[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 6 (Monday, February 15, 1993)]
[Pages 171-185]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Town Meeting in Detroit

 February 10, 1993

    The President. Thank you, thank you very much. Let me, first of all, 
thank all of you for being here in Michigan, and thank our audiences in 
Washington and Georgia and Florida for joining us, and all the people 
across this country who are watching this event.
    I started doing these televised town meetings a year ago in New 
Hampshire. Between June and November I did nine that were televised 
alone, including one here at this station. And I wanted to come out of 
the White House 3 weeks to the day after I became President because I 
can see now, after only 3 weeks, how easy it is for a President to get 
out of touch, to be caught up in the trappings of Washington, and 
basically to be told by people that nothing needs to be changed or you 
can't change things.
    Let me just briefly say, I want to take as much time as possible for 
questions, but I want to say one or two things real quickly. I believe I 
got elected on a commitment to change America, to create jobs, try to 
raise incomes, to face the health care crisis, to try to liberate the 
Government from special interests and turn it back to the people, and to 
try to reduce the deficit and put America on a path to long-term health 
and recovery, bringing the American people together.
    There's been some good news and bad news since I won the election. 
The good news is that productivity of American firms is up. People are 
buying houses because interest rates are down. Consumer confidence is up 
since the election. I like that. People think things are going to be 
better.
    There's been some bad news. With all these economic improvements, we 
aren't generating new jobs. And the deficit of this country is about $50 
billion a year bigger than

[[Page 172]]

I was told it was going to be before the election.
    So we have to put together a plan that keeps my commitments to you, 
invest in you, in your jobs, in your education, your health care, and 
your future; that brings that debt down; that deals with the health care 
crisis; and that does it in a way that's fair to all Americans.
    I've been working almost exclusively on the economic issues of the 
country since I became President. I've got another week to put it 
together. And I wanted to come up here tonight and just listen to your 
questions, answer them as candidly as I could, and share with you as 
much as I can my feelings about where we're going to go.
    But I'll say this: All the hundreds of thousands and maybe a million 
miles that I've traveled, I never saw one person along the highway with 
a sign that said, ``Things are just fine the way they are. Don't change 
anything.'' [Laughter] So I'm going to keep trying to change, and I'm 
going to try to stay in touch with you this whole 4 years so that you 
can honestly tell me what you think.
    I'm really proud of the fact that the voter turnout was not only up, 
we not only had the biggest crowd for the Inauguration in history, but 
the mail and the phone calls in the White House are running at record 
levels, some good, some critical. But that's good. That's democracy. And 
it proves that people really feel, at least so far, that I'm going to 
listen and try to move forward. And that's what we're here to do 
tonight. So let's begin.
    Bill Bonds.  Thank you very much, Mr. President. You know, in 
reality there are several town meetings tonight besides our audience 
here at WXYZ. The President is going to be taking questions from people 
in three other major American cities. From the far northwest, we welcome 
the people at station KOMO in Seattle, Washington. Ken Schramm will be 
the moderator, bringing us questions from the people of that Evergreen 
State; Ann Bishop, our moderator from station WPLG in Miami, Florida; 
from our station in Atlanta, Georgia, Bill Nigut taking questions from 
the people visiting him at station WSB.
    The response from the people in these American cities has been 
overwhelming. And we'll begin right now by taking a question from a 
member of the audience here at WXYZ in Detroit and see if this bird's 
going to fly tonight.
    Our first question is from Susan Esser. Susan Esser was the 
political coordinator for the Ross Perot campaign for the Presidency in 
the State of Michigan. I suspect this is going to be about--well, it's 
``the economy, stupid,'' as we heard--the economy.

Balancing the Budget

    Q.  The American people, Mr. President, feel that Congress does not 
have the political will to balance the budget. If this is true, and as 
you say, if the economy is your priority, will you support a strong 
balanced budget amendment, one that is not watered down, and with us 
send a signal to Congress that we need them to face the issue? And when 
can we expect Washington to start to solve this enormous problem of 
ours?
    The President. I think you can--first of all, I'm not for any 
version of the balanced budget amendment that I have seen because I 
think it is basically a gimmick and a way of putting the decision off 
that would give us 5 years to deal with it. Secondly, if we balanced the 
budget tomorrow, we'd drive unemployment up because it would require 
such terrible sacrifices.
    I hate to say this again, but if you look at what the Japanese did, 
they had a huge deficit in the 1970's, about as big, even a little 
bigger than ours is now. And they brought it down over about a 10-year 
period until, in 1990, they were the only major industrial country with 
a balanced budget; one reason, they had low unemployment and high 
growth.
    Let me just tell you what I'm going to do, and I wouldn't rule out 
other measures later. I'm going to try to get the Congress to pass the 
modified line-item veto bill that the House passed the last time and the 
Senate didn't. I strongly support it. I'm going to try to pass a strong 
campaign finance reform law and a lobby reform law to free the Congress 
of undue influence of special interests. I'm going to ask them to cut 
spending, and dramatically, across a broad range of areas, and to raise 
some more money to try to bring this deficit down in a dramatic way that 
will

[[Page 173]]

send a signal that we're in control of our own house again. And we're 
going to lower interest rates as a result of it and get this economy 
going again. I think that's what we want.
    The important thing is not to balance the budget overnight but to 
put it on a steady and decided downward tack. If we don't do it--let me 
just say, there's no virtue in any of this unless it helps you.
    Let me just answer this. A lot of people say to me, ``Why do you 
want to balance the budget?'' It's no fun cutting spending or raising 
more money to balance the budget or reduce the deficit. If you reduce 
the deficit, the United States doesn't borrow so much money. We have 
more of your tax money to spend on the education of your children or on 
developing new jobs or on health care. We keep interest rates down, and 
it's easier for you to borrow money in the private sector. So you create 
more jobs. If the deficit gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year, 
it weakens the economy.
    So we have to do two things at once that no Government in your 
country's history has ever done. We've got to increase investment in 
jobs and reduce the deficit, and we're going to do it. And I think we 
can start next week. Look at my plan. See how you like it and see if the 
Congress responds. I predict to you that they will respond in a 
bipartisan fashion and reduce the debt for the first time in a long 
time.
    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, we've kicked it off with that first 
question. Thank you, Susan. We're going to keep this moving right along. 
Let me throw it now and link up with Ann Bishop from station WPLG in 
Miami.
    Ann Bishop. Thank you very much, Bill. And with me is Kelly Kaprin, 
an attorney, and she has a question for the President. Kelly.

