[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[October 27, 2000]
[Pages 2335-2342]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the Budget and the Legislative Agenda and an Exchange With 
Reporters
October 27, 2000

    The President. Good morning--good afternoon. [Laughter] Don't tell 
anybody I didn't know what time it was. [Laughter]
    I would like to say a few words about the budget, the progress we 
have made, and the work still to be done in this Congress.
    The appropriations bills we pass every year do a lot more than keep 
our Government running. They tell us something very basic about our 
priorities as a nation. There's no great secret to getting things done 
around here. When we put progress over partisanship, we get results. 
When we work together, we get results.
    For example, I just signed a very fine VA/HUD appropriations bill, 
along with the energy and water appropriations bill. It includes some 
impressive advances for the American people: 79,000 housing vouchers to 
help people move from welfare to work; more support for housing for the 
elderly and disabled; investment for our economic empowerment agenda 
that the Vice President has led, including 
empowerment zones and community development banks; more funds for 
AmeriCorps; funds for climate change research and technology in the 
Energy Department; funds to support our space program; the largest 
increase ever in the Veterans Administration and in the National Science 
Foundation, something that is critically important to our future; and 
adequate funding for FEMA to meet our national emergencies.
    The energy and water bill also contains funds for climate change 
technology and research in solar and renewable energies. These things 
will have a direct, positive impact on our long-term energy future and 
help us to become less dependent on and less vulnerable to supply 
interruptions and price explosions in oil. This is very, very important.
    Now, I could say the same thing about the Interior bill I signed the 
other day, which many of you were here for, the largest appropriation 
for land preservation ever in our country's history for our lands legacy 
initiative. And the foreign operations bills, which the Congress has 
passed in a completely bipartisan way, funds the debt relief initiative 
for the poorest countries in the world, which is one of the most 
significant

[[Page 2336]]

achievements in the international arena in years and years for the 
United States and, I believe, for years to come will provide a 
foundation upon which my successors, whoever they are, will build to 
help advance America's interests and build a more peaceful world.
    So we can do things that really matter around here, even though we 
have differences. Do I agree with every little thing in these bills? No, 
I do not. Did I get everything I wanted in these bills? I did not. But 
we all worked together, and we had some remarkable successes.
    Now still, here we are, almost a month past the end of the fiscal 
year, and there are still some very vital work to be done by Congress. 
And I have the feeling that the congressional majority has not yet 
decided whether to wrap up with more progress or score partisan points 
and leave town, and that would leave vital national needs unmet.
    Two days ago I made a good-faith offer to the Republican leadership. 
I said, let's work together to meet our most pressing outstanding 
priorities and pass responsible tax relief for middle class families and 
small business. The answer I got was disappointing. Instead of meeting 
us on common ground, instead of working with the White House or 
congressional Democrats, the Republican leadership closed its doors to 
compromise, literally closed the doors to compromise.
    They crafted their own partisan tax package and passed it last night 
on a party-line vote. The Republican tax package fails to meet the test 
of fairness to our children, our seniors, or the millions of Americans 
without health care coverage. If it reaches my desk in its present form, 
I will have no choice but to veto it.
    Congress has to get back to work on this, so let me be clear about 
my concerns. First, the bill is unfair to children. We can't expect to 
lift them up if we put them in schools that are falling down. That's why 
I've proposed to repair old and crumbling schools and build new ones. 
Unfortunately, the majority's inefficient tax incentives help only a 
few, and ironically, most of the help would go to the schools and school 
districts that need it the least.
    This bill is unfair to hospitals, to community providers, and to 
patients. It is a massive give-away to the HMO's, tens of billions of 
dollars at the expense of teaching and rural hospitals, home health 
agencies, and other community providers who really need the help. And 
even though they are spending the Medicare resources, their plan allows 
the HMO's to take the money and then abandon the Medicare patients, 
which is the alleged pretext for giving them so much of this money, that 
they've been dropping people from their Medicare program out in--
especially in the rural areas of our country over the last couple of 
years.
    Now, we have to make improvements in the Medicare and Medicaid 
allocations here. At the same time, the majority is blocking bipartisan 
proposals to extend health care coverage for children and pregnant women 
who are legal immigrants or to expand coverage for children with 
disabilities. Just an hour ago I met here at the White House with a 
group of Americans with disabilities who lead various groups across our 
Nation. They have a vital interest in adequate funding for home- and 
community-based services in this Medicare-Medicaid allocation bill, a 
need the that Republican bill grossly shortchanges because it 
disproportionately gives the money to the HMO's.
    The priorities of this leadership bill do not reflect the priorities 
and needs of the American people. The bill is unfair to seniors. The tax 
package the House passed last night abandons my bipartisan approach to 
providing significant, long-term care relief for families' long-term 
care costs. It also fails to address the lack of pension coverage for 
more than 70 million hard-working Americans.
    So again, I ask Congress: Send me a tax bill that helps us build new 
schools and repair old ones; a bill that helps our workers, all of them, 
save for retirement; a bill that expands long-term health care coverage 
for Americans who need it; a fair tax bill.
    I also want to raise the minimum wage but not with a Republican bill 
that stacks the deck against American workers. The leadership should not 
play games with the minimum wage. They should stop holding it hostage to 
tax breaks for special interests, stand up for working Americans, and 
send me a bill I can sign. We can do that and still have appropriate 
small-business tax relief.
    There is more we should do and some more things we must do. We 
certainly should pass the voluntary Medicare prescription drug benefit 
and a real Patients' Bill of Rights. And we must pass fairness for 
Latino immigrants. We have a hate crimes legislation we ought to pass. 
And

