[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 27, 2000]
[Pages 1953-1956]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks on the National Economy and an Exchange With Reporters
September 27, 2000
National Economy
The President. Good morning. Yesterday I announced that household
income has reached an all-time high and the poverty rate has fallen to
its lowest level in 20 years. Today there's more good economic news.
Eight years ago, our future was at risk. Economic growth was low;
unemployment was high; interest rates were high; the Federal debt had
quadrupled in the previous 12 years. When Vice President Gore and I took
office, the budget deficit was $290 billion, and it was projected this
year the budget deficit would be $455 billion.
The American people, thankfully, chose a better future. They put
their support behind a new economic direction of fiscal discipline,
greater investment in our people, expanded trade in our products. It's
given us the longest economic expansion in history and the strongest
fiscal turnaround in memory. Record budget deficits have given way to
record surpluses. And this has enabled us to do something that would
have been impossible just 8 years ago. We've actually begun to pay down
the debt.
Today we received more good news that our strategy is working.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, this year's budget
surplus will be at least $230 billion. With this surplus, we've been
able to cut the debt over the last 3 years by this figure.
[At this point, the President wrote the number on a chart showing the
deficit.]
The President. Three hundred and sixty billion dollars in debt
reduction over the last 3 years.
This year alone we've cut the debt by at least $223 billion, the
largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States.
Like our Olympic athletes in Sydney, the American people are breaking
all kinds of records these days. This is the first year we've balanced
the budget without using the Medicare Trust Fund since Medicare was
created in 1965. I think we should follow Al Gore's advice and lock those Trust Funds away for the future.
We've come a long way since then and a long way since 1993. But we
can go further still. If we stay on the path we're on, we can pay this
debt off entirely by 2012, for the first time since Andrew Jackson was
President in 1835. Paying off the debt will benefit America, just as
paying off credit cards benefits the average family. It frees up money
for things that matter, and it keeps interest rates lower. That will
mean more investment, more jobs, lower mortgage payments, car payments,
and student loan payments. This is all terribly important.
Already the benefits of debt reduction have meant about $2,000 a
year--or deficit reduction, and then debt reduction has been about
$2,000 a year in lower interest payments for home mortgages, about $200
a year in lower interest payments for cars, about $200 a year for lower
interest payments on college loans. And if we stay on this path, rather
than go back and spend all the surplus and get back into the Social
Security funds, it will keep interest rates about a point lower over the
next decade. That will be worth, in home mortgages alone, over $300
billion.
So this is a very important thing to do. And I hope that we will
see a continuation of this trend in this year's final end-game budget
negotiations. However, the fiscal year is almost over, and Congress
still has sent me only 2 of the 13 spending bills. We need to put our
priorities in order and put the broad national interest above special
interests.
The key to fiscal discipline, to these kinds of results, is
maintaining it each year, year after year. If you look at what's
happened in the last 8 years, Federal spending today as a percentage of
the economy is the lowest it has been since 1966. The Federal civilian
work force is the smallest it's been since 1960, down 377,000 from the
day I took office.
I am concerned, frankly, about the size and last-minute nature of
this year's congressional spending spree, where they seem to be loading
up the spending bills with special projects for special interests but
can't seem to find the time to raise the minimum wage or pass a
Patients' Bill of Rights or drug benefits for our seniors through
Medicare or tax cuts for long-term care, child care, or college
education.
And first and foremost, they haven't found the funds for education,
for continuing to hire
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100,000 qualified teachers to reduce class size, to build and modernize
schools, to provide after-school for children who need it, and to have
real accountability for failing schools, requiring them to turn around
or shut down or be put under new management.
These are the things that need to be done, and I certainly hope
they will be. We can finish this year in good shape. We can maintain our
fiscal discipline. We can get this country out of debt and still make
the right investments and have the right kind of tax cuts, but we have
to work together to do it and avoid just throwing money away simply
because we're close to an election.
These results today--paying off $360 billion of the national debt,
something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago;
continuing the longest economic expansion in history; knowing that we
can get this done, that we can actually get the country out of debt--
ought to be an inspiration for all of us to stay on the path that got us
here now and in the years ahead.
Thank you very much.
Middle East Peace Process
Q. Mr. President, do you think there will be a final peace
settlement in the Middle East before you leave office?
The President. I don't know. We're working on it.
Q. Any progress?
The President. I don't know. They're working, and they're working
hard, and they're trying, and we're working as hard as we know how. But
I can't say there will be; I can't say there won't. We can do it, but it
will require what these difficult things always require, a remarkable
convergence of both sides willing to make difficult decisions and kind
of leap off into the future together. I hope we can do it.
Hate Crimes Legislation
Q. Mr. President, on hate crimes, Republican leaders have
indicated there really isn't much of a chance of a bill passing this
year. If that's the case, do you intend to make the issue one of your
nonnegotiable priorities in the final budget talks with the GOP? And how
much is your speech later in Texas designed to put pressure on
Republicans on this issue before the elections?
