[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 16 (Monday, April 26, 1993)]
[Pages 609-611]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Mike Whitely of KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

 April 17, 1993

    Mr. Whitely. For everyone listening on KDKA Radio, I'm Mike Whitely, 
KDKA Radio News. We're here at the Pittsburgh International Airport and 
with me is the President of the United States Bill Clinton.
    And I'd like to welcome you to the area and to KDKA.
    The President. Thank you, Mike. Glad to be here.

Los Angeles Verdict

    Mr. Whitely. There are a lot of things we'd like to talk about in 
the brief amount of time we have, but some news is just breaking from 
Los Angeles. I guess the entire country has been kind of holding their 
breath, wondering what's going to happen in the trial of the four Los 
Angeles police officers. We just heard that two of those officers, the 
sergeant, Sergeant Koon and Officer Powell have been found guilty, and 
two officers have been found not guilty.
    It's a situation that's been building for over a year since the 
first trial and now this trial and this verdict. And I wonder what your 
thoughts are this morning on how you see the situation in Los Angeles in 
connection with your administration and what you're trying to do.
    The President. Well, first of all, I think the American people 
should know that this trial, in my judgment, is a tribute to the work 
and judgment of the jury, as well as to the efforts of the Federal 
Government in developing the case.
    The law under which the officers were tried is a complex one; the 
standards of proof are complicated. The jury decided that they would 
convict the sergeant who was responsible for supervising the officers 
and the officer who on the film did most of the beating. The jury 
acquitted an officer who kicked Rodney King, but also plainly tried to 
shield him from some blows, and another officer who was a rookie.
    No one knows exactly why they did what they did, but it appears that 
they really tried to do justice here. They acknowledged that his civil 
rights were violated. And I think that the American people should take a 
lot of pride in that. But I hope now we can begin to look ahead and 
focus on three things: first of all, the importance of trying to bring 
this country together and not violate the civil rights of any American; 
secondly, the importance of renewing our fight against crime.
    I think it's important to recognize that in the poorest areas of Los 
Angeles and many other cities in this country, people may be worried 
about police abuse, but they're even more worried about crime. It's time 
that we renewed our efforts to go to community policing: put 100,000 
more police officers on the street, pass the Brady bill that would 
require a waiting period before people could buy a handgun, and do some 
other things to reduce the vulnerability of our people to violence and 
drugs.
    And the last point I'd like to make is it seems to me that we have 
got to rededicate ourselves to the economic revitalization of our cities 
and other economically distressed areas. If you just think about it, if 
everybody in Los Angeles who wanted a job had one, I don't think we'd 
have quite as many problems as we do.
    I laid out a very ambitious program in the campaign to try to bring 
private investment and public investment to bear in our cities. I have 
dispatched the Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown, to California to try to 
come up with some strategies for that State, because it's our biggest 
State with our highest unemployment rate, which could then be applied 
around the country. I want to talk to him and to the Attorney General, 
to the new head of the NAACP, to Reverend Jackson, and to several other 
people, and then I'll decide where to go from here with regard to Los 
Angeles and the other cities of the country.

Stimulus Package

    Mr. Whitely. Let's talk about what brings you to the Pittsburgh area 
today. I guess there's been a lot of discussion on Capitol Hill about 
your stimulus package. You've been locked in a battle with the GOP. 
Yesterday, as you said earlier in your radio address, you made some 
moves to break that gridlock. What brings you to Pittsburgh, in 
particular

[[Page 610]]

to Allegheny County, in particular to Pennsylvania, with that battle?
    The President. Well, there are two reasons. First of all, 
Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and Pennsylvania supported me in the last 
election because they wanted a new direction in economic policy. We have 
passed our overall economic plan. It gives the country a very different 
budget for the next 5 years than we've had in the previous 12. We 
reduced the deficit and, at the same time, increased investment in jobs 
and education and health care, in the things that will make us a 
stronger country.
    But in addition to that, I asked the Congress in the short run to 
spend a little more money, a modest amount of money to create another 
half-million jobs in the next year and a half, to try to cut the 
unemployment rate by half a percent but also to try to spark job 
creation in the private sector more. The plan passed the House. It has 
the support of a majority of the Senate. At the present time, all the 
Republican Senators as a bloc are filibustering the bill. That is, they 
won't let it come to a vote.
    I believe that Senator Specter would like to vote for the bill. And 
I believe that Senator Dole, the Republican leader, has put a lot of 
pressure on a lot of the Republicans to stay hitched. And they're all 
saying that this bill increases the deficit. It doesn't. This bill is 
well below the spending targets that Congress approved, including the 
Republicans, for this year. This bill is paid for by budget cuts in the 
next 5 years. This bill is designed to give a jumpstart to the economy. 
And I must say, a lot of the Republican Senators that are holding it up, 
when Mr. Bush was President, voted for billions of dollars of emergency 
spending of just this kind, much of it was totally unrelated to creating 
jobs.
    So what I'm trying to do is to break this logjam. I've held out an 
olive branch; I've offered a compromise. But I think that we ought to 
try to put some more Americans to work right now to show that we're 
changing the direction of the country. And that's the purpose of the 
bill.
    Mr. Whitely. Have you been in touch with Senator Specter or his 
office lately?
    The President. Well, we've been trying to talk regularly, through my 
White House congressional liaison operation, to the Senators that we 
think are open to this, Senator Specter, Senator D'Amato from New York, 
Senator Jeffords from Vermont, Senator Hatfield from Oregon, and five or 
six others whom we believe know we need more jobs in this economy and 
know what we are paying for this with budget cuts over the life of the 
budget I presented.
    You know, it has a lot of appeal to say, ``Well, we've got a big 
deficit. We shouldn't increase it more.'' But the truth is that we are 
paying for this with budget cuts in the whole life of the budget over 
the next few years. And more importantly, we have this program well 
below the spending targets that Congress has already approved for this 
year. And they've done this for years, with the Republicans voting for 
it, many Republicans voting for it, for things that weren't nearly as 
important as putting the American people back to work.
    So I just hope that this doesn't become a political issue. It ought 
to just be about the people of this country and the need for jobs.
    Mr. Whitely. I have some questions from people who supported you, 
and some people who are skeptical about your administration. It has to 
do with their hopes and also with their fears. A lot of people who 
supported you and voted for you in Pennsylvania, I think some of them 
are now saying, ``We're glad we got him in the White House, but now look 
at this incredible process he has to go through. Look at these problems. 
Look at this gridlock.'' And they're beginning to wonder: Is this going 
to work; can you pull it off? And of course, your skeptics are saying, 
``Well, I knew it was going to be like this.''
    The President. Well, I'd ask people, first of all, to remember that 
we are, frankly, moving very fast. The budget resolution that the 
Congress passed is the fastest they have ever passed a budget 
resolution, ever in history, setting out the next 5 year budget targets. 
So we are moving really rapidly. And we've got them working on political 
reform, welfare reform, health care reform, a whole wide range of 
things.
    But it's a big operation. You can't expect to turn it around 
overnight. It took 12 years to produce the conditions which led to the

[[Page 611]]

victory I received from the people in November, and we can't turn it 
around in 90 days. But I think we're making real, real progress.
    I would urge the people not to get discouraged. We're not going to 
win every battle, and not everything is going to happen overnight. But 
we are definitely moving and changing things.

Note: The interview began at 10:40 a.m. in the USAir terminal at 
Pittsburgh International Airport.