[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.

[[Page 1956]]

  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.