    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 11 (Monday, March 22, 1993)]
    [Pages 423-430]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks in an Interview With the California Media

     March 13, 1993

    Winter Storm

        The President. Hello, everybody. Welcome to sunny Washington.
    [Laughter] I want to basically just answer questions. I brought Mr.
    Panetta so he could help with any details of any questions you might
    have. I'm sorry we're a little late, but as you might imagine, I've had
    to take some time this morning to try to calculate what our response
    should be to this severe storm that is sweeping the east coast and that
    will move over Washington in its center not until about 7 o'clock
    tonight. So that's what I've been working on. And I know it doesn't
    concern you except you're here.
        Yes.

    Military Base Closings

        Q. Mr. President, you got some of your highest vote totals from the
    San Francisco Bay area when you ran for President: San Francisco 78
    percent, Alameda County. A lot of folks out there are wondering how
    you're letting them take such a big hit to lose five facilities when
    they're watching southern California facilities also, some of them being
    taken care of. What do you say to the people in the Bay area who
    supported you so strongly and now are looking at themselves taking a
    pretty big hit?
        The President. Well, first of all, those decisions were not made on
    a political basis, and I did not intervene individually in those
    decisions, nor do I think I should have. I'll tell you what I did do. I
    asked the Secretary of Defense to be sure that he fulfilled his legal
    responsibility to consider the economic impact of every State, including
    California, and because it's so big, all parts of California, before
    sending the list on to the Congress. And he did that to the best of his
    ability.

    [[Page 424]]

        There hadn't been a lot of naval closings in the first two rounds.
    The Navy strongly recommended all the sites, including the ones in the
    Bay area. I'm concerned about it. If you look at the whole country, the
    Bay area and perhaps Charleston, South Carolina, were the hardest hit,
    although the Charleston Yard won't close entirely.
        But the way the process works, it seems to me, is the only way it
    can work. And that is for the services to make their recommendation and
    for the Secretary of Defense to try to evaluate the economic impact--
    something, by the way, that can't be done by the services because they
    don't know what each other is doing; so if the Secretary of Defense
    doesn't do it, no one can, because they've got the Navy, the Air Force,
    and the Army cumulatively coming in with these recommendations--and then
    to send it on to the Congress.
        I believe that the Bay area ought to do--I think we ought to have
    two things to be sensitive to what's happened there. One is the base
    closing commission itself, which has in the two previous cases made
    modifications in the services' requests, should consider the strongest
    argument the Bay area can put together for some modification of it. But
    secondly, the areas that are disproportionately hit, it seems to me,
    should receive extra attention from this administration in the new
    conversion effort that we have announced just in the last couple of
    days. We are going to put into play this year over $1 billion in funds
    not only for worker retraining but also for community redevelopment and
    for the development of new technologies and new purposes for economic
    activity where there has been a severe dislocation.
        So I am prepared to do that for the Bay area, to make a special
    effort to focus on their long-term needs so that--and keep in mind, this
    is not going to happen overnight, this is a longer term phaseout--so
    that by the time the jobs were actually lost there, we would be ready to
    move forward with new economic activity, perhaps even before that time.
        Another issue that relates to all the bases in California, and
    indeed all the ones in the United States, is that the environmental
    cleanup at a lot of these bases, especially the air bases, has taken so
    long that by the time the bases close, they're not ready to be taken
    over by local community interests, even though if they were ready,
    economic activity would pick up almost immediately. So another thing
    we've really focused on is trying to make sure we are moving as
    aggressively, as quickly as possible on the environmental cleanup. I
    talked to the Secretary of Defense for an hour about that yesterday when
    we were on the helicopter going to visit the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt.
        Q. Mr. President, how do you justify, although it's not your
    decision, but how would you justify spending $320 million to close a
    working capable home for three nuclear carriers in Alameda to build a
    facility in--[inaudible]--that was conceived as part of an outdated
    home-porting strategy that won't post its first carrier, nuclear
    carrier, until 1996, that will require by the Navy's own estimates at
    least another $140 million to complete, and that the GAO recommended
    closing 2 years ago on the grounds that it was a waste of money to
    duplicate facilities already present in Alameda?
        The President. That's a question you should ask the Navy and the
    Secretary of Defense. As I said, I did not review that list. I didn't
    think I should. This law was established--this is the third round of
    base closings. The Navy's been pushing for base closings. I heard about
    the GAO report after the list was ultimately released yesterday, and
    that's one of the issues I think the Base Closing Commission ought to be
    required to confront.
        Q. Mr. President, you said politics didn't play a role in this.
    Let's not talk politics, let's just talk simple fairness. Was this list
    fair to the Bay area?
        The President. Well, let me answer you in this way. I think that the
    Secretary of Defense deleted a couple of the facilities in northern
    California because he thought the aggregate economic impact was too
    great. That's my impression of why he made the decision that he made.
    The Bay area still takes a big hit. The Navy was very adamant about the
    recommendations they made and pointed out that very few Navy
    installations had been closed previously. If the Navy can

