those folks for a dollar a month, and we
    will be able to do a lot more--even though they are long way from most
    urban areas, we'll be able to do a lot more business for them because of
    E-commerce, once we get them all hooked up.
        But the main thing that we have before the Congress is some way of
    giving tax incentives for people who have money to invest, to invest in
    these poor areas in America that are equal to the tax incentives we now
    give people to invest in poor areas in Latin America or Asia or Africa.
    I'm all for encouraging investment in developing countries overseas, but
    we ought to be giving the exact same dollar-impact investment incentives
    to invest in developing communities here in America. They're the nearest
    markets we've got, and we ought to do it.
        And let me say, finally, on the health care issue, I think it's
    quite important that we continue our efforts to provide health insurance
    and coverage and care to people who don't have it. We still have over 40
    million Americans without any health insurance. There are still too many
    children and too many working parents who don't have any. And more and
    more older Americans and their families are overwhelmed by the costs of
    long-term care and overwhelmed by their medical costs, especially for
    prescription drugs.
        So I hope this year that in this Congress we'll find a way to extend
    coverage to more Americans. I hope we can do a better job to make sure
    that every child who is eligible for coverage receives it. Of the some
    10 million children in America who do not have health insurance, public
    programs now in place--the Children's Health Insurance Program, that's
    run by the State in all your States, and the Medicaid program, which is
    administered by them--would cover about half those kids today--today--
    with programs already in place. And it is very important that we
    continue to do a better job.
        I also believe that we should pass the initiatives in Congress to
    provide a $3,000 a year tax credit for long-term care. This is something
    that I think has broad bipartisan support. More and more families are
    having to deal with this as we live longer, and it really is a high-
    class problem in that sense. But it can be a very difficult and
    expensive one. And again, I think there's bipartisan support for this. I
    hope it will pass, and I ask for your support.

    [[Page 808]]

        And finally--I'm sure that Senator Hatch talked about this a little
    bit, because we're having a dispute about what the best way to do it
    is--but I think it's important that we add some prescription drug
    coverage to Medicare this year. And I feel very strongly that we ought
    to offer a completely voluntary program that's available to any senior
    who needs it, with the most being done, obviously, for people with the
    least money. But we're having an argument about exactly how to do it.
        I think you ought to know the facts. More than 60 percent of the
    senior citizens in America today lack access to affordable prescription
    drugs. If there were no Medicare program and we were all starting again
    tomorrow, we would never design one today that didn't have prescription
    drug coverage. Thirty-five years ago, when Medicare was set up, it was
    for people who had acute problems. It was basically a doctor care, a
    hospital care program. Today, more and more seniors face chronic
    problems. Anybody that lives to 65 in this country today has a life
    expectancy of 82, 83 years. You know more about these tables than I do.
        And believe me, if you just take the medical breakthroughs that I
    think are likely to occur in the next 5 years--sometime in the next few
    months we'll announce the sequencing of the human genome. We've already
    identified the defective genes that cause breast cancer, Parkinson's,
    may lead to Alzheimer's and other things. Before you know it, when young
    mothers come home with their babies from the hospital, they'll have a
    genetic map which will say, ``Your child has these potential problems
    and these potential strengths, and if you do the following 10 things,
    you will cut by 90 percent the chance that your child will get the
    following conditions.'' I mean, it's going to be a whole different world
    out there. And you may have life expectancy go up in the 21st century
    even more than it went up in the 20th century.
        There have been a lot of studies to try to determine how long the
    human body would last if nothing bad ever happened. And the answer is,
    about 120 years. That is, if you factor out environmentally caused
    cancer, accidents, and crime leading to death, and we all had perfect
    nutrition and took good care of ourselves, our systems, most of us,
    would still stop functioning somewhere around 120 years. They've done a
    lot of tests with animals that show that no matter how well you take
    care of them, someday they just conk out. [Laughter] But that means that
    we've got quite a long way to go. I expect George Frazier to live about 120 years. [Laughter] But the rest of us
    are going to need a little help. [Laughter]
        And so I think that will completely change the insurance business.
    You think about it. It will totally change health and life insurance if
    the average life expectancy goes up another 8 years. And it's why we
    also--I agree with one thing Orrin Hatch said--I hope we can avoid
    politicizing this whole Social Security debate. I think it ought to be
    discussed, and policy options ought to be taken care of.
        One of the things that I've been trying to convince Congress to do
    is take the interest savings off the debt, since we're paying down the
    debt because not only--we've cut spending, but you're still paying more
    in Social Security taxes than we're paying out. So I think we ought to
    take that portion of debt reduction, so we don't have to pay interest on
    the debt anymore, that's due to Social Security taxes, and put it in the
    Trust Fund. And then we could take the Social Security Trust Fund out to
    2054. And then we could decide what else to do to try to increase the
    return, because when all the baby boomers retire, there will be two
    people working for only one person drawing Social Security. The ratio
    has normally been 3 or 4 to 1; it's going to go down to 2 to 1. So there
    are a lot of challenges there.
        But the point I want to make is, this whole thing is going to
    change, and the emphasis, more and more and more, will be on keeping
    people well in the first place, letting them manage their own care,
    letting people stay at home, not overwhelming the hospital system and
    the medical care system. You would never, today, set up a Medicare
    program without prescription drug coverage.
        So basically what we're having a debate about here is at what level
    to stop the coverage and how best to deliver it. And the only thing I'd
    like to say about the level, because I think that's very important, is
    that if you stop at 150 percent of the poverty line, it sounds
    reasonable, but that means that seniors over $15,000 in income can't buy
    any medical coverage. Half of the people who don't have prescription
    drug coverage today are between the incomes of $15,000 and $50,000. And
    if you're on a fixed income of $30,000, you may think you're sitting
    pretty if you're 75 years old. But if you get a $2,000

    [[Page 809]]

    a month medical bill because you've got a chronic problem, all of a
    sudden you don't have much money left. And I'm sure you all know this,
    so I hope we can find a way this year--I think there's a fair chance we
    can--to put this issue beyond partisan politics and also to get a
    program that works.
        I also have to tell you that a lot of people in the insurance
    industry have been very forthright in saying that they think that our
    proposal is probably more workable. But the reason that the prescription
    drug people don't like it--the pharmaceutical companies don't like it--
    is they think that it would cover so many people that we would have too
    much bargaining power, and we'd get the drugs too cheap. And if you
    listen to their argument, they think that that might mean that they
    wouldn't have enough profit margin to continue to develop new drugs. I
    don't want to paint them as the bad guys here; we're having a genuine
    argument. But I think that if we are to design--if we design a program
    that doesn't work, then we wind up with the worst of both worlds. And
    the insurance industry could be left holding the bag if you're expected
    to offer policies that are not practical, that won't sell, and if they
    do sell, won't do what people want. That's why we've actually had quite
    a lot of really good dialog with people in the insurance industry about
    that, and I'm very grateful for it.
        But I just want to say to you, this is a national problem that
    deserves a national solution. We should not have a program to cover
    senior citizens and disabled people's medical benefits that doesn't
    cover prescription drugs. We need to do this. This is a sort of measure
    of what we do with good times.
        There are lots of issues I could mention, including the education of
    our children, the continued work to make America a safer country. I
    don't think we should stop on this crime deal until we have the safest
    big country in the world. We've still got a lot of work to do. And there
    are so many other challenges out there. But if we could just think
    about, here, keeping the economy going, extending its benefits to people
    in places left behind, and continue to make progress on health care--
    those are great goals worthy of a nation that is grateful for the
    success it has enjoyed.
        And as I leave office, that's all I really want. I don't want to
    think that we squandered this enormous opportunity. For the last 7
    years, Al Gore and I and all the people that have worked with us, we've
    tried so hard just to turn this country around and get it moving in the
    right direction. And now, as I leave at the end of the year, what I'm
    thinking of is, how will we deal with the prosperity? It's a great
    measure of a great nation. And I hope you'll do what you can to make
    sure we deal with it in an appropriate way.

        Now, before I sit down, I want to ask your president to join me.
    Bill, come up here. We've got a little surprise
    for George Frazier. George is thinking about
    retiring after 46 years as an independent agent. I'm against that. I
    don't know; you know, you're not term-limited. Why quit? [Laughter]

        As you heard him say, I've known him all
    my life, since I was a little boy in Hope, Arkansas. And for all those
    years, I have known him as a person who always, always cared more about
    other people than himself and always gave more than he took, whether it
    was a Little League team that needed a sponsor or a hospital that needed
    a new wing or a young man starting out in public life who needed advice
    and friendship. He has been there for a lifetime.

        I want to say that he and his wife,
    Effie, who are here today, are literally two
    of the finest people I have ever known in my life. And as I said, I had
    the honor of swearing him in 23 years ago as the president of your
    organization. And I think it's quite fitting that I started my career
    with his presidency and ended it with my own. I'm more surprised about
    mine than his. [Laughter] And I am very grateful to him for what he has
    been professionally and even more for what he has been as a citizen, as
    a human being.

        So George, Hillary and I love you. And if
    you will come up here, I want to present to you a beautiful resolution
    that this organization is giving you for your years of dedication and
    service.

     [At this point, the President presented the resolution to Mr.
    Frazier. ]

        The President.  Thank you very much. Thank you.

     Note:  The President spoke at 8:55 a.m. in the Independence Ballroom at
    the Grand Hyatt. In his remarks, he referred to Bill Houston, president,
    Paul A. Equale, chief executive officer, and

    [[Page 810]]

    George Frazier, former president, Independent Insurance Agents of
    America; Lib Carlisle, former chair, Arkansas State Democratic Party;
    and Myra Jodie, student, Steamboat Navajo Nation.