The President. Well, I think there should be hate crimes
legislation. I think they made a mistake in Texas not to pass it, and I
think it's a mistake for Congress not to pass it. But we all know what
the deal is here. This is not complicated. The Republican majority does
not want a bill that explicitly provides hate crimes protections for gay
Americans. And I think they think it will split their base or something.
All the surveys show that over two-thirds of the American people
believe that no one should be subject to a crime because of who they
are. And I just hope and pray we can do it. If we can't do it, what did
that Senate vote mean? Was it just some stunt? I mean, they voted for it
57-42. It's not a complicated piece of legislation. It could be put on
anything.
So I wouldn't give up yet. I think a majority of the House and a
majority of the Senate are for it. So if it doesn't get on, it will
require an effort of the leaders to keep it off. In other words,
minority rule not majority rule in the Congress. I believe there's--
there are Republicans in the Senate and the House who genuinely support
this. I don't know how many, but enough, as you saw in the Senate vote,
to get a majority, unless the leaders keep it from happening. They'll
have to actually keep it from happening.
Possible Lieberman-Farrakhan Meeting
Q. Mr. President, is it realistic for the American public to
expect a book on race from you before you leave office? And also, what
are your thoughts about Joe Lieberman expecting to meet with Minister
Louis Farrakhan to heal the racial divide between the Jewish-American
community and the African-American community?
The President. I didn't understand. What did you say about Joe
Lieberman and Louis Farrakhan?
Q. Joe Lieberman told me yesterday that he wanted to meet with
Minister Louis Farrakhan to help ease the tensions between the Jewish-
American community and the African-American community, and also to try
to change what he said, the misguided statements that he made at the
beginning of Joe Lieberman being announced as the Democratic Vice
Presidential running mate.
The President. Well, if anybody has got the standing to do it, he
certainly does. That's my objective--I don't know about the other
question.
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Go ahead.
President's Book on Race
Q. What about the race book, though?
The President. I don't know. I'm working hard.
Yugoslav Elections
Q. Mr. President, how do you assess the situation in Yugoslavia
and the likelihood of a run-off election?
The President. Well, Mr. Kostunica
and his forces apparently have said at the present time they don't plan
to participate in a run-off because they're confident they got a
majority. The Government's official election commission has no
credibility, whatever. There are no opposition party members on it.
There are no independent observers that have monitored its work. And the
opposition believes it clearly got over 50 percent, and at least another
NGO and other independent observers believe it did, too.
So they have to decide how to respond to this. And I think what
Europe and the United States should do is to support the express will of
the Serbian people, and it certainly appears from a distance that they
had a free election, and somebody is trying to take it away from them.
And so we'll just have to see what happens. But whatever we do, I think,
should be consistent with the wishes of the majority of the people
there.
Legislative Agenda/Possible Vetoes
Q. Mr. President, given what you've said today, why not just tell
Congress that you won't sign appropriations measures that grant you more
funding than you even requested, as they seem prepared to do?
The President. Well, first of all, the President should never be
in a position of, in effect, usurping the Congress's authority. They
always add something to what I spend. I have consistently shown more
fiscal discipline. But this is a question of the dimensions of it. And
the Supreme Court said that I didn't have the authority for the line-
item veto, and so I have--the only option I have is a meat-axe option
now. And we'll just have to see whether I will be able to sustain those
and what the consequences would be, and my main concern here is all the
things that are left undone, all this money they're spending, but they
still have an inadequate commitment, in my judgment, to education--at
least based on what I've seen so far--and all these other things. The
priorities of the Congress strike me as strange. I mean, look at what
their--their first priority for tax cuts was something for the
wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, and they still haven't done anything
for long-term care or college tuition tax credits or child care for
average Americans, and they still haven't done anything to raise the
minimum wage.
So this is a question of priorities and balance. In terms of
whether I would veto one, it depends on how much extra money they spend
in the end and what it looks like. So I can't say that. I'd have to
study the bills first.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Q. Mr. President, 8 months ago, Vice President Gore said he
thought it was a bad idea to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. You
spoke with him last week before announcing your plans in that regard.
What's your take on his change in position?
The President. Well, I think the circumstances are quite
different. I didn't tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve 8 months ago
either. And as you know--I think it's been reported in the press--we had
a very long and serious discussion about this, and we discussed all the
pros and cons and decided that after OPEC had set a target range of $22-
28 a barrel--which most of us, certainly me and the producing countries,
thought was a reasonable range; that is, we didn't want to go back down
to 13 or 12 or 10 again because that was also disruptive--that the
accumulated decisions were not going to come near that target and that
there seemed to be a trendline going quite high.
And so Secretary Richardson and his
experts at the Energy Department argued for a couple of weeks, based on
their experience and their understanding of the supply situation, that
among the various options we considered--and there were three or four of
them, including doing nothing right now, and others--that the most
prudent thing to do is what we did.
So I essentially took the advice of Secretary
Richardson and the experts at the Energy
Department, after discussing it extensively with our whole economic
team, including the Vice President.
Thank you.
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Note: The President spoke at 9:55 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the
White House prior to his departure for Dallas, TX. In his remarks, he
referred to Yugoslav opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica.