[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 16 (Monday, April 26, 1993)]
[Pages 636-638]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Exchange With Reporters en Route to the Blair House

 April 21, 1993

Stimulus Package

    Q. Mr. President, any reaction to the----

[[Page 637]]

    The President. Well, I'm disappointed. But I knew when I came here 
that we'd have to change some things in Washington and that the American 
people won't be surprised, I guess, to think that a minority of one 
House could keep several hundred thousand people out of work this year. 
I think it's a mistake, but I'm not done. I'm going to come back next 
week and regroup and go forward.
    We've had a real good success getting our budget plan through. We've 
kept interest rates down. There's going to be $100 billion in 
refinancing this year as a result of that. So I think that things are 
going basically in the right direction, but I'm very disappointed about 
this. And frankly, I'm a little surprised about it. It doesn't make a 
lot of sense. A lot of the Republican Senators told me they wanted us to 
work something out, and I went out of my way to meet them halfway, and 
then some. I don't know. But I just think that we've got to keep 
fighting for jobs.
    I think it's so easy for people who are here, who have not been out 
in the country, who make these decisions, who all have jobs, to be 
willing to pay for unemployment but not want to invest in employment, 
not want to put people to work. And I just think we've got to keep 
fighting for it. So next week I'll regroup and try to do something else.
    Q. What do you come back with next week?
    The President. I don't know. We'll see. This country went in one 
direction solid for more than a decade. I've been here about 90 days; 
it's going to take a little while to turn it around. But I'm not too 
disheartened. I'm disappointed in this particular thing and surprised by 
it, genuinely surprised, but I think we can regroup and go forward.
    Q. If you can't get a $16-billion stimulus package through Congress, 
what does it say for some of your more ambitious proposals, health care 
reform and a price tag that that carries with it?
    The President. Well, we'll just have to see. I think that depends 
on, always, whether there is a majority for a proposition and then 
whether the minority will keep it from even being voted on. I think the 
American people need to know that we had a majority in both Houses of 
Congress, but the minority kept the issue from being voted on. I feel 
pretty good about it.
    We passed the budget resolution, and we got the 60 votes necessary 
to break the debate in the Senate there, so I think we've got a real 
shot at a lot of reform. But it's going to be hard. And as I said, look 
at what's happened in the last 12 years: the deficit goes up, jobs go 
down, and no investment in our people. Congress passes laws it doesn't 
live under. We're trying to change this. And a lot of the Members of 
Congress have been willing to support this process of reform. This is, I 
hope and believe, an aberration where a minority stubbornly refused to 
let an issue get voted on. I'm just not going to be discouraged by it; 
we're just going to go on.
    Q. Let me ask you, when you come back next week, are you coming back 
with a scaled-down jobs bill or what are you----
    The Vice President. Stay tuned.
    The President. I've got to talk to a lot of people, see where we 
are, and go forward. We've got lots of other issues we need to put out 
there in the Congress and, you know, we may not win them all. But I'm 
going to keep fighting for jobs. I'm going to wake up tomorrow knowing 
that I'm waging a fight to put the American people back to work and lift 
this economy up, and that's what I was hired to do. I'm just going to 
keep doing it.
    Q. Is this a pretty big defeat for you, Mr. President? Isn't this a 
big defeat?
    The President. Not a big defeat. For me, it's a big disappointment 
to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have had jobs. But I 
don't have to explain it; I fought for it. The people who have voted for 
this sort of spending repeatedly to help other countries and wouldn't do 
it to help their own folks and did it when the deficit was going up, and 
I'm bringing the deficit down, they may have to explain some things, but 
that's the way Washington's worked for too long. We're going to lift 
this thing up and change it. We've just got to get people focused on the 
American people and their needs and put aside all the petty politics and 
all the maneuvering and start thinking about what's best for the 
American people. I think we can change it, and I'm upbeat about it. 
We've just been here 90 days. And basically,

[[Page 638]]

the big part of the plan, the budget resolution passed; we've just got 
to keep fighting it.

Note: The exchange began at 7:42 p.m. in the North Portico at the White 
House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of this 
exchange.