Family Leave Bill and Gays in the Military

    Q. Why did you choose to tackle the gays in the military and the 
family leave bill first versus getting right to the economy and the 
Federal deficit?
    The President. I didn't--I did choose the family leave bill first. 
Let me answer the question separately. I chose to deal with the family 
leave bill because I knew there was a majority support in both Houses 
for it and because I thought it was a pro-family bill. I thought it was 
a bill that would be helpful to strengthen the American family with so 
many people forcibly in the work force. It contained an exemption for 
small business. It had been passed twice by the Congress before and 
vetoed. I thought it would help families and illustrate we had ended 
gridlock.
    I tried to put off the gays in the military issue for 6 months. 
Senators in the other party wanted it dealt with now. They say it as a 
way to delay family leave and to throw the whole Federal Government into 
debating that. I actually spent very little time on the issue myself. I 
met with the Joint Chiefs on a number of issues, including that; met 
with the Senate Democrats on the Armed Services Committee. But I was, 
frankly, appalled that we spent so much time the first week talking 
about that instead of how to get the economy going again. It wasn't my 
idea. My agreement with the Joint Chiefs was to study the issue for 6 
months, so we could focus immediately on the economy. Thank goodness 
that's what we're now doing.
    Mr. Bonds. Some people say you probably would have been better off 
if you sat down with Sam Nunn and a couple of--maybe somebody like 
Admiral Crowe, a couple of the heavyweights in the U.S. Senate and say, 
``Look, how do I approach this thing with the Joint Chief of Staff and 
not get the mess that we got into?''
    The President. That's just what we did do. The Joint Chiefs wanted 
to meet with me on that and other issues. I met with them. Senator Nunn 
got into this because I asked him to. I hate that it was written, 
particularly in Georgia, that there was some conflict between us. I 
asked him to help me craft a resolution to do what the Joint Chiefs 
asked, which was to review it for 6 months and to put it off. We did our 
best, but there were others in the Senate, mostly Republicans, who just 
wanted to debate it to death because they thought it was hurting the 
other efforts we were making. And now we're on the economy, and that's 
where we ought to stay.
    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, we're going to switch now to Atlanta, a 
little bit closer to your hometown part of the country. Bill Nigut, WSB. 
Bill.

[[Page 174]]

Tax Increases

    Bill Nigut. Mr. President, we're glad that you could join us by 
satellite from Detroit. We're going to start with Katie Rapkin, who 
works here for the Atlanta Symphony and who is a bit concerned about at 
least one of the campaign promises that she believes you made and yet 
she feels--you're not quite sure he's going to follow through on it.
    Q. I'm concerned about your campaign promise to not raise the taxes 
for the middle class, how you intend to keep that promise.
    Mr. Nigut. Did you vote for President Clinton?
    Q. Yes, I did.
    Mr. Nigut. Was that one reason you did?
    Q. Yes, I did.
    The President. Well, first of all, I did put out a plan which didn't 
contain a middle class tax increase, but I also repeatedly said, and I 
said in the debates in front of 100 million people, I refuse to say 
``read my lips.'' That's not responsible.
    Now, what's happened since the election. We have been told since the 
election that the Federal debt every year is going to be $50 billion 
bigger than we were told it was before the election. I wish I could 
promise you that I won't ask you to pay any more. But I can tell you 
this: Look what I'm doing. I'm doing my best to keep my campaign 
commitments.
    I have, first of all, started by cutting the Government. I cut the 
White House staff by 25 percent yesterday. I bet that's never happened 
in the lifetime of anybody in this audience. And it's real cuts. Today I 
announce $9 billion in cuts in the central administration of the Federal 
Government, $9 billion. I have also said that before I ask the middle 
class to pay, I'm going to ask the wealthiest Americans and companies 
who made money in the eighties and had their taxes cut to pay their fair 
share. And I'm going to cut more Government spending. But I cannot tell 
you that I won't ask you to make any contribution to the changes we have 
to make.
    We have got to do two things at the same time. We've got to bring 
the debt down for the reasons that the first questioner so clearly 
articulated. And secondly, we've got to invest more in creating new 
jobs, in educating people, and providing health care for all Americans 
and controlling cost.
    I'm doing my best to do that in a way that is fairest to middle 
class America. But I have to be honest with you; the debt is $50 billion 
a year bigger than we were told it was before the election. I'm doing my 
best. I have done nothing almost for 3 weeks but wrestle with this 
budget, try to cut costs, and find ways to finance what we have to do. 
But we've got to change what we're doing.
    Let me say I do have an alternative. I could play the same kind of 
games with you that have been played for the last 10 or 12 years. And 
this is not a partisan comment. This happened out of Washington. I could 
give you a bunch of smoke and mirrors and pretend the deficit is not 
there, and then 3 or 4 years from now we'd be spending 20 cents of every 
tax dollar paying off the debt. And it's not right.
    So I'm going to do the best I can. Listen to what I say next week. 
Decide whether you think it's fair, and tell me and your Senators and 
Congressmen whether you think I'm right or wrong.