    [[Page 425]]

    be proved wrong, I think that's something we ought to consider.
        I believe that a couple of those facilities, the Treasure Island
    one, for example, I think that the potential of even more economic
    benefits by turning some of those facilities over to nonmilitary uses
    are very great indeed. But again, I think that the people from the Bay
    area and the elected Representatives from California ought to make the
    strongest case they can to the base closing commission.
        This is the public process. This sort of enables me in a way to
    discuss these things, to get involved, to evaluate them, because after
    the base closing commission makes their recommendations, they send it
    back to me so that there's no suggestion of closed doors or behind-the-
    scenes maneuvering. This is all out-in-the-open debating. And I think
    that the people in the Bay area ought to make the strongest case they
    can on all these things, including aggregate fairness, to the base
    closing commission. I'm going to review it very closely. I also think
    they ought to claim the right to have an extra intense effort in our
    conversion process if they're going to have to eat all these closings.
        Q. Mr. President, the Naval Training Center in San Diego is now on
    the so-called hit list when it wasn't before. Do you have any insight as
    to why that changed?
        The President. No, I don't. What do you mean it wasn't before?
        Q. It never showed up on a list before, the Naval Training Center,
    and then it seemed to be on the list in the newspaper in the morning.
        The President. No, because I didn't know whether the list that was
    in the press was right or not. You know, the Long Beach facility was on
    that list, and apparently it was not recommended for closing. So I can't
    comment on that. San Diego is going to net out a substantial increase in
    jobs in this. There will be a few thousand more people employed in the
    San Diego area when all these changes are made, I know that.
        Q. Do you know why McClellan was removed from the list? It was the
    biggest one that was removed.
        The President. You ought to ask the Secretary of Defense. The only
    thing I asked him to do was to realize that the law imposed on us the
    responsibility of seriously taking into account the aggregate economic
    impacts not only on this round of base closings but on the previous two
    as well. And I think you should ask him about that.
        Q. Mr. President, the people of California, the people of Los
    Angeles understand that we've got to cut the deficit, so we've got to
    cut the defense budget, so we've got to cut bases. But given the fact
    that the recession in California is so deep, many people there feel the
    timing is poor to cut so deeply now. What's your view?
        The President. If we were cutting now, I would agree with that. But
    keep in mind, these are bases that starting between 3 and 5 years from
    now will be closed. And I certainly hope that 3 years from now the
    California economy will be in much better shape than it is now.
        Right now, what I'm trying to do is to get a big infusion of capital
    into California through this stimulus program that will put a lot of
    money to work in community development block grants and highway projects
    and clean water projects and through some changes in the Federal aid
    programs that Mr. Panetta and I have worked very hard on, to try to get
    several hundred million dollars a year more into California in
    recognition of the fact that you have a big problem with immigrants that
    the Federal Government has let you struggle with for too long without
    appropriate response.
        And during this 3-year period, I plan to start an intense effort to
    diversify defense contractors' production, to intensely retrain men and
    women who might lose their jobs, and to put real funds into communities
    to develop new and different economic strategies. I think there is an
    enormous potential in California, if we do all these things, to rebuild
    the high-wage job base that has been so savaged by this.
        And let me just make one other point I made to the State legislators
    who were here last week about the base closing issue. Now, this doesn't
    answer the Bay area question, I don't pretend. But in the aggregate, let
    me make this point. We started reducing defense spending in 1986--topped
    out, and it started going down. And it's projected to go down until
    1997. If we don't change anything