[[Page 2337]]

they've had a bill there that has enormous bipartisan support throughout 
the country to strengthen the equal pay laws for women.
    Again I say, there's no secret to getting things done. We have to 
work together. Look at the VA/HUD bill I just signed, the energy and 
water bill. Look at the Interior bill. Look at the foreign operations 
bill. This Congress has done some good things. But whenever the 
Republicans shut the Democrats and the White House out and go behind 
closed doors and try to make an agreement among themselves for the 
benefit of the elements in the rightwing of their caucus, we wind up 
with a bill that is unacceptable to the American people.
    So I'm here. I'm prepared to keep working. But as we celebrate these 
good days, we ought to finish the business of the public in the right 
way.
    Thank you very much.

Need for Bipartisan Approach

    Q. Mr. President, the leadership says it's you that's playing 
politics, trying to help the Vice President and the Democrats who are 
running.
    The President. Well, look at the facts. The problem with that charge 
is, it doesn't stand up to the facts. I have signed every appropriations 
bill that has been the product of a bipartisan process, every single 
one. The only one we don't have now is the Labor/HHS bill which contains 
the education budget of the country, which is the most important one, 
but we're making real progress there. If you notice, even though it 
hasn't passed--and it should have passed--I didn't say a word of 
criticism in my remarks about it because we're continuing to work 
together in a bipartisan fashion.
    What happened with this Commerce/State/Justice bill and the 
immigration issues and the other issues and this tax bill is that the 
Republicans basically kicked the Democrats and the White House out of 
the room. And they came up with a bill, and then they called us and 
said, ``Now, we took care of this, that, or the other concern of yours. 
Now you guys just be cooperative and sign off on what we have decided to 
do. The leadership has decided this is the only bill we can get past our 
rightwing, and you'll just have to take it.''
    Well, that's not the way to go. I have never tried to play politics 
with this in this year. Look, I bragged on them today. Every time we do 
something in a bipartisan way, I try to give credit where credit is due. 
I have bent over backwards for 8 years here to work with both 
Republicans and Democrats. But I will not bend over backwards to be run 
over, not because of me or the Democrats in Congress but because it's 
not good for the American people.
    Now look, we just have these two appropriations bills, and we have 
the tax legislation, and we have to put some money back into health 
care. And we can do this, but we're going to have to do it together. We 
can't just--we can't have our Republican friends say, ``Hey, we're 
having a really tough time getting agreement within our caucus, so you 
guys have to go away, and we'll go in our caucus, and we'll try to fight 
it out with each other, and whatever we can live with by ourselves, the 
rest of you have got to take.'' Now, that is what happened. That is the 
fact.
    It is true that the bills are not as awful as they once were. It is 
true that they took some things out. But the bills are not what they 
would be if they were like all the other appropriations bills, the 
products of a genuine bipartisan negotiation. That's all I'm asking for. 
That's all I've ever asked for. And like I said, in these bills that I 
signed today, there are hundreds, literally hundreds, of projects that 
the Members wanted that I did not support.
    They cut back on the investment in some things that I thought were 
important. But when you sit down and negotiate with people, you have a 
good-faith obligation to try to come to agreement. We honored that, and 
we got the agreement. And I'm very, very pleased with these bills. But 
the ones that are still out there, they do more harm than good, and we 
need to clean them up. And we need to do it in a hurry so they can get 
out of town and go on about their business.
    Q. Mr. President, the Senate majority leader says that the tax cut 
bill gives you 80 to 90 percent of what you wanted and what you were 
asking for and that no President should expect to get 100 percent of 
what he wants.
    The President. I agree nobody should expect to get 100 percent, but 
I don't agree that it's 80 to 90 percent. I explained what I thought was 
the matter with it. That's just not a--I do not believe that is an 
accurate characterization of the tax bill. And again I say, you know, 
whenever I'm involved in a peace process around the world, I hear the 
same sort of thing. If people aren't talking to each other, they say,

[[Page 2338]]

``Well, why don't they like this? This is more or less what they've 
asked for.'' And it's very important that you understand what happened.
    On these bills, unlike the other work we have done, they sent the 
Democrats and the White House out of the room, because they were having 
trouble agreeing among themselves. Once they made an agreement among 
themselves and made some changes based on objections we had raised, they 
said, ``Well, why aren't you happy?'' And again I would say, all we 
need--if we get a negotiation, we will have a compromise bill that will 
be an honorable compromise.
    But you all know this is so, because you follow this. The way these 
bills were produced, the tax bill and the Commerce/State/Justice 
appropriations, was different from the way all the other bills were 
produced. Today we had Senator Mikulski 
in here, a Democrat from Maryland, Congressman Walsh, a Republican from New York in here talking about what they 
did together on the VA/HUD bill. That's the way we need to get this 
done.

Situation in the Middle East

    Q. Four more Palestinians died this morning in clashes with Israeli 
troops. Are you trying even harder now to try to arrange separate 
meetings with Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat, or do you think 
that violence still has to stop before there is even any point in 
bringing them here?
    The President. I think there has to be a much lower level of 
violence before they could meet together and talk about the long-term 
prospects for peace. I worked on this for several hours yesterday, and 
we obviously keep up with it. And I'm very disturbed about today, 
because we actually had 2 or 3 good days here, where there was very 
little violence.
    We're trying to get to the bottom of seeing what happened and see 
what, if anything, we can do to undermine the causes of today's violence 
so that it won't recur. But we've got to get the level of violence down 
before there can be a resumption in negotiations.
    In terms of who comes here when, that is still subject to 
discussion. We're talking to the Israelis. We're talking to the 
Palestinians. We're talking with others around the world, and--look, I'm 
working really hard on this. I'm frustrated--I'm just as frustrated as 
you are, and it's heartbreaking. We've just got to try to get ahold of 
it, and I--but don't lose sight of the fact that we had 3 pretty good 
days. And I would say to the people in the region not to lose sight of 
the fact that we did, and tomorrow needs to be a good day, not a bad 
day, because of what happened today.

Budget

    Q. Mr. President, are you in danger of playing into Governor Bush's 
hands on this budget battle? After all, Governor Bush has run largely on 
the premise that he can get things done--as a Washington outsider, he 
can come in here and break gridlock. Now, you're threatening to veto.
    The President. Well, first of all, let's have a little reality 
therapy here. You know, I said that I would do that, and I have. I kept 
waiting for someone to point out--some of you to point out when they 
kept saying, ``The partisanship is terrible in Washington, and nothing 
ever gets done''--well, let me just point out--since they came in, it is 
true that they shut the Government once down because I wouldn't agree to 
abolish the Department of Education and agree to the biggest Medicare 
cost increases on recipients in history and the biggest education and 
environmental cuts in history.
    But when that was over, look what's happened: We had a bipartisan 
welfare reform bill that passed with big majorities in both Houses of 
both parties; we had a bipartisan balanced budget bill that passed with 
big majorities in both Houses in both parties, including the Children's 
Health Insurance Program, the biggest increase in children's health in 
35 years. We had a bipartisan Telecommunications Act that provided the 
E-rate that has taken us to 95 percent of our schools now hooked up to 
the Internet, created thousands and thousands of businesses, hundreds of 
thousands of new jobs. We've had 100,000 police. We've had 100,000 
teachers. We've gone from zero to serving 800,000 kids in after-school 
programs, all done in an entirely bipartisan way. I just went over this 
breathtaking litany of things that were done at the end of this 
negotiation process in a purely bipartisan way.
    Now, the only thing I have objected to is the unipartisan, if you 
will, the single-party production of a tax bill and one appropriations 
bill. That's it. And I don't think that party should seek to--should be 
able to benefit from their failure at bipartisanship.

[[Page 2339]]

    Let me just give you another example. We have a bipartisan majority 
in this Congress, in both Houses, for hate crimes, for a good school 
construction bill, for a minimum wage increase, for a Patients' Bill of 
Rights, for campaign finance reform. Now, it's not bipartisanship that 
is keeping those bills from passing. It is the leadership of the other 
party in the Congress blocking a bipartisan majority. I fail to see how 
you could argue that the voters ought to reward people for creating the 
problem that they are complaining about. I think that's a pretty hard 
sell.
    Yes, sir, go ahead. This gentleman has had his hand up.

Pork Barrel Projects

    Q. Thank you. Critics of spending, of Federal spending, identified 
the VA/HUD bill as an example of legislation that's so stuffed with pork 
that next year we may not have an on-budget surplus, and whoever 
succeeds you in office won't have enough money for their proposals. And 
I'm wondering, how can you sign a bill like that and say it's a fine 
bill, when it has so many pork-barrel projects in it?
    The President. Well, the one thing about--first of all, it does have 
too many pork-barrel projects, for my taste, but that's what the 
Republicans wanted. If I wanted to get the money to help people move 
from welfare to work and have housing, if I wanted to get the funds to 
help create--continue to help create jobs in poor areas that have been 
left out and left behind, and the other things that are in the VA/HUD 
bill, they were also willing to--you know, they never agreed with me and 
the Vice President on global warming 
before, and they came in and really supported our budget for research 
and development and new energy technologies.
    And most of these projects--I saw an article in the press today that 
estimated that this spending in this Congress would reduce the projected 
surplus by $900 billion. Let me just say, I don't--it will reduce the 
projected surplus, but I think it's by more like half that, and let me 
explain why.
    Because the one thing about these so-called pork-barrel projects--
and I've found in Washington and in life, a pork-barrel project is the 
other guy's project. It's never yours. If it's the project in your 
hometown, it's the greatest thing you ever saw. But they are--because 
they are capital projects, they are not repeating. So the assumption 
that this erodes almost half the surplus is based on the fact that you'd 
have this rate of increase every year to sustain that. And that does not 
have to be the case, because a lot of these projects are--you know, they 
got the funding, and they'll do the project, and they don't have to 
repeat it next year. And that's the difference in that.
    So I do think that the estimated surplus will have to be reduced, 
but I think that the assumption that these spending projects require us 
now to assume that spending will increase by this amount every year for 
a decade, I do not agree with that. And it shouldn't, and we shouldn't.

Peru

    Q. Mr. President, you've always been interested in promoting 
democracy in Latin America and fighting drugs. There is a problem now in 
Peru, in which the ex-head of intelligence went to Panama, has returned. 
President Fujimori supposedly is looking for him, and the situation--
political situation in Peru is really very perilous. What do you think 
is going to happen, and what can the United States and the OAS do to 
help it out?
    The President. Well, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm 
following it closely, and I don't know. I think what we have to do is to 
continue to support democracy and the rule of law in whatever way is 
appropriate. I don't know that I can say much more than that right now.

Situation in the Middle East

    Q. One more on the Middle East. How can you have peace in the Middle 
East until you train the younger generations of both Palestinians and 
Israelis to stop hating each other?
    The President. Well, you know, that's--I must say, that's what the 
Seeds of Peace program was about and a lot of these young Palestinians 
and young Israelis, along with other young Middle Easterners I've met, 
young Jordanians and young Egyptians, in the Seeds of Peace program, 
young people from other Arab countries.
    I think, obviously, a big part of what is driving these 
demonstrations is a profound alienation of young people in the 
Palestinian community who have not seen any economic benefits from peace 
over the last 8 years, and who despair that it will ever actually be 
completed. I think finding a way to reach out to the young and

[[Page 2340]]

give them some more positive contact with each other across the lines 
that divide them is very important.
    I think one of the best things I've seen in the whole region over 
the last 8 years is this Seeds of Peace program and what these young 
people have done together. And that kind of dialog is what has to 
replace the bullets and the rocks.

Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus

    Q. Mr. President, despite your personal involvement for a Greek-
Turkish rapprochement over the Aegean and Cyprus, Ankara has become more 
aggressive against the territorial integrity of Greece and the Republic 
of Cyprus in the last days. May we have your comments?
    The President. I don't know if I can comment on what's happened in 
the last few days, simply because I've been so overwhelmingly involved 
in the Middle East. But I can say that one of the relatively small 
number of real disappointments I have after 8 years of working in the 
foreign policy field is that I have not made more progress in helping to 
resolve the Cyprus issue, because I have always felt that Turkey should 
be integrated into Europe. I have always felt that Turkey and Greece 
should be natural allies because they're allies in NATO. I've seen them 
work together.
    I think the whole world was profoundly moved by the way that the 
Greeks and the Turks responded to each other's human losses in the 
earthquakes, and basically to see entrenched and unmovable positions in 
Cyprus in what really ought to be a fairly straightforward problem to 
solve, keep them apart, and keep Turkey more at arm's length from 
Europe, I think it's a price not worth paying, and I think it's a very 
sad thing. I still hope it can be resolved.
    There is actually some chance we can make a little progress before I 
can leave office. If we don't, it's something I will keep an interest in 
and would be willing to keep working for even after I'm gone from here, 
because it just--it makes no sense in the larger context of the future 
of Greece, the future of Turkey, and the future of the Cypriots, 
themselves, to maintain this present impasse with all the bad feelings 
and conflicts and estrangements that it has brought us.

Week Prior to the Election

    Q. Mr. President, if this budget process drags on into next week, 
are you concerned that it could cut into your efforts to get out the 
vote and energize the base for the Democrats? It's a busy week next 
week.
    The President. Well, the most important thing I can do is to do my 
job. And events around the world could also cut into that. We just have 
to see what's going to happen.
    As I have said to you all along, I've always been happy to do what I 
could basically to go out and say what I believe, which is that the 
country is in better shape than it was when I took office, that we're 
moving in the right direction, and I hope we'll build on that instead of 
reversing it.
    And this ought to be a happy election for the American people. They 
ought to be out there excitedly debating the differences. But I think 
the Vice President and Senator 
Lieberman have made a very good case for 
themselves, and I think they will continue to do that. And I will do 
what I can to help, in terms of explaining to people how important it is 
that they go vote.
    But the votes will be won or lost by the candidates in the ongoing, 
sort of 24-hour debate that will happen between now and election day. I 
would like to be helpful because I believe what we've done is important, 
and I think the progress should be continued. I think it's very 
important that we not get into a budget where the numbers don't add up 
and we get back into deficit. I think it's very important that someone 
be here in this job to restrain the impulses of the rightwing of the 
Republican Congress if they should stay in the majority in either House.
    I think that--you know, all this is important. But the first thing 
I've got to do is, do what the American people hired me to do, because 
they're going to make their decisions based on their own evaluations of 
the candidates and the arguments they make.
    I may be the only person here who has ever been on the other side of 
this, because I was a Governor for a dozen years when there were 
Republican Presidents who would come to my State from time to time in 
election season. I can say my sense was, when they came, that they did 
help get their own voters out but that the electorate who were 
undecided, who were

[[Page 2341]]

listening, were listening more to what my opponent and I were saying 
than to what the President said about us. That's where I think we are 
here.
    So my role has got to be, go out and tell the people this country is 
in great shape, and we're in better shape than we were 8 years ago. 
We're moving in the right direction. I hope we won't take a U-turn.
    There are certain things I think I can speak with some credibility 
on, like the budget and the need to resist some of the extremist 
impulses in the Republican caucus. But by and large, what I want to do 
is just tell the American people this is a chance of a lifetime to build 
the future of our dreams for our kids, and you all ought to show up to 
vote.
    We may never have another election like this where we've got this 
much prosperity and this much progress with the absence of domestic 
crisis or foreign threat to our security. It may not happen again in our 
entire lifetime. And that's the message I hope I'll get to go out and 
deliver, and I'll do everything I can to do it.

