[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.