    [[Page 426]]

    else--let's say we hadn't made this announcement yesterday. It doesn't
    answer any of the detail questions. You may be right about the specific
    one. If no announcement had been made yesterday, here's what would have
    been the picture by 1997: a 40-percent reduction in the defense budget,
    a 35-percent reduction in personnel, a 56-percent reduction in our
    presence overseas, and a 9-percent reduction in bases.
        Now, if we permitted that to happen, what State would be hurt worst?
    California. Why? Because California, with 12 percent of the Nation's
    population, received 21 percent of the total defense budget last year.
    Why? Because you have a lot of the plants that make the high-tech
    defense products that are a critical part of this country's economic
    strategy. So the more you keep bases that can't be justified for
    strategic purposes, if you keep the same defense cuts, the more you wind
    up cutting contracts and laying factory workers off and putting pressure
    on those companies.
        So if we want a balanced approach that maintains a smaller but still
    the best trained and best equipped military force in the world, with
    unquestioned technological superiority, and if we keep in place an
    industrial infrastructure that can be called upon to meet those needs
    and to expand if necessary, that's another reason we have to proceed
    with discipline on the base closing, so we can build up and maintain the
    private sector industrial production we need that gives us our
    technological lead.
        Q. Mr. President, you made this point a couple of times, and I just
    want to make sure that we get it nailed down. Some Members of Congress
    are pointing to the exclusion of McClellan Air Force Base as evidence
    that the whole process was contaminated by politics. And they're saying
    we're going to get a coalition together, we're going to kill the whole
    list. What would you say to those delegates?
        The President. I would say to them that, first of all, they ought to
    talk to the Secretary of Defense before they do that. Secondly, if they
    didn't want the economic impact on States considered, then that
    shouldn't have been part of the legislation. Thirdly, that there is no
    way the aggregate economic--let me ask you this: Add back in McClellan
    and the Defense Language Institute to the Bay area closings, and
    calculate the impact on northern California, and add that to the impact
    on California of the previous two rounds of base closings, and tell me
    that that is fair or takes into account the economic impact.
        My view is that the Secretary of Defense basically took the list
    that was submitted to him by the separate services and did two things
    they did not do. He aggregated them together so he could calculate the
    cumulative impact of Navy, Air Force, and Army closings and then
    considered the cumulative impact of the previous two rounds of base
    closings. And I believe that was his legal responsibility. That is all I
    asked him to do. We didn't get into any specifics. I just said, you've
    got to--that's part of your job--do that. And I think he'll be able to
    do that with great credibility.
        There was also a lot of effort made in other areas to minimize the
    economic impact by the services themselves. For example, they didn't
    entirely close the Charleston Navy Yard. They didn't entirely close up
    some other operations that people had feared that they would. So, to me,
    he did the best job he could with a very difficult circumstance. And
    even with this, this round of base closings is the biggest we've had.
    And even with this, California takes the biggest hit. I think that's
    going to be a pretty hard sell for those other Congressmen.
        Q. Mr. President, someone in the California delegation said the
    military base closure list was actually left over from the Bush
    administration, that more time and thought should be given to it in
    terms of what combination of bases should be closed for the best cost-
    effectiveness and also more knowledge of the military economic impact.
    They think that it should be slowed down--the process, even a new list
    started. What would be your response to that?
        The President. I think it would be a mistake to discard the list. I
    think that the people in California--it is true that this is left over
    from the Bush administration in the sense that the legislation requiring
    a list to be produced in 1993 was signed previously and that the
    services surely were doing this work last year, working on this. But,
    after all, this list

