[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 17 (Monday, May 3, 1993)]
[Pages 679-685]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Question-and-Answer Session With the Newspaper Association of America in 
Boston

 April 25, 1993

Bosnia

    Q. I'm director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern 
University here in Boston. I apologize for not being an actual member of 
NAA, but I guess I'm here as your guest.
    Mr. President, you did refer to Bosnia. And I must say, as we look 
at that situation, it is horrifying; it is so reminiscent of what 
happened in Europe in the Second World War. I wonder if you would be 
able to explain to us why the West, which is possessed of imagination 
and technology, can stand idly by while these horrible things go on?
    The President. Suppose you tell me what you think we ought to do, 
what the end of it will be?
    Q. Well, you know, I could speculate, but I didn't come here to 
foist my ideas on other people. I'd be interested to hear what you have 
to say. It's obviously an immensely difficult question, because it could 
drag you into areas that you don't want to go, a Balkan war, an 
expanded--but let me quit. I'd like to hear your----
    The President. All right. Let me just tell you that I think that the 
European countries, that are much closer to this than we, would like 
very much to find a way to put an end to the practice and to the 
principle of ethnic cleansing. They are very concerned about it, just as 
the United States has been.
    The question is not simply how to stop the Serbs from cleansing 
certain areas of Bosnia of all the Muslim inhabitants and killing and 
raping along the way, but also what the end of it is from a military and 
political point of view. That is, there is much more ethnic coherence, 
as you know, in the other republics of what used to be Yugoslavia. So 
the question is, what can we do that will actually achieve the 
objectives you seek? And secondly, who's going to live where, and how 
are they going to live when it's over?
    Then there are all the tactical questions about whether, in fact, it 
could be done. Remember, in the Second War, Hitler sent tens of 
thousands of soldiers to that area and never was successful in subduing 
it, and they had people on the ground.
    That does not mean that there is not anything else that we can do. 
I'm not prepared to announce my policy now. I can tell you I've asked 
myself the question you asked me a thousand times. I have spent immense 
amounts of time on this, talking to General Powell; talking to Reg 
Bartholomew, our Special Ambassador to the area; talking to the 
Secretaries of State and Defense and the

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Ambassador to the United Nations; and soliciting opinions from others in 
Congress and elsewhere. And I assure you that we are going to do 
everything we think we can to achieve those two objectives. One is to 
stand up against and stop the practice of ethnic cleansing. The second 
is to try to find some way for the people who live in Bosnia and 
Herzegovina to live in peace. But I have to tell you, the more you look 
at it, it is by far the most difficult foreign policy problem we face, 
both in terms of the larger political issues and in the purely tactical 
questions to resolve it. I wish I could be more specific now, but if I 
were, I would be announcing a policy that has not been finalized.

Telecommunications

    Q. My question has to do with telecommunications. Newspapers and 
others who wish to offer electronic information services can do so now 
only by using the local exchange monopolies of the telephone companies, 
principally the Bell operating companies. The telephone companies would 
like to be deregulated, and they would like to use those monopolies to 
offer those same services themselves. Would your administration support 
the establishment of competition for local exchange services before 
granting deregulation?
    The President. I thought you'd never ask. [Laughter] I hesitate to 
give you the honest answer. The honest answer is, I'm not sure I still 
understand it well enough to give you an answer. We have a technology 
working group in the White House; there are about five issues that we're 
looking at, of which this is one. And no decision has been made yet, and 
I wish I could give you a more intelligent answer. I can tell you this: 
You have certainly rung my bell, and I will get on top of it next week. 
[Laughter] I didn't mean that, ring my bell. Hey, what can I tell you; 
it was a long week. [Laughter]

President Yeltsin of Russia

    Q. You mentioned the Russian election ongoing today. Could you tell 
us whether or not you have had any contact within the past 24 hours with 
President Yeltsin and, if so, what advice or counsel you may have given 
him?
    The President. I haven't had any contact with him in the last 24 
hours. And I haven't done it because he had no business talking to me 
because I couldn't vote for him. [Laughter] He needed to be out there 
stirring around. I also was, frankly, quite sensitive to the delicate 
tightrope that Yeltsin walks in our relationships together. That is, 
apparently the Russian people believe that it is, on balance, a good 
thing that we met in Canada and that we came forward with the aid 
package and that all of us in the G-7 are trying to help them in ways 
that will be more real than the last aid package. And that's not a 
criticism of the previous administration so much as a criticism of the 
process which made Russia ineligible for a lot of the things that we 
said, the nations of the world said they were going to do for them. All 
that's been a plus.
    On the other hand, the enemies of reform and the enemies of Yeltsin 
just beat him to death with me all the time. I don't know if you saw in 
one of the newspapers--maybe it was the Wall Street Journal that had a 
quote in the last day or two in Yeltsin's campaign where one of his 
enemies were saying: The only person for him is Bill Clinton. [Laughter] 
And so I have on purpose not had any personal and direct contact with 
him in the last few days because I didn't want to hurt him in the 
election. But I can tell you this: I think he's going to do pretty well 
today, and we need to be in this for the long term with him. And I 
intend to call him as soon as it's appropriate, when we have some sense 
of which way things are going.

Education Financing

    Q. I'm a student at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And I, 
with a lot of other students, because of tuition fees, may not be coming 
back next year. And I was wondering how your administration is going to 
try and step in and help public state colleges, help us students afford 
it, basically.
    The President. We're trying to do two things. First of all, one of 
the things I attempted to do in the jobs program which didn't have 
anything to do with jobs--it was sort of like unemployment--was to deal 
with the problem left on the table last year, which

[[Page 681]]

is to replenish the Pell grant program, to try to get it ginned up.
    And then, what I want to do with this national service proposal--it 
really has two components that are distinct but related. The one would 
make available, to all Americans who go to college, income-contingent 
loan repayment. Now, that's a brain-breaker of a phrase; I'm trying to 
think of some clever way to say that that makes common sense. But the 
idea is that any young American, or not-so-young American would be able 
to borrow the money to finance a college education and then pay the loan 
back, not based on so much just on how much you borrowed but also on a 
percentage of your income so that it would be affordable for everyone. 
And we could do it for a lower cost because we are proposing to cut the 
administrative costs of the program and to make people pay the loan back 
with some connection to the tax system so you can't beat the loan. An 
enormous number of college loans now are not repaid at all, putting 
enormous burdens on those who do repay. If we set this up the way we're 
trying to, that would mean no one would ever have to fear a loan again, 
because you would not start to repay it until you were employed. And 
your ability to repay would be secured by having the formula for 
repayment tied to your own salary. So if you made less, even though you 
borrowed more, you'd just pay at a smaller rate over a longer period of 
time.
    The second thing we want to do is to give more young people like you 
the chance to actually earn your way through college through rendering 
service to your country, either before you go to college, after you get 
out, or while you're going, under the national service program. And if 
we could do those two things, I think we could lift the crushing burden 
of college costs off millions of young people. And we're going to 
introduce the national service program to do that on the 100th day of 
this administration. And I hope you will support it.

Media Credibility

    Q. Mr. President, I'm a student at Boston College and a 
communications major. I'd like to ask you, do you think the news media 
today is too concerned with gossip and sensationalism?
    The President. I don't know that I'm the one to answer that. 
[Laughter] I think the answer to that is, you can't generalize about it. 
I must say, I am stunned from time to time at the stuff I read in the 
papers now about things in the National Government that are just purely 
based on gossip. I mean, I think you can get a rumor into print a little 
too easy now, I do, and even in the news magazines, some of them, 
although there seem to be different standards for different ones. But I 
wouldn't generalize. I think, by and large, there are still quite high 
standards of proof and fact that most people in journalism require 
before they go with stories. But I am kind of amazed, actually, of the 
stuff--most of it doesn't affect me at all--but the things that will get 
into print if you just say it is a rumor or ``it's alleged that'' or 
``somebody said that.'' I think there's a little too much of that in 
some places, but it would be unfair to generalize about it. And by and 
large, it occurs either in the tabloids, which are a different class, or 
in journalistic media that basically live and breathe with political 
gossip, where there's more pressure to do that all the time.

Congressional Budget Cuts

    Q. Mr. President, I think many of us were very pleased to hear you 
say today that Vice President Gore has been put in charge of looking at 
ways of streamlining the budget. Of course, we all know that the 
Congress is in charge of the financial spending of the United States. 
Will there be any looking by Vice President Gore of the way Congress has 
increased its spending many times over the last few decades?
    The President. Well, let me say two things. Number one, I think 
Congress has made a commendable beginning in cutting back its staff 
expenses, too. They've, I think, adopted a 12 percent cut, absolute cut 
target over the next couple of years, not quite as much as the 
administration has but not insignificant. And they deserve credit for 
that. Secondly, there's been a lot of pressure, because of the publicity 
that's been brought to bear on Congress, to scale down on some of the 
committee and subcommittee work for

[[Page 682]]

select committees that were recently abolished by the Congress. And let 
me just say this: There are a lot of Members of Congress who believe 
that they're on too many committees or subcommittees. There are a lot of 
them who don't feel they can do their best work. I don't think it is for 
the executive branch to tell the legislative branch how it should 
reorganize itself. We have a separation of powers clause in the 
Constitution which I think has a good purpose.
    I think the best thing you could do, since you need to know--there 
are a lot of people in the Congress who are honestly asking these 
questions--the best thing you can do is to give the issues that you care 
about, all of you, in terms of congressional organization, a high level 
of visibility and make your suggestions about what should be done and go 
at them directly, because they are not reform averse. Now, I can tell 
you that the freshman legislators are certainly not. But believe me, 
I've got plenty to do reorganizing the executive branch, and there's 
more money there. And I think it would be inappropriate for me to tell 
them how to do it. I think it's better for you to tell them how to do 
it.

Stimulus Package

    Q. Mr. President, some recent indicators suggest that the economic 
recovery may be slowing down. If that continues, will you take another 
run at a stimulus package? And what would have to be different about it 
this time?
    The President. Well, I don't know. As I said in my press conference 
a couple of days ago, we've sat down at the White House, and we've tried 
to really reexamine how this whole thing was handled and what I could 
have done differently, how I could have done a better job in presenting 
this, because I'm sure that there were some mistakes made on our side, 
too, in terms of how it was done.
    I can tell you this: There are people in the Republican Party, for 
example, in the Senate, who are generally sympathetic to this sort of 
thing--people who voted for these kind of supplemental appropriations 
over 25 times in the last 12 years--who voted against it because they 
basically thought that even if it wasn't increasing the deficit, this 
was another way certainly to reduce it--if you don't spend the money--
and that we were in a recovery.
    I think what I'm going to do is to just examine, with people who 
care about this, what we did that wasn't right the last time and how we 
could do it better and what our options are. Because as I said, I live 
in a State with perhaps the toughest balanced budget law in the country. 
I'm appalled by the size of the deficit. I can't stand it. I wouldn't 
spend a nickel to see the cow jump over the Moon if I didn't think it 
needed to be done. So the reason I asked for this package was because I 
saw it as a part of a big overall deficit reduction package that would 
maybe jumpstart this economy right now. And we're just going to have to 
revisit it.
    Let me say that we had a huge increase in productivity in the fourth 
quarter, as all of you who follow this know, I know, and that's 
wonderful work. It means output per worker is escalating dramatically. 
The difference is that in the past when productivity went way up, it 
normally meant a reinvestment in the business which would lead to more 
people being hired.
    Today--and I'll bet you a lot of newspapers can identify with this, 
I'll bet you a lot of you have gone through this--today, when you have 
an increase in productivity, you may turn around and put it right back 
into what produced the productivity, which is new technology which may 
reduce the pressure to hire people. And small businesses, which hired 
almost all the new workers net in the eighties, have slowed down not 
only because they too are reaping the gains of technology and 
productivity but also because of the incredible extra costs it takes to 
hire a new worker in terms of health care costs, Social Security, 
workers' comp, and all the rest of it.
    So, I know I haven't answered your question, but the short answer is 
this: If the economy slows down, we'll go back and try something 
different. And I don't know what it is, but we'll keep trying things 
that are different. Because keep in mind, one of the reasons the economy 
may be slowing down is that the economic growth rate is so low in Europe 
and that our friends in Japan are having a tough time. That's another 
reason: I thought if we could get this small stimulus out now,

[[Page 683]]

that the Japanese job stimulus package which is much larger would begin 
to bite about 6 or 7 months from now and that we might have some 
movement in Europe because the Germans continue to lower their interest 
rates, hoping, I think, trying to make an effort to stave off this slow 
growth. So what we do will depend on what happens in Europe, what 
happens in Japan, and what my options are if it becomes clear that the 
economy's really slowing down.
    Moderator. Mr. President, unfortunately I'm going to have to 
interrupt and say we have time for just one more question. And there's a 
smile back on that lady's face. And I'd like all of you please to stay 
in place when the President is finished. You're going to do more than 
that, did you say?
    The President. We ought to let those two young people back there----
    Moderator. All right, fine. We're going to----
    The President. You qualify----
    Moderator. There's no question you're in charge here, so----
[laughter]
    The President. Nearly everybody looks young to me these days. Go 
ahead.

Campaign Promises

    Q. Over the past week or so, I've been taking a poll for my radio 
class about your favorability with your first 100 days in office. It 
seems that you've started to fall out of grace with a lot of college 
students. And they were citing that you didn't keep the campaign 
promises. What would you say to boost the morale of our generation?
    The President. Well, give me an example. One thing I'd say, you 
can't expect instant results. It took 12 years to get in the situation 
that I found when I took office. One of the things I would say to 
college students is you need to have a realistic expectation about what 
kind of time it takes to get anything done.
    The second thing I would say is that what I promised college 
students was a national service bill, and we're introducing it on the 
100th day. We're doing it. And we're also going to release a report 
which shows how many of my campaign commitments that I have kept. To the 
best of my knowledge, the only one I haven't been able to keep was to 
give some tax relief to the middle class because the deficit, the week 
after the election, was announced at being $50 billion bigger than I 
thought it was. And I can't responsibly offer to cut anybody's taxes 
when the deficit is going up instead of down. That's not right, and I 
can't do it. But the budget that was adopted by the Congress, in 
general, is completely consistent with my campaign commitments. I've got 
a national service program going, a health care program going. We're 
changing the way the Government operates--all the things that I promised 
to do. I have imposed tougher ethics guidelines than anybody else has 
ever imposed. I'm going to offer a campaign finance reform and a lobby 
restriction bill. Everything I talked about in the campaign is being 
done.
    Now, if people thought that I'd be President and 90 days later every 
campaign commitment I made would be written into the law and everybody's 
life would be changed, I think that's just not realistic. You have to 
have a realistic feeling about how much time it takes to change and how 
long it takes to have an impact on it.
    Another thing is, when you're not in a campaign, when you have to 
stay there and go to work, you're at the--and this is not a criticism of 
you, this is a fact--you are at the mercy of the press coverage. The 
defeat of the $16 billion stimulus package got 50 times the press 
coverage of the passage of the multitrillion-dollar budget resolution. 
Why? Because we won, and we won in record time and in short order. 
Again, I'm not being critical; that's just the way this whole deal 
works. And if somebody stands up and criticizes me, that's good news. 
And I welcome that.
    But I'm just telling you, I think that if you look at what's 
actually been done in this 100-day period and compare it to what has 
previously been done within 100 days, in a long time, I think you'll 
have a very difficult time saying that the actual accomplishments were, 
number one, not consistent with my campaign commitments--they were--and, 
number two, that they're not quite considerable. So what I've got to do 
is a better job communicating to the students you represent what has 
been done and what we're going to do and how much I need their help to 
fight for

[[Page 684]]

it. That's why you get a 4-year term, not a 3-month term.
    Q. I don't know if I should be up here or not, but just to make sure 
that you're not guilty of age discrimination--[laughter]--I guess that I 
was ahead of the gentleman behind me. I have a question for you about 
what you refer to as gridlock in Congress, because it seemed to me that 
for the first time Congress did say no to some very good programs 
because of the fact that they would add to the deficit, and that this 
was in fact breaking a previous gridlock which existed when Congress, 
when they had good programs, would simply say, well, we've got to add to 
the deficit. And you campaigned on reducing the deficit. And why 
couldn't you--admittedly, that you have some very good programs in the 
stimulus bill--why couldn't you, say, cut tobacco subsidies or any of a 
number of other programs that weren't as necessary as what's in your 
stimulus package?
    The President. I will answer that. First of all, I had 200 such 
cuts, 200 that were not adopted by the previous administration or the 
previous Congress in the previous budget, 200. I did not ask that 
stimulus bill to be voted on until the Congress had adopted the budget 
resolution committing itself to more than $500 billion of deficit 
reduction in the next 5 years, more than $500 billion, including this 
$16 billion. It was paid for by those budget cuts.
    Secondly, as I said, even if it hadn't been paid for, all of the 
spending was under the spending limits that Congress had already 
adopted. It was paid for. And you know, I must tell you that I find it--
I will say one more time, a majority of the Republican Senators voted 
under Presidents Reagan and Bush--not the Democrats, the Republicans--28 
times for over $100 billion of exactly the same kind of spending, 
usually for foreign aid purposes, without blinking an eye. And so, do I 
think that it was a mistake that they didn't vote for it? I do.
    Now, if I had just come up and said, how about adding $16 billion to 
the deficit this year, they should have voted against that. But I didn't 
ask them to vote on it until we had adopted a budget resolution in the 
Congress that reduced the deficit $514 billion over the next 5 years, 
including the $16 billion. I did not ask them to vote to spend until 
they had voted to cut. Now, I concede that I didn't do a great job of 
painting that picture, but that is a fact. And you ought to write those 
fellows and ask them how they'd feel about just the suggestion that you 
made. Tell them to come up with that program. We'll see what we can do 
with it.
    Q. Thank you.

Law Enforcement

    Q. Thank you for waiting, Mr. President. I'm a student journalist 
from Boston University. And you've mentioned so far, in a couple 
different contexts, that you're interested in putting more police 
officers on the streets. I was also concerned and wondering that, in the 
same notion, are you willing to create some kind of, I don't know--do 
you have a task force now that would look into community relations 
between police officers and the public? Because I'm from a city and a 
neighborhood where some people might feel safer with more police in the 
streets, but a lot of people would actually be terrified with more 
police in the streets.
    The President. Well, I accept that. The answer to your question is 
no, I haven't thought about that. Maybe I should think about it, but I 
haven't. But let me answer you in this way: When I have talked about 
putting more police officers on the street, I've always talked about it 
with two things in mind. First of all, keep in mind that in the last 30 
years, there has been a dramatic worsening in the ratio of police to 
crime. Thirty-five years ago there were approximately three policemen 
for every serious crime, every felony reported. Now there are three 
felonies for every police officer. That puts enormous pressure on those 
police officers. I'm not justifying abuse. I'm just talking about the 
kinds of pressures in the day-to-day work of the cops on the beat, out 
there on the front line living with all this. So I believe that if you 
had more police officers who were well-trained, you would have a 
reduction in tensions.
    But secondly and more importantly, I believe it's important to go to 
community based policing, where you have the same group of police 
officers, unless they're misbehaving, working in the communities month 
in and

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month out, year in and year out, establishing relationships with people 
in the communities so that you dramatically reduce the likelihood of 
abuse or fear, because people know each other. They've got people 
walking the beats. They know the first names of the police officers. 
They see them as friends. In the cities where I have seen that happen, I 
have seen not only a decline in crime but also an increase in mutual 
trust and understanding between folks in a community and folks in the 
uniforms.
    So I think you've made a very good point. It's not just important 
that we have more police officers, but the structure of policing, in my 
judgment, has to be more rooted in particular communities. And I think 
if we did that, the crime rate would go down significantly. And by the 
way, there is a lot of evidence, probably in a lot of the cities in 
which you live here, that that would in fact occur.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 4:56 p.m. at the Marriott Copley Place 
Hotel.