Crime and Gun Control

    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, there are a lot of people who are 
convinced that the Federal Government doesn't spend enough money 
battling crime. I don't have to tell you about the mean streets of 
America. This man is John Marbury. His son was killed in the city of 
Detroit for a leather jacket. Right, Mr. Marbury?
    Q. Yes. I would like to ask Mr. Clinton what advice would he give to 
the administrations of these large urban areas of how to get rid of 
these illegal handguns and curbing the violence with an immediate 
impact?
    The President. I wish I knew how to have an immediate impact. And I 
thank you for having the courage to come here tonight, with all the pain 
you must feel.
    Let me tell you where I think we ought to begin. We ought to begin 
by passing the crime bill that nearly passed last year, which does two 
things: It gives the urban areas of this country more police officers 
for the streets. I have been in areas that were dominated by drugs, by 
weapons, and by murders, which are now virtually crime-free because

[[Page 175]]

they have enough policemen. They have neighborhood policemen walking the 
streets on every block, working with their neighbors. That's the first 
thing.
    The second thing that bill has is the Brady bill that would require 
a waiting period before people could buy handguns.
    And the third thing we probably ought to do is do what Governor 
Wilder in Virginia is trying to do. It takes a lot of guts to do that, 
but he's trying to pass a law which says that you can't buy a handgun 
more than once a month. Try to stop all these people that go to legal 
gun stores and buy guns and then turn around and just give them to kids 
like they're going out of style.
    So those are three places that I think we ought to start. And if 
you've got any other ideas, I'd like to have them. I think the problem 
of violence among young people, particularly in our inner cities and not 
all big cities, is maybe the biggest problem we've got today in terms of 
their future and the future of our cities.
    I'm now preparing a jobs package for the Congress that I want to try 
to boost the job-creating capacity of the economy for the next year or 
so while we bring the deficit down, because I don't want unemployment to 
go up. And one of the things I want to do is give extra incentives for 
companies to invest in inner cities. But they're not going to do it if 
they think it's not safe. You can't have a job in a place where people 
can't walk to work safely.
    Mr. Bonds. The most powerful lobby perhaps in the U.S. Congress is 
the NRA, and they don't want gun control. How are you going to overcome 
that?
    The President. We're going to fight to change. All I can tell you 
is, that's what I hired on to do. I may not win every battle I fight, 
but that's one of the changes we ought to make. And let me say, I live 
in a State where more than half the people have a hunting or fishing 
license or both. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. I believe 
in the right to hunt. I believe in all this. I do not believe that we're 
well served by having a bunch of 14- or 15-year-old kids out there with 
handguns shooting each other because of blood battles between gangs or 
because they're mad or because they're high on drugs. It's wrong. We've 
got to do something about it.
    Mr. Bonds. We've had some difficulty linking up with our station out 
in Seattle. We switch there now to Ken Schramm, KOMO.

Aerospace Industry

    Ken Schramm. Thanks, Bill. I'd like to introduce Larry Brown, who is 
a machinist with the Boeing Company. I'm going to go out on a limb here 
and suggest that perhaps you have a question concerning the economy.
    Q. I certainly do. Good evening, Mr. President.
    The President. Good evening, Larry.
    Q. Yesterday the Boeing Company announced that there would be 16,000 
layoffs here in Seattle. Recently, Pratt Whitney announced 10,000 
layoffs, and over 200,000 aerospace workers have lost their jobs in 
southern California. At last report, the governments in Europe involved 
with the airbus consortium have subsidized their industry to a tune of 
$26 billion. My question is, how can America meet the challenge of 
maintaining our leadership in the very important aerospace industry?
    The President. The answer, I think, is twofold: First, a lot of 
those aerospace workers who lost their jobs, lost their jobs because of 
cutbacks in defense which had to come at the end of the cold war. That 
is, we couldn't keep spending so much more than all of our competitors 
in these high-wage countries on defense without paying an economic price 
for it. But we shouldn't have cut defense as much as we did in terms of 
high-tech, high-wage employment without a plan to reinvest in other 
industries, in other technologies, to put those people to work. So the 
first thing we have to do is to invest more in converting these high-
wage jobs to other technologies.
    The second thing we need to do, frankly, is to take a serious look 
at the aerospace industry itself. The Congress passed a bill last year 
that was never enacted that we're now trying to get up and going, where 
I will appoint someone and they will appoint some people to a commission 
to focus on how to rebuild the aviation industry in our country in two 
ways: Number one, people who work for Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and 
other

[[Page 176]]

subsidiary companies--how can we get more jobs in making these planes 
and selling them at home and around the world. And number two, how can 
we do something about the commercial airlines themselves to avoid 
further bankruptcies and massive layoffs like--we've got a Florida 
station here with us tonight. Miami, has been devastated by layoffs at 
Eastern and Pan Am.
    So we are going to work on that. And I assure you that I'm going to 
have a strategy to try to invest in commercial aviation. And we're also 
going to either have to--either the Europeans are going to have to quit 
subsidizing airbus and trying to deny us access to those contracts, 
which is something else that's going on now, or we're going to have to 
meet the competition. I am not going to roll over and play dead.
    Seven, seven technologies are going to shape the highway jobs of the 
future. And one of the biggest is commercial aviation. The United States 
has a lead there. We are losing it because we have not fought to 
maintain it. And I assure you, as soon as I get this budget and this 
investment plan, this jobs program sent up to the Congress, we're going 
to start working on defense conversion and aerospace.
    Mr. Bonds. We're going to switch now to Ann Bishop, WPLG, Miami.

Florida Disaster Assistance and Military Base Closings

    Ms. Bishop. Thank you very much, Bill. And of course, we've not only 
had the devastation of the air industry but also Hurricane Andrew. And I 
want you to meet now the Reverend Walter Richardson, who certainly lives 
in the area that was hardest hit.
    Q. Good evening, Mr. President. On August 24th, many of the things 
that we had in the south Florida area were gone. One of the things that 
was gone because of Hurricane Andrew was Homestead Air Force Base. What 
plans do you have for the restoration of Homestead Air Force Base?
    The President. Well, first of all, let me talk generally about the 
hurricane. There is a lot of aid left to go to south Florida which has 
been approved but not spent, that's tied up in various Government 
pipelines. Some of it was not pushed through under the previous 
administration. But I have to say, frankly, some of it was slowed down 
because of the transition, the change of governments. That happens. And 
I'm going to put someone on that next week because of something Governor 
Chiles said to me. I want to put one person in charge of making sure 
that all the assistance that's supposed to go to south Florida for 
Hurricane Andrew actually goes there as quickly as possible. We'll run 
through all those Departments and try to push it out.
    On Homestead Air Force Base: In the campaign, President Bush said 
that he would just rebuild it while we were closing a lot of other air 
force bases. The Congress voted against that and said Homestead had to 
be considered along with all other bases. I agree with that; I think we 
have to consider Homestead along with all other air bases. There's a 
base commission, and they will evaluate the needs for it.
    But let me say what I believe, based on having spent an enormous 
amount of time in south Florida and having talked to your congressional 
delegation about it and others. I think that is an invaluable asset. I 
think it is important to rebuild enough support systems so that all the 
retired military personnel, around the air base at least, don't lose the 
dependence they had on it and turn around and leave your community, 
which would be bad for you.
    I think it's important to find a mission for Homestead. And I 
believe that there are a number of multiple use missions which are 
potential. We may even have joint use between military and commercial 
uses. I've given a good deal of thought to it, and it's one of the 
things that I want to talk to you folks about. Now, if it clears the 
base closing commission, it will just be rebuilt with its mission. If it 
doesn't, then I think we need to look at whether there is a mixed use 
for it as both a military and commercial mission.
    It's an incredible resource for south Florida, and it has to be used 
as a part of the rebuilding process. So if the base is not rebuilt 
because the base closing commission doesn't recommend it, then I'll help 
you do something else with it to generate an equal amount of jobs.
    Q. Thank you, Mr. President.

[[Page 177]]

    Ms. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. President. We'll throw it back to you, 
Bill, now in Detroit.
    Mr. Bonds. Okay, thank you very much Ann. We switch now to Bill 
Nigut, WSB, in Atlanta, Georgia. Bill.

Gays in the Military

    Mr. Nigut. Bill Bonds, as you know, the issue of lifting the ban on 
gays in the military has been a particularly heated one here in the 
South. Roger Turner wants to ask you, Mr. President, why you want to do 
it. Tell the President why you don't want him to lift the ban and see if 
he can respond to that.
    Q. Having served in the United States Navy for 5 years aboard a 
guided missile destroyer and also doing isolated duty in Alaska and as a 
Christian and having the opportunity to minister to a number of men in 
the Navy, I believe it would just add continued undue pressure on the 
situation that's already pressure-packed to begin with. And I want to 
know, why do you want to lift the ban, and what impact do you see the 
ban having on the military?
    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, does it surprise you to hear a minister--
we also have a minister standing here who very much wants the ban 
lifted. Does it surprise you to hear a minister say we should keep the 
ban in place or continue a discriminatory pattern?
    The President. Absolutely not, because a lot of ministers of the 
gospel believe that homosexuality is morally wrong and, therefore, that 
ground alone is enough to justify the ban.
    Let me tell you why I favor lifting it very briefly. We have now and 
everyone concedes we have always had homosexual men and women in the 
military service. I received a letter from a retired officer, a woman, 
the other day who told me she left the service because she could not be 
honest about her sexual orientation, even though she was a distinguished 
officer with a remarkable service record, one of many such letters I 
have received. Your Government spent $500 million to get rid of about 
16,300 homosexuals from the service in the 1980's.
    Now, here's my position. If there are homosexual men and women in 
the service anyway, if we know they have served with distinction and 
they have always been there, the issue is should you be able to say what 
you are and not be kicked out. This is not about conduct. This is about 
status. I believe there ought to be the strictest code of behavioral 
conduct applicable here. I also believe there ought to be an even 
stricter code applicable to sexual harassment, whether homosexual or 
heterosexual. The biggest sexual problem in the armed services, 
according to the men and women who talked to me, involves heterosexual 
harassment.
    I think there ought to be a tough code of conduct. If people do 
wrong, they ought to be gotten out. But I think people should not be 
asked to lie if they're going to be allowed to serve, because the 
question is not whether they should be there or not. They are there. So 
the narrow question of this debate is should you be able to stay and 
admit it.
    The military itself has admitted they should stop asking people when 
they join. That's the position of the Joint Chiefs. So the only question 
here is should you be able to say that you're a homosexual if you do 
nothing wrong. I say yes. Others say no. The military is studying the 
practical problems about duty assignments and other things, and we'll 
revisit this in about 6 months.
    Mr. Bonds. I want to advise my stations along the link-up that it's 
time for us to take a break here. They'll be taking a break. Speaking 
about the military, we have military forces in the Persian Gulf. We have 
military forces still in the Kuwait area. Are we going over to Bosnia-
Herzegovina? And we'll be back with that question for you, Mr. 
President, in just a moment.

[At this point, the television stations took a commercial break.]

    Mr. Bonds. I appreciate your enthusiasm. I think we'd save a little 
time if we'd hold the applause to the end so that you could get more 
questions in, the President of the United States could get more answers 
in. So you do what you want to do, but we feel it would be better. That 
we have troops in the Middle East, we have troops in Somalia. Are we 
going to go into Yugoslavia? That's this young lady's question.

[[Page 178]]

Bosnia

    Q. Good evening, Mr. President. Serbian death camps and rape camps 
have shocked the world. And today we have heard Mr. Warren Christopher 
stating that he supports negotiated settlement in Bosnia. How does one 
negotiate with war criminals without a clear enforcement to let them 
know that they have to stop with the atrocity? And how does one ensure 
that the Serbs will not continue with their atrocities and that they 
will negotiate in good faith and that they will lay down the arms?
    Will you ask NATO for their enforcement of the terms of agreement 
and give them the authority to use force in this case? And will you also 
help Croatia regain its sovereignty on the territories it's lost so that 
700,000 people can return to their homes? Thank you.
    The President. I'm glad you asked the question in the way you did. I 
was afraid you were going to ask me why we agreed to get involved in 
this process today.
    Just for the benefit of the people who don't know as much about it 
as you, let me tell you what happened today. Today, the Secretary of 
State announced a new policy by our Government that we would agree to 
become more involved in what is going on in Bosnia, not in committing 
our ground troops now or anything like that, but in trying to get 
involved in these negotiations, to protect the rights and the integrity 
of the Bosnians, the Croatians, and others who have been basically 
subject to the assaults of the Serbs; that we would be in a position to 
say we're not going to enforce a peace agreement on the Croatians or the 
Bosnians that they don't believe in, but that if we could get an 
agreement, then the United States would participate, not alone, but with 
the United Nations and with Europe, in guaranteeing that the agreement 
would protect the basic human rights of the people involved and the 
terms of the agreement.
    Now, people say, ``So we are not committing today to make war in the 
former Yugoslavia.'' We are committing to try to help get a peace and 
then to enforce it. Why is that? Because if we don't, number one, the 
terrible principle of ethnic cleansing will be validated; that one 
ethnic group can butcher another if they're strong enough to do it at 
the end of the cold war; number two, that problem could spread to other 
republics and nations near there.
    Never forget: It's no accident that World War I started in this 
area. There are ancient ethnic hatreds that have consumed people and led 
to horrible abuses. You know about it: the rapes of the women, the 
murders of the children, all these things you have read about. We've got 
to try to contain it.
    And I think we have to be very much stronger standing up to 
aggression. We've got to get the heavy weapons out of utilization; you 
implied that. We've got to toughen the embargo against the Serbs. We 
ought to open a United Nations war crimes inquiry, and we ought to 
enforce the no-fly zone against Serbian aircraft, strongly. Those are 
the things that I think we should do.
    I do not believe that the military of the United States should get 
involved unilaterally there now. We have to work with these other 
countries. And I might say that that's the position that General Powell 
and our foreign policy folks have taken. But this is a much more 
aggressive position than the United States has taken.
    But I can tell you, folks: We're not going to make peace over there 
in a way that's fair to the minorities that are being abused unless we 
get involved. And if we don't get involved and the thing spreads all 
over creation over there, then we'll be pulled into it in horrible ways 
that could be very dangerous to our people. So we ought to do what is 
right now. It's also what is safest for the United States.
    Mr. Bonds. But isn't it a reality, Mr. President, that if the United 
States doesn't get involved and doesn't lead, nothing is going to 
change?
    The President. I think that it is reality that if we don't get 
involved, either nothing will change or the Bosnians will be wrecked and 
the Croatians will be hurt badly.
    Mr. Bonds. And it could still spread after that.
    The President. And it could go into Kosovo, which is next door; it 
could go into Macedonia. You could involve the Turks. You could involve 
the Greeks. We could have a serious problem.
    Mr. Bonds. Then you've got a major policy decision to make.

[[Page 179]]

    The President. I just did it. [Laughter] We're going to get 
involved.
    Mr. Bonds. I don't think she thinks you did make it.
    The President. Let me just say, the United States has learned one 
thing: When we operate--look at the Gulf War. If we operate with the 
support of the United Nations and with the support of Europe and with 
the support of our allies, we can do a lot of things at an acceptably 
low cost of life, and get something done. If we go off on our own and 
everybody else is over here, we can't get it done.
    I have to deal with the fact that Europe believes today that 
negotiations are possible, that Russia wants negotiations from a 
different point of view. And even though they've been historically 
sympathetic to the Serbs, they have supported our position that we ought 
to toughen the embargo and stand up to aggression.
    And if I go in there, the United States now takes a leadership role, 
I think there's a real chance we can stop some of the killing, stop the 
ethnic cleansing, and get a peace agreement. And then we'll have to help 
enforce it. She's absolutely right. If we don't have an enforcement 
mechanism, you won't be able to do it. But I believe this is the best 
thing to do for the Croatians and for the Bosnians and for humanity at 
large in the former Yugoslavia. I think it's the right thing to do.

Health Care Reform and Meat Inspection

    Mr. Bonds. Thank you, Mr. President. Ken Schramm, KOMO in Seattle.
    Mr. Schramm. Thank you. Mr. President, my understanding is that 
while you were en route to tonight's program, while aboard Air Force One 
you called an area hospital because you were concerned and wanted to 
speak to some parents and some children who have been affected by the E. 
coli bacteria contamination in this area. I'd like to introduce Vicky 
and Darrin Detweiler, whose 16-month-old son remains in critical 
condition at Takoma's Mary Bridge Hospital. And they have a question 
concerning health care.
    Q. Mr. President, actually our child is at Children's Hospital in 
Seattle, but he is in intensive care, in critical condition. And only 2 
days prior to him going in there with E. coli poisoning from tainted 
meat, my husband lost his job, and we were left without medical 
coverage.
    I'm Canadian originally and always took comfort in the medical 
system there and in knowing that my children would be taken care of. My 
question to you now is: What are you prepared to do in regards to the 
tainted meat problem, and is there any hope in the near future of seeing 
universal health care so no one else has to go through what we've gone 
through?
    The President. Let me, first of all, say I thank you for being on 
the program, and I hope your child will be well. I did call two other 
sets of parents who are in the hospital with their children, on the way 
out here, just to inquire about that and to get their ideas about what 
we should do.
    Let me answer your second question first. As I'm sure you know, I've 
asked my wife to head a task force to come up with a bill within 100 
days which will bring a new system of health care to America which 
offers us the chance to provide basic health coverage to everybody, to 
stop people from losing their health coverage when they lose a job, to 
stop people from their inability to change jobs because they've had 
someone in their family sick, and to bring the cost of health care in 
line with inflation.
    I think we can do that. And if we don't do it, we'll never balance 
the budget, and we'll never restore health to this economy. Fifty 
percent of the projected deficit growth between now and the year 2000 is 
all in health care costs. So it is a terrific human issue, but it's a 
big economic issue for Americans. And the answer to your question is: 
Within 100 days of my becoming President, we're going to have a bill to 
the Congress to do just what you've said.
    Now, the second thing, this E. coli thing--have you all been 
following it up in Washington? I asked the Secretary of Agriculture, 
Mike Espy, who is responsible for the regulation of the slaughterhouses 
and the meat before it comes to a restaurant, to go up there and look 
into the situation. And we think there are two things that have to be 
done.