President's Role in 2000 Campaign

    Q. [Inaudible]--were out there doing it now?
    The President. That's not true. No, that's not true. I've seen some 
of these stories, and I have to tell you, since August, I told--I was 
talking to Bill Daley yesterday, and he was 
reminding me, he said, ``You first told me in August that you should 
stay in Washington and do your job with the Congress and do your job 
with the country until the last week or so of the campaign, except for 
the work you could do at night, helping to raise funds for the Congress 
and the Senate and the Democratic Party.'' And that's pretty much what I 
have done.
    You know, as I said, I've actually experienced this in my former 
life, when I was a Governor. And the stories that imply that I have 
disagreed with that up to now are just not accurate. I believe that I 
have been doing what I should be doing, the work of the country. The 
political work I have done, even for my wife, I have done in a way that 
was consistent with, first of all, getting this work done.
    Now, when you get down to the last week or so, I think the American 
people expect everybody to get out and kind of mix it up, and they want 
us all to be out there. But make no mistake about it, they're going to 
make their judgments overwhelmingly based on what these candidates say 
to them.
    And I think the Vice President has been 
doing a great job, and I feel comfortable. I just want to make sure the 
American people understand what the stakes are and understand how truly 
unique this moment in history is. You know, most voters are now younger 
than me, and most people--a lot of voters will vote who have never lived 
in anything other than a time of economic expansion, declining crime and 
welfare rolls, an improving economy, increasing college-going, and all 
these things that have been happening. And you know, they may think it's 
just--that's the way things are, and so they don't have to factor all 
that into their voting.
    I've lived long enough to live through many different cycles of life 
in America, and so I just want to get out there and make sure everybody 
understands what a unique moment it is. But if I have to do it from 
here, as I'm doing it today, because my job requires me to stay here, 
I'll stay here until election day, if I have to, to do right by the 
American people, because my first job is to take care of them.
    Q. Mr. President, your feelings are not hurt? You're not angry?
    The President. I have always believed that what I should do is to do 
my job here. When I can go out at night and on the weekends to help the 
House and Senate Members raise money, I should do that, or help our 
party. I should go to the Democratic Convention, make the best speech I 
could about giving an account of the last 8 years, and then I should do 
whatever I could to help increase the turnout and make sure the stakes 
in the election were understood in the last week or 10 days or so.
    That's exactly what I thought should be done. So I actually feel 
quite good about this. And I think--what I want to see the American 
people have here is great clarity in what the choice is and what the 
consequences are, and I think they're getting more and more clarity with 
every passing day. So I feel good about that.

North Korea

    Q. Mr. President, one on Korea. Is it your intention that if you 
made a personal trip to North Korea now, do you think it would result in 
specific steps to have them reduce their missile production and export 
of missile technology, and do you intend to go?

[[Page 2342]]

    The President. Well, the answer to the last question is, I have not 
made a decision yet. But I was very pleased with the reception that 
Secretary Albright received, and I 
hope that the North Koreans were pleased with the reception that General 
Cho received here. And we're talking about 
those things.
    If I could just take a minute, I think it's important for the 
American people to understand just how far this issue has come and yet 
what is still out there. When I became President, and I began to get--
after the election, just as the new President-elect will find, I got all 
these briefings, and we went through all the national security stuff. 
The general consensus was that the most dangerous problem I was facing 
in late 1992 was North Korea's nuclear program and that it could lead to 
the development of not only nuclear weapons, which would imperil the 
Korean Peninsula and our then about 40,000 soldiers there--we have 
slightly fewer now--but that in the worst of all worlds, they might 
develop nuclear weapons and sell them to others, along with missiles, 
which would be devastating to the whole future of arms control.
    And what happened? We got an agreement to end the nuclear program. 
The Japanese supported it. The South Koreans strongly supported it. We 
got other countries to kick in a little money. We've worked on it. We've 
continued to negotiate over missile testing and technology with them. 
And we refused to have an independent relationship except on arms 
control issues, in the absence of some improving relationship between 
North and South; the present President, Kim Dae-jung, gets elected in South Korea, breaks this long icy 
relationship, justifiably wins the Nobel Peace Prize. I was elated for 
him. And then they come here; we go there. So let me just remind you, we 
are a long, long way in the right direction, compared to where we were 
back in January of '93.
    But we still have substantial concerns in the missile area, as you 
pointed out. We're working on it, and that's all I think I should say 
now. We're working on it, and I haven't made a decision on the trip.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:10 in the Rose Garden at the White House. 
In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel; 
Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority; Republican 
Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; former Chief of 
Intelligence Vladmiro Montesinos and President Alberto Fujimori of Peru; 
National Defense Vice Chairman Cho Myong-nok of North Korea; and 
President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea.