[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 16, 2000]
[Pages 475-477]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Departure for Capitol Hill and an Exchange With Reporters
March 16, 2000

Legislative Agenda/Oil Prices

    The President. Good afternoon. I'd like to say just a few words, 
before I go up to the Speaker's annual Saint Patrick's Day luncheon, 
about three issues.
    Yesterday the House took a small but significant step down the long 
road toward commonsense gun safety legislation. House Members from both 
parties have said it's time to get to work, after 8 months and other 
senseless shootings. It's time for the House and Senate conference to 
resolve the differences between the two bills and send one to me.
    The American people have spoken clearly and consistently about the 
need to protect our children from gun violence. The House is listening. 
I hope the Republican leaders in the House and the Senate will listen 
and get this conference underway.
    Of course, a meeting is just a beginning. Congress should keep 
working until it sends me a bill I can sign that closes the gun show 
loophole, requires child safety locks with all new handguns, bans the 
importation of large capacity ammunition clips. Again, I hope they will 
reconsider and restore the provision that hold adults responsible if 
they knowingly or recklessly let little children have access to guns.
    A courageous bipartisan majority in the House has now said no to the 
attack ads, no to the name-calling, and no to the threats. They have 
stood up for the American people, but there are further tests ahead. The 
clock is ticking, and America is waiting to see whether Congress can 
really produce a bill that responds to the interests of our children and 
not the intimidation of the NRA.
    I'd also like to say a few words about the budget the House passed 
yesterday. It is more than a balance sheet; every budget is. It's a 
blueprint for our future. For 7 years, our administration has worked to 
build a future based on fiscal discipline. The budget proposed by the 
Republican leadership would erode that discipline. It would weaken, not 
strengthen, the foundation Americans have worked so hard to build for 
the future.
    Before devoting a single dollar to pay down the debt or extend the 
solvency of Social Security or Medicare or provide a voluntary 
prescription drug benefit or invest in our children's education, the 
majority's budget already spends almost half a trillion dollars in tax 
cuts--almost half a trillion, and as the Republican budget makes clear, 
they're just getting started.
    This is unrealistic, unwise. The risks it poses are unconscionable. 
It is as risky and costly as the budget they proposed last year that I 
vetoed. It would undermine our ability to make America debt-free by 
2013, to strengthen Social Security and take it out beyond the life of 
the baby boom generation, to lengthen the life of Medicare and add a 
voluntary prescription drug benefit. It would slash our most pressing 
priorities across the board, from education and the environment, from 
law enforcement to public health, from scientific research to basic 
nutrition. It would be impossible for them to follow the path that we 
have all agreed on to modernize our defense forces and improve the 
quality of life of our men and women in uniform.
    This is the wrong path for America. The only way they could meet 
their spending priorities with this tax cut is to go back to huge 
deficits. I asked the leadership to change course, to go back and write 
a budget that maintains our fiscal discipline and meets our most 
pressing priorities.
    Now, the third issue I would like to mention very briefly is that I 
have just met with the Secretary of Energy 
and his team and my economic team, and we have talked about the present 
difficulties that Americans are facing because of the price of gasoline 
and the high price of oil, and what our short and longer term options 
are. And we've been working very hard

[[Page 476]]

on this now for several weeks, and we hope to have some things to say 
about it over the next few days.
    But this is--I'm encouraged by a lot of the developments that are 
going on. I hope there will be some relief soon when the OPEC meeting 
occurs. But I do believe we need to do more on our own here in America 
to deal with some of the things we've learned, some of the pressure 
points we've learned are on our people in these last few months.
    So I just want to notify you that we are working on this, and we 
will have some more to say later, and I don't want to be late to the 
Speaker's Saint Patrick's Day lunch.
    Q. Mr. President, on the question of gun control----

Oil Prices

    Q. Mr. President, have you spoken in person to any of the leaders of 
the OPEC nations to increase----
    The President. Wait, wait. The answer is, we have made clear what my 
public position is. I've said no more to anybody privately than I've 
said in public. I think it is in the interest of the OPEC nations and in 
the interest of the consuming nations to have a stable price of oil that 
gives them a fair return on their oil, enables them to run their 
countries and finance their budgets, but is not so high that it runs the 
risk of promoting inflation or recession, which will reduce the demand 
for oil by cratering the economies of other countries and hurting ours 
and hurting a lot of innocent people in the process.
    So the trick is to find the right balance. Oil was way too low last 
year because they increased production right as demand dropped after the 
Asian financial crisis. Now, the price is too high because they cut 
production right as demand increased, when Europe and Asia were growing 
more again.
    So we've got to get this back into balance. That's what I want to 
do. I think it's very much in their interest, and I haven't said any 
more in private than I'm saying to you in public, but we are working 
that.

National Rifle Association

    Q. Mr. President, Wayne LaPierre, last night on the news, said the 
blood of Ricky Byrdsong is on your hands. I was wondering if you would 
like to respond to that personally, sir, and also go to the underlying 
issue of enforcement? The NRA contends the administration has been lax 
up until very recently on the enforcement issue.
    The President. Well, first of all, most of those--I think the 
television news, some of the reports answered the Byrdsong case in great 
detail, and I don't have anything to add to that. And again, I will say, 
I don't think--getting into a personal spat with Mr. LaPierre about tactics that I don't think any American 
appreciates and that all Americans can see through is not worth doing.
    I think on the enforcement issue, if you just go back and look at 
the facts that were reported on the news last night in this case, I 
think it makes the case. The question is: What should the States do? 
What should the Federal Government do? What is the appropriate thing to 
do in the Brady cases? And I believe what we've tried to do is the right 
course.
    I think the Attorney General has tried to 
increase Federal gun prosecutions. We've asked for resources to do more. 
But we've also tried to do it in a sensible way that left a lot of the 
burden and the criminal law where it belongs, with the local 
prosecutors. And I think to try to take a case like that, where actually 
the Brady bill worked--and if we had more comprehensive checking so that 
no one could sell a gun without a Brady background check, we'd have an 
even safer society--is not a very good argument for the other side to 
make.
    And I think it's truly ironic that the NRA is now criticizing us for 
not throwing everybody in jail that fails a Brady background check when 
they opposed the Brady bill. If it had been up to them, we wouldn't be 
doing these background checks, and 500,000 more felons, fugitives, and 
stalkers would have handguns, so----

Northern Ireland Peace Process

    Q. Is there a break in the Irish impasse?
    The President. Thank you. We're working it.

National Rifle Association

    Q. Can I follow up on that, sir? Mr. President, why do you think the 
NRA has chosen this particular moment, though, to attack you?
    The President. I have no idea. I really don't know; must be a good 
fundraising tactic. I honestly don't know. I don't know.
    Q. Because they've had their way mostly on Capitol Hill, it seems, 
up to this point.

[[Page 477]]

    The President. I don't know. I think they know that the majority of 
the American people support us on this bill, and if they get the bill 
before the Congress, it will pass. So maybe it's some strategy to try to 
keep it from ever being in an acceptable form to be voted on one way or 
the other. I don't know. You'll have to ask them. I can't figure it out.
    Thanks.

Note: The President spoke at 11:50 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Wayne LaPierre, executive vice 
president, National Rifle Association.