[[Page 180]]

    First of all, we've got to make it clear to people who are providing 
the fast food that they've got to do everything they can to comply with 
our cooking regulations. Some of these viruses would have clearly died 
had the heat been observed. On the other hand, we've got to find ways to 
do more inspections and to try to do them in a more effective way. And 
so we are reviewing now the possibility of not only hiring more 
inspectors, which I've already agreed to do, but secondly, seeing if 
there is some way we can do a better job of actually inspecting the 
meat, empowering the inspectors to do some more things.
    We have got to do that. And I can tell you, if you have any more 
ideas, I'd like to have them. The parents that I talked to today had 
some, actually, some quite good ideas that we're going to pursue. And I 
want to invite you and any others who are listening who have other ideas 
to let me know. But you can look forward to more inspectors, and we're 
looking for ways to inspect better as well.
    Mr. Bonds. In that case, you're increasing Government.
    The President. We are there. But that's a direct service to people. 
That's not a waste of bureaucracy. I think the American people want us 
to make sure they're safe if we can.

Job Retraining

    Q. Mr. President, I'm a former Pan American Airline employee, and 
I'm still unemployed at this time. And I would like to know if you have 
any new provisions for people who suffer from big industries' traumas.
    The President. Let me tell you, we're going to try to do two things. 
One is to provide a much more comprehensive program of retraining and 
job placement; and secondly is to try to have a strategy available when 
we know that major, major industries are going to shut down, to try to 
do conversion, to try to provide investment opportunities for new kinds 
of economic activities.
    I said earlier something that I probably should have broadened. This 
is not just a problem in defense industries. It's also a problem in 
other big employers. As we're in Michigan tonight, as the people in 
Michigan know, the biggest companies in America did nothing but 
basically lay off people in the 1980's and the early nineties. Even when 
they were making more money, they restructured.
    For the last 10 years, until 2 or 3 years ago, a lot of the jobs 
that were lost by big companies were made up by jobs that were created 
by small companies. About 2 or 3 years ago, that process slowed to a 
halt because of the cost of health care to small business, because of 
the general recession, because of the credit crunch.
    So my answer to your question is: We're going to be much more 
aggressive than American governments have been in the past in trying to 
find ways to deal with these problems when we know in advance they're 
coming, and go in and give people the chance to restructure their lives, 
to rebuild them, and try to create other kinds of economic activities 
with new partnerships in the private sector.
    We're also going to try to change the tax system to favor investment 
more. That is, we want to raise the corporate tax rate some. But then we 
want to say, if you want to lower your taxes, invest more. And you can 
lower your taxes if you invest to create jobs. And I think that will 
help a lot. We're going to try to do that.
    Q. I have a followup on Homestead and some of that training. We 
obviously have plenty of space down here to have it done. But what kind 
of training are you going to give someone who's middle-aged or even 
older but who still needs to work?
    The President. Well, I think that is both the burden and the 
excitement of the time in which we live. That is, there is nothing I or 
any public official can do about the fact that the average 18-year-old 
American today will change jobs about eight times in a lifetime. Even if 
you keep working for the same company, if you're lucky enough never to 
be laid off, in order to keep a job, an 18-year-old today will have to 
be retrained to do eight different jobs. So whether we like it or not, 
middle-aged people will have to keep learning new things, developing new 
skills.
    Now, that will be very exciting and interesting for people in their 
middle and later years if we can spare them of the gnawing insecurity of 
thinking they're going to be

[[Page 181]]

thrown onto the scrap heap of history, they're going to lose their job 
and never get another one, or they're going to lose their job and then 
getting another one making one-third of what they used to make. That's 
our great challenge. And we are working on it. That is something that I 
think America ought to be able to lead the world in, and now we're 
behind some of our other countries.

Health Care Reform

    Q. Mr. President, is it possible to pay them and give them benefits 
as well, like health benefits, while they're learning?
    The President. Oh, I think so. What we're going to try to do with 
this health care plan is to make sure that everybody, whether employed 
or unemployed, has access to a basic package of comprehensive benefits. 
Every other country in the world, advanced country, does this. Every 
industrialized country but South Africa does this, everybody. And yet we 
spend 30 percent more of our income on health care than anybody else.
    Now, if you have access to health care in America it's the best in 
the world--and a lot of good things about it. But there are ways to give 
people a choice of doctors, high quality care, and do it for lower cost 
if we're willing to take on the insurance cost, if we're willing to take 
on a lot of the other waste in this system, the phenomenal waste. The 
paperwork in the American health care system alone is enough to cover 
virtually everybody without health insurance.
    Let me just give you an example. In most hospitals in America today 
for the last 5 years have hired clerical workers at 4 times the rate of 
health caregivers like nurses, even though there's been a national 
nursing shortage. Why? Because we're the only country in the world with 
1,500 separate health insurance companies writing thousands of different 
policies, covering small, small groups with a blizzard of rules that 
would choke a horse. Plus the Government makes it worse by the way we 
run Medicare and Medicaid.
    And we're going to try to fix it. It's the most complicated problem 
I've ever messed with. But if we don't fix it, we can't control the 
deficit, we can't restore health to the economy, and most important, we 
can't restore security to the lives of people like those who've asked 
these questions tonight.