    [[Page 427]]

    was produced by the military services and only slightly modified by the
    Secretary of Defense under a discipline that has to be undertaken in
    this country.
        I will say again, if you leave all these bases open it means more
    contract cuts. We're taking the military force down to 1.4 million
    people and keeping a base structure that supported nearly twice that
    many. These things have to be done.
        That does not mean that the services made the right decision in
    every case. But that's why we have a commission. In each of the two
    previous commission hearings, even though the aggregate base closings
    were much smaller, the commission made some minor modifications to the
    recommendations. And I would say to the people who make those arguments
    that they ought to go forthrightly with those arguments to the
    commission; they ought to make them in public. There are some things
    that I might want considered by the commission as I have time to
    evaluate this. And I will seriously consider those things as they're
    made.
        But that's why we're moving now to the public part of this process,
    and that's the time for those arguments to be made. But the people in
    the services had a very difficult and heavy responsibility. I don't
    suppose that the Naval officers or the Air Force officers or the Army
    officers in charge relished making the recommendations they made. They
    did it because they think that that is best for the national security,
    given the reductions in the defense budget.

    Defense Conversion

        Q. Turning to your defense conversion program, a lot of what you
    say--a lot of your program involves having companies in California
    compete for partnerships. And I'm not sure exactly what your program
    involves concerning defense contractors, but the problem in California
    is that a lot of jobs, a lot of high-wage manufacturing jobs have moved
    out of State. Some have moved to Arkansas. You, in fact, helped
    negotiate one deal where a company moved from southern California to
    Arkansas. How do you safeguard against that, and do you want to
    safeguard against that? Do you want to keep high-wage manufacturing jobs
    in California?
        The President. Oh, absolutely. Well, I think part of that work has
    to be done in California itself. That's why I was very enthusiastic when
    the leaders of the House and the Senate and the Governors co-sponsored
    that bipartisan economic conference recently that I spoke to by
    satellite technology. I think California needs a manufacturing base, in
    my judgment. And there needs to be a serious evaluation of where you are
    with regard to that competitively and what you have to do to rebuild it.

        But I believe that most of the companies will stay where they are if
    they have enough work to keep them going. And we are allocating over the
    course of the next 4 or 5 years, if my budget passes, about $20 billion
    to help the private sector convert this economy and to deal with the
    dislocations caused by defense cutbacks and by other differences in the
    economy. And a lot of those companies are going to be able to--they will
    be competing with one another, but they'll be competing with one another
    for a much bigger economic pie in terms of the exploration of new
    technologies.

        Let me just give you one example. There's an effort going on in
    California similar to the one I saw at the Westinghouse plant in
    Maryland 2 days ago to develop an electric car. There are now electric
    cars that run 80 miles or more an hour, that run over 100 miles without
    being recharged. You get up to about 200 miles without being recharged,
    and then you begin to talk about real commercial viability. That could
    put an unbelievable number of people to work in the State of California.

        Q. But the problem with that is GM developed an electric car in
    southern California, and it is now building it elsewhere. With your
    technology partnerships and your other programs, are you going to have
    some sort of a safeguard to make sure that these companies keep these
    manufacturing jobs in California?

        The President. Well, I don't think you can force--I don't think the
    national Government can force private companies not to cross State
    lines. I mean, that's almost a constitutional issue. I mean, under the
    commerce clause, that would be a hard sell.

    [[Page 428]]

    Military Base Closings

        Q. Mr. President, the reason there are so many political questions
    this morning--one of the reasons is that all the politicians in
    California are taking credit for saving a number of bases. The two
    Senators and the Governor have had press conferences and said, ``We
    saved Long Beach.'' And they said, ``We took a list that was 11 and took
    it down to 6.'' But when you check with the Pentagon, they say that's
    not true. There were only two changes from the original list: McClellan
    and Monterey. And all this other stuff is just smoke. And that's why we
    are confused here. Was there, in fact, only those two adjustments in the
    list, or was there, in fact, a grand salvage effort here, successfully
    completed by the two people out there, the two Senators and the
    Governor?
        The President. Well, I can say this: I know that the Secretary of
    Defense recommended--decided to delete the two facilities. I know that
    now. I don't know that there were any others that were deleted. Those
    were the only two that I know about. I know that your Senators and a
    number of the people in your congressional delegation made pleas to the
    Defense Department, contacted us, contacted others after the list was
    leaked. The list that was leaked was not accurate in some respects. The
    list that was leaked did have other facilities in California on it that
    I am not aware--that I don't know that the Secretary of Defense deleted,
    nor--I wouldn't say that wasn't done. I'm just telling you I don't know.
    I only know of two personally.
        But I do think that at least the people who contacted him and
    contacted me probably had some impact on him. The only thing I said to
    him was that the law requires us to take into account economic impact,
    and I think you ought to do that.
        I guess I ought to say one other thing. There were some people who
    weren't from California who urged the Secretary of Defense not to delete
    the Defense Language Institute, including Senator Simon from Illinois
    who made a public plea about it. So there was a lot of support around
    the country for not doing that. But I do think you've got to give credit
    to the people who made that intense plea. I mean, they may have had some
    impact on this. I'm sure they did in the sense that I told them that he
    should consider economic impact and he did and he made the decisions he
    did. But I don't know that the list was as long as has been speculated
    about.

    Immigration

        Q. Mr. President, may I change the subject for a moment? You
    mentioned immigration. I'm from San Diego. Our drought ended with
    millions of dollars in flood damage and a tremendous loss of life of
    people trying to cross the river to come to California. We're at a point
    now where the county, tragic in both senses, says it doesn't even have
    the money to pay for the medical examiner to deal with the loss of life
    amongst immigrants, both legal and illegal.
        How do you foresee dealing with some of our border problems--of
    dealing with the problem of immigration and the load on the county and
    the local jurisdictions, of issues that some would argue really are
    solely a Federal problem?
        The President. Well, first of all, I think what I'd like to do is
    ask Leon Panetta to explain to you what we've got in this budget to deal
    with that, to deal with the whole immigration issue. But there's no
    question in my mind that, for years, the Federal Government's
    immigration policy or lack of it has had a profound impact on California
    and on Florida and on Texas, and that basically, immigration is a
    national policy, the lack of an immigration enforcement is a national
    responsibility, and that under the system we have for joint financing of
    all kinds of health and human services, California, Texas, and Florida,
    and to some extent New York--and to a much lesser extent some other
    States--have basically been unfairly financially burdened by Federal
    policy, and we're trying to offset that.
        Since Leon worked up the budgets, I'd like for him to describe in
    more specific terms what we're trying to do. Would you do that? Let him
    answer that question first.
        Director Panetta. We have been working on a program to try to target
    those States that are impacted by immigration, in part, legal
    immigration and refugee resettlement but also undocumented immigration
    as well.

    [[Page 429]]

    And the key to our program is to try to develop an approach that, first
    of all, tries to fully fund the immigration assistance, the so-called
    SLIAG provisions that flow to States like California, Texas, and
    Florida. That's the legalized immigration assistance grants. While those
    grants have been there, they've never been fully funded for various
    reasons. We intend to fully fund those. So, for example, in a State like
    California, we estimate that SLIAG funding will approach almost $600
    million for '94.
        Secondly, what we want to do is develop a program to expand refugee
    settlement assistance. That is a program that's in place. As a matter of
    fact, there were some cuts that were enacted in that program. There was
    an effort by the prior administration to, so-called, privatize it. Never
    worked, and as a consequence we're going to be asking for additional
    funds for refugee resettlement and a supplemental request that will
    follow the battle on the stimulus program; that's two.
        Three, we're looking at additional funds for migrant education as
    well as Chapter I education. And then, fourthly, we're looking towards
    assistance, an assistance program to try to help those States that are
    providing health care to undocumented individuals.
        Q. Is it realistic to assume that there might be Federal money for
    the hospital to treat so many, for all of the facilities that the county
    now pays for, to augment those with Federal dollars because----
        Director Panetta. I can't tell you that there will be direct funding
    to that kind of hospital, but what we want to do is provide some
    assistance to the States that have to meet that responsibility, and
    that's what we're trying to fashion now. And there will be a program
    like this included in the budget presentation that we'll make at the end
    of this month.
        Q. Mr. President, do you feel under siege on this issue from
    California?

    Military Base Closings

        The President. No, but I want to tell you that if you go back to the
    very first question I was asked, if this had been a purely political
    process, your question would have had a different answer. You know, this
    has been a very painful thing for me, seeing this thing happen to the
    Bay area. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, a man I
    very much respect and admire, has taken--his district has the biggest
    projected loss. But was there--do the people who speak for California
    deserve some credit for making sure that the Secretary of Defense did
    fulfill his legal obligation? I think that's probably yes. The answer to
    that is, yes, that they did.
        But I will say again, this is not going to happen tomorrow; this is
    going to happen between 3 and 5 years from now. If we want to maintain
    our high-wage base and technological lead in defense, we will have an
    easier time doing that if we close appropriate bases and if we do it in
    a timely fashion. The difference between now and what has been done in
    defense cutbacks, both bases and defense contractors--and keep in mind,
    most of the losses California has endured in the last few years has come
    from the loss of private sector jobs because of contracting cuts. And we
    have not got an aggressive and a well-funded program which we will
    pursue, which has not been done for the last 3 or 4 years, to try to
    make sure that we find jobs and economic opportunities for the people in
    the communities involved.
        So I don't feel under siege. I wanted to do this today. I think you
    could make a compelling case if it hadn't been for the people of
    California, I wouldn't be the President of the United States. And I told
    them that I would work on these problems, and I will. But I cannot walk
    away from my responsibilities to continue this base closing process. And
    in the end, California is going to be better off if we preserve the
    capacity for high-tech employment in the defense industries and if we
    speed up the diversification process.
        Thank you.

    Winter Storm

        Q. ----about your response to the storm?
        The President. What was that?
        Director Panetta. There was a question on the storm.
        The President. On the storm, we've got two FEMA people in every
    State now with a State operation. We're in touch with the State
    officials in every State involved, and we will be spending the remainder
    of the day

    [[Page 430]]

    trying to assess the damage that has been done, the damage that might be
    done, and what other resources we should perhaps bring into play. I
    don't want to say any more about it than that because we're monitoring
    it as it goes along.
        I will say that I just came from a meeting with press people on the
    east coast, and I would just urge our people to exercise caution as the
    center of the storm moves closer to their community and because what
    looks like a very enjoyable late-winter snowstorm--and it's not
    enjoyable maybe if you're from the South and you're not used to seeing
    it. But as you move from here on up, a lot of people will be used to
    seeing snows of this magnitude. And I don't want them to get careless in
    it, because behind the snow are very, very high winds. And so that we're
    trying to do is just prepare as best we can and deal with it. And we may
    have more to say later today.

    Economic Stimulus Plan

        Q. Mr. President, laid-off workers in California think this is too
    little, too late.
        The President. I just got here. It's not too little, too late. This
    is a good program. It is very aggressive. The Congress appropriated $1.4
    billion last year, and none of it was spent. And we're going to spend it
    and move aggressively. Twenty billion dollars over 5 years is a lot of
    money to put into defense conversion.
        Q. People will have lost their houses by then.
        Q. ----in California.
        The President. Well, maybe people who were affected by decisions
    made before I got here will be, but these decisions we announced
    yesterday are going to take effect 3 to 5 years from now and we will
    have our programs in place and we'll be working on it. And we're going
    to do our best to reach out to those who have already been adversely
    affected.
        That's one of the reasons the stimulus package ought to pass.
    California will get more than a billion dollars worth of benefits out of
    this.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:25 p.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive
    Office Building. Following the interview, Office of Management and
    Budget Director Leon Panetta continued to answer questions from
    reporters.