Child Care

    Mr. Bonds. Child care and the terrible dilemma that so many working 
parents have had finding competent child care has obviously been in the 
news a great deal recently, Mr. President. Hattie Henry lives in a 
community just north of Atlanta. She is a first-time mother with a 6-
week-old baby, and you want to go back to your job as a nurse. You're 
struggling with that dilemma. Is there something that you think that the 
President can do to help ease this terrible child care crisis out there?
    Q. That's what I want to know. I'm obviously going to be a working 
mother, and I'm very concerned about the child care crisis, which has 
finally been thrown into the spotlight with ``nannygate.'' And I would 
like to know what your first thing is that you're going to do to address 
the child care issue, to make it affordable and reasonable.
    The President. Let me ask you--can you hear me?
    Q. Yes, go ahead, Mr. President.
    The President. Bill, I'd like to ask your questioner a question 
first. As you contemplate going back to work, is your biggest concern 
the cost of child care or the availability of quality care?
    Q. The quality of the care. The quality of what I can get for the 
affordability of what I can get; if it is even worth it to go back to 
work with what we have available. And what about working mothers who 
don't have any choice about going back to work? Where can they take 
their children and have it be affordable and quality care, whether 
they're sure their children are safe and getting good care?
    The President. Well, I think there are two or three things we can do 
that we're working on now. First is to work in partnerships with States 
to help them to develop high standards for child care but also quality 
care at affordable prices. And one of the things that we did in my State 
when I was Governor is to spend a good deal bit of our training money. 
For example, training people who are on welfare but who were quite 
intelligent and capable of--for taking care of their own chil- 

[[Page 182]]

dren--to work in child care facilities and moving them from welfare to 
work in ways that took maximum advantage of money the taxpayers are 
spending already and lower the cost of child care. And we often put 
these child care facilities in and around job training facilities to 
help working mothers and working parents that were going back to school. 
Sometimes they were going to school and working at the same time. I 
think we can do that.
    The second thing we can do is to increase the earned income tax 
credit for working Americans, especially middle to lower middle income 
working Americans, so that they will have more disposable income to pay 
their child care expenses.
    The third thing we can do is simply to increase the child care 
credit itself. We basically have got to make the economics of this work. 
And I think there are lots of other things that can be done, but they 
won't affect the population as a whole. The population as a whole needs 
to be helped by making sure you've got a steady stream of trained 
quality child care workers and then more income for middle-class people, 
either through the child care tax credit or through the general earned 
income tax credit, which basically says if you work 40 hours a week and 
you've got kids in the house, you shouldn't be put into poverty because 
of your other expenses, including child care. The Government ought to 
reduce your tax burden, if necessary even give you money back, as long 
as you're working hard and playing by the rules and you need to take 
care of your kids.

Kimba Wood

    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, as long as we're on the subject, let me 
come in the back door on it and ask you the same question that many 
Americans apparently have felt, and that is, Judge Kimba Wood certainly 
did everything she could legally to attain child care. Why was she 
penalized, punished by being eliminated as a candidate for Attorney 
General if, in fact, she dealt with this rather difficult problem in a 
perfectly legal way?
    The President. Well, first of all, I never selected her to be 
Attorney General. There was a press report that she was, and I regret--I 
think she was treated quite unfairly in this whole thing. I have high 
regard for her, but she was one of three or four people I was 
considering.
    Secondly, the facts of her case was that she did not violate the 
law, because in 1986 the law was changed to say if you knowingly hire an 
illegal alien, you're violating the law, but if you did it before the 
law became into effect, you're not violating the law. So a few months 
before the law was passed, she knowingly hired an illegal alien.
    Now, I think--and she did not do anything illegal. She knew the 
person providing child care was doing something illegal, but she didn't. 
But the question there that you can ask or answer, that I would have had 
to answer had I decided to put her up for Attorney General, is whether 
the Attorney General, who runs the Immigration and Naturalization 
Service, has a special standard to meet in this area that other Cabinet 
members might not have to meet. And that's a question that I would have 
had to resolve, had I decided to nominate her.
    One of the things that I think has been very good in this whole 
business is that we've now taken a lot of these issues out. They're now 
the subject of public debate, and I hope that we will be able to resolve 
some of them, including--you would be amazed how many people who come to 
my attention as potential candidates for various positions in Government 
honestly did not know that they had to take out withholding on anybody 
who worked for them if they spent more than $50 on them every 3 months. 
They just didn't know. And that's something that I think has really been 
raised on the public agenda. I think people are so much more aware of 
that than they were. You know, some people don't think that ought to be 
the law, but that's what the law is.

Health Care Reform

    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, a lot of people wonder if when your wife 
speaks on health care reform she is speaking directly for you and if 
that is the message that you're sending to the American people. Here's a 
young woman by the name of Marcie Hoffmaster; she's 17. She's going to 
be graduating soon, and you've got a tough future in front of you.

[[Page 183]]

    Q. Yes, I do. I suffer from a chronic illness called systemic lupus, 
and I've already discovered that it will be almost impossible for me to 
get health care. I'd like to know what you're going to do ensure that 
people with a preexisting condition can get health care. And also, if 
the Government decides to regulate health insurance and prioritize 
illnesses, where will long-term, incurable illnesses, such as lupus and 
cancer and AIDS, stand on that list of priorities?
    The President. Let me answer your first question first. The reason 
so many people with preexisting conditions can't get health insurance is 
because people are so often insured in very small pools. Like, look 
around here, suppose there are about 60 people in this room. Suppose all 
of us belong to a group health insurance, and suppose we have the 
standard array of illnesses and problems, and a couple of us have 
cancer, and you have lupus and maybe one person has HIV and all the rest 
of us are healthy as can be, right? It only takes one or two people in a 
group that small to bankrupt the pool.
    But in most countries, and in a few States in America, insurance 
companies are required to rate people for insurance according to huge 
community pools with hundreds of thousands of people in them, so that 
the risk of your care is spread across large numbers of people. And 
insurance companies make money the way grocery stores do, a little bit 
of money on a lot of people, instead of a lot of money on a few people. 
So the short answer to your question is, the way to keep preexisting 
conditions from barring people from getting health insurance is, number 
one, to make it illegal and, number two, to make it possible for the 
insurance pools to be big enough so that they don't go broke taking 
people like you.
    The second answer is, I believe, if you look at how much money we're 
spending on health care, if we can redirect a lot of the money that 
would be saved from administrative costs and from insurance overcharges 
per person, because of the system we have, if we could do more 
preventive and primary health care, if we can, in short, maximize the 
money we're now spending and keep people like you in big pools, I 
believe there would be enough money to cover your care.
    If that is not true, what the Government will have to do is to 
develop a Government long-term care program, because you cannot abandon 
people who have AIDS or who have prolonged bouts with cancer. In fact, a 
lot of cancer survivors, as you know, are living now for 10, 15, 20 
years and during most of that time, even when there's a recurrence, are 
serving quite productively. So I think we have to do that.
    I just approved, by the way, a strategy to fully fund the Ryan White 
Act for the care of AIDS patients over the next couple of years, because 
I think that's an important issue. But we'll never do it, you won't be 
treated right until we have a national program that covers everybody.
    Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, we're going to move into kind of a 
roundrobin here. We're going to throw it now to Seattle. Ken Schramm, 
KOMO.

Antidrug Program

    Mr. Schramm. Thank you. I've got two quick questions for you here, 
Mr. President. The first one is from Rochelle Pinrod, who is 9 years 
old, has never spoken to a President before, but she has written you a 
letter.
    Q. Mr. President, how will you help make a drug-free America so I 
can feel safe walking out on the streets, so that no one's going to come 
up and ask me, would you like to buy some drugs?
    The President. Good for you. There's no easy answer to your 
question. One thing I can do is to speak out. Another thing I can do is 
to hire a person to be our national drug czar, the developer of, the 
leader of our drug policy, who understands that you have to have a 
combination of things. You have to have a strong education program in 
the schools. You have to have a strong program in the communities to 
keep the streets safe and to protect the children and to give them 
something to do. And you have to have a strong enforcement program 
designed to break those people who are bringing drugs into our country 
in large quantities. I went to college with a person who's done a lot of 
very serious prosecution of people involved in and around drug 
transactions. And he tells me one big mistake we've made, for example, 
over the years, is not to go after people who

[[Page 184]]

make big money at it by chasing the money instead of the drugs.
    So all I can tell you is that drugs have affected my family. I hate 
what they are doing to America and to children's future. And I'm going 
to do what I can to fight it through education, through treatment, 
through opportunities for safety on the streets, and through trying to 
go after the people who are really causing the problems.
    Who's next, Bill?
    Mr. Bonds. Well, I have a young man here in the studio, but I think 
we're going to throw it to Miami. Ann Bishop, WPLG.
    Ms. Bishop. Thank you very much, Bill. We have with us Marlene 
Bashin, who has a question for you. Marlene.

Haiti

    Q. President Clinton, during the Presidential campaign, you severely 
criticized George Bush's policy on Haitian refugees, but now you're not 
only carrying that same policy, you also place a naval blockade against 
Haiti, giving these frightened people no chance to escape. How do you 
explain these actions, especially at a time when the situation in Haiti 
is as bad as possible?
    The President. Well, for one thing, the situation in Haiti is 
getting better. But let me tell you, I explain the action in the 
following ways: My policy is not the same as President Bush's policy 
because I'm trying to bring democracy back, because I am committed to 
putting more resources there to process people who want to be political 
refugees and can meet the standards and bringing them safely to the 
United States.
    And let me tell you why I did what I did. I did what I did because 
of the evidence that people in Haiti were taking the wood off the roofs 
of their houses to make boats, that were of questionable safety, to pour 
in thousands of numbers to come to this country, when we knew for sure 
hundreds of them would die on the high seas coming here and a human 
tragedy of monumental proportions. And that if they came here, they 
would all come to south Florida, where the unemployment rate is high. 
The government is strapped, they don't have any money, and the Federal 
Government has constantly broken their commitment to the people of south 
Florida to help them deal with the immigrant problem.
    I decided that the better course was to launch an aggressive effort 
to restore democracy to Haiti and to launch an aggressive effort to 
protect people who want to apply to be political refugees in this 
country, in Haiti, and to process their applications all over the 
island, which is what we are doing now.
    And I might say, the ultimate proof that my policy is different is 
that President Aristide himself asked the Haitians to stay home and work 
with him to restore democracy. And if you noticed, just in the last day, 
the present rump government in Haiti has agreed to let us send observers 
there. And I look forward to fully changing the policy and in restoring 
democracy in Haiti. But I could not, in good conscience, let hundreds of 
people die on the high seas and create an enormous problem simply 
because the United States has not used its muscle to restore democracy 
to Haiti. That's the problem, and that's the one I'm trying to tackle.
    Mr. Bonds. But Mr. President, if you place or slap an embargo on 
Haiti, you don't hurt the people at the top, you hurt even more severely 
the people at the bottom.
    The President. The embargo was there all along, and I support it.
    Mr. Bonds. Yes, but I mean, it gets worse.
    The President. Look, if we lift the embargo, then what incentive 
does the government have to change? That is an unelected government 
there. The man who was elected president, everybody down there concedes, 
if he were on the ballot again today would win overwhelmingly. And we 
have got to try to restore democracy there. I want to lift the embargo 
very badly. I want to do more than lift the embargo; I want to help 
rebuild the economy of Haiti. That would be good for America. They could 
be good partners for us. A lot of the Haitians who are in south Florida 
would dearly love to go home. But I am not going to lift the embargo as 
long as there is a government down there oppressing the people.

Relations With Press

    Mr. Bonds. You can't do a town meeting every month, Mr. President, 
and many people in the White House press corps are saying

[[Page 185]]

``He's going to have to come and answer our questions.'' You've got 
about 50 seconds left to answer that question. How are your 
relationships with the White House press corps?
    The President. I think they're all right.
    Mr. Bonds. They'd like to talk to you.
    The President. I answer their questions just about every day. They 
come in and ask me questions, and I answer them. We don't see the world 
the same way.
    Mr. Bonds. Well, I think the point is, are there going to be many 
more of these?
    The President. Oh, I hope there will be a lot of these.
    Mr. Bonds. Thanks, Mr. President.
    The President. I hope there will be a lot of these.

Note: The town meeting began at 8 p.m. at the WXYZ-TV studios in 
Southfield, MI.