[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 18 (Monday, May 10, 1993)]
[Pages 756-759]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in Honor of National Nurses Week and an Exchange With Reporters

 May 5, 1993

    The President. Thank you very much, Ginny, for that wonderful 
statement and the introduction. And thank you, Secretary Shalala, for 
everything you said. I noticed a few groans in the audience when you 
pointed out that Dorothea Dix worked for nothing. I don't think she was 
suggesting that you do that, I think she was volunteering to do that, 
don't you think? [Laughter]
    I want to say, you know, I knew nurses were miracle workers, having 
been raised by one. But I don't see how you staved off the rain today. 
When I first heard 100 nurses were going to be here I thought to myself, 
what else can I do? I've given up junk food. I run every day. What more 
do you want of me? [Laughter] I'm doing my part.
    I want to say a special word of acknowledgement, too, to the nurses 
who are in this audience who work here at the White House, who care for 
me and my family and are available to the other people who work here. 
They do a wonderful job, and I'm very grateful to them. And they're here 
and there and around, and I thank them for their presence here.
    I'd also like to pay a special word of tribute to your president, 
Ginny Trotter Betts, for hanging it out there with us in the election 
and bringing the support for the American Nurses Association and also 
for being such a forceful advocate of sweeping reforms in our health 
care system. Hillary and I very much appreciate the work that she and 
the Nurses Association have done. And I know that she's also an old 
friend of Al and Tipper Gore's, and they're grateful, too, for her 
contributions.
    I'd also like to recognize some of the other people who are here 
today, including a remarkable nurse whose presence in the Congress is a 
symbol of your political strength, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson 
from Dallas and my dear friend. She's really a tribute to the practice 
of good health. I've known her for 20 years, and I look much older, and 
she looks younger than she did the first time we met.

[[Page 757]]

    I also want to thank all the nurses who have advised our Health Care 
Reform Task Force and brought such a valuable perspective to that 
effort. You've really made a difference, and we're grateful to you.
    We're here today to mark the beginning of National Nurses Week, a 
time for our country to recognize the services that you and your 
colleagues provide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. From 
inner city hospitals to rural clinics, from the Red Cross to the Armed 
Services, America's nurses always answer the call.
    Today we're reminded that our Nation's 1.8 million working nurses 
are the backbone of a health care system, the largest single group of 
health care providers in America, and I might add, a group that will 
have to do more and should do more in primary and preventive care if 
we're going to bring the cost of medical care down.
    You know better than anyone else what is wrong with this system. You 
see all the people who show up at the emergency room to get the most 
expensive care too late because they didn't have a basic primary and 
preventive health care package. You see the enormous burden of paperwork 
squandering more and more hours of nurses and doctors, requiring more 
and more precious health care dollars to be diverted to clerical 
expenses instead of to investing in the health of our people. Every day 
you see these kinds of problems as the Nation continues to wait for 
action on a health care front. I'm here today on this beginning of your 
week to reaffirm to you my commitment that now is the time to do 
something about health care and to do it right.
    One of the most challenging things we have to do in this city at 
this time is to break a mindset that we have one problem at a time, and 
we'll get on it, and we'll only think about that. I believe that this 
country has at least three huge problems that relate one to the other. 
One is, there are too many people who are unemployed and too many people 
who are working harder with no gains in their incomes. And it's been 
that way for a long, long time. Two is, the cost of health care is 
exploding at an unacceptable rate, and yet, too few people have 
coverage, or their coverage is too limited. Third is, we're absolutely 
being consumed by a massive national debt and a growing deficit. And 
these things are all related one to the other.
    Now, people say to me, ``Well, we just do one thing at a time.'' 
Well, look back over time where that's gotten us. People just say, 
``Well, we ought to just spend money and give it to people, and maybe 
that will work.'' That hasn't worked. Then for 12 years we heard the 
worst thing in the world is taxes; we'll just cut taxes, especially on 
wealthy people, and that will make everything wonderful. Well, that 
hasn't worked out very well either. So the guy said to me yesterday, ``I 
know a bunch of people who got tax cuts last year, because they used to 
be making $40,000 a year, and now they're making $10,000. They all got a 
tax cut.''
    And what I say to you is that we don't want to just keep trying to 
give people things in a system that is broken. You can't give people 
Government money. You can't give people tax cuts if the system is 
broken. What we have to do is to attack all these problems at once and 
not keep giving people things but give them the means to take care of 
themselves and to create lives that are productive and good and strong 
for themselves and their families, their children. That's what we have 
to do.
    That's why, yes, we have to reduce spending and increase taxes, 
mostly on wealthy people who got their taxes cut in the 1980's, to bring 
the deficit down. But we also have to invest carefully in programs that 
will create jobs and raise incomes, new technologies for the 21st 
century, and the kind of education and training that will give people 
work. If everybody in this country who wanted a good job had one, we 
wouldn't have half the problems we've got.
    And then the third thing we have to do is to attack the health care 
crisis, because if we don't we will never get the Government deficit 
under control. We will never balance this budget, and more importantly, 
we will never provide the security that most families need and deserve 
in a rapidly changing and increasingly insecure world.
    There are millions of Americans today who cannot change jobs, 
because somebody in their family has been sick. There are millions of 
others who have no health insurance.

[[Page 758]]

There are millions of others who have some health insurance but very 
little, because they work for small businesses who cannot afford a basic 
package of health care because of the insurance system that we have in 
this country. There are untold billions of dollars being spent that 
should not be spent by the people who pay the full price and more for 
health care because they have to pay for somebody else's health care 
who's not covered when it's too late and too expensive or because 
they're paying an unbelievable bureaucratic burden for the paperwork 
burdens of this system.
    So I say to you, these are false choices. People cannot say to us 
you must choose between having a healthy country, an employed country, a 
country bringing its deficit down. We must do all three of those things 
because that's the only way we can--instead of trying to give people 
something that's not there to give, empower people to seize control of 
their destiny and bring this country back. That's what we've got to do.
    There will always be defenders of the status quo. It is easy to say, 
``Well, let's just write somebody a check.'' Even easier to say, ``Taxes 
are evil. They're out to get you.''
    Right now, you know as well as I do, the lobbyists are lining up 
strategizing about how they're going to pick this health care proposal 
to death. But I'll tell you something, the worst thing we could do, in 
my opinion, after 400-and-something people have worked their hearts out 
for months and months and months, is to take a dive on the health care 
thing, to turn away from it, to deal with the inconveniences of it.
    People say, ``Well, it may cost somebody else some money.'' Let me 
tell you something, all those people who don't have health insurance 
today, they're being paid for by everybody else who's paying the bill. 
What about fairness to them: Who's thinking about them? I'll tell you 
something else, we've been reducing defense spending quite steeply and 
about all we can for the last 5 years. And all the savings we hope to 
have in the peace dividend have been exploded away by rising health care 
costs and interest payments on this deficit.
    So it is all related. You've got to have a job strategy. You've got 
to have a deficit reduction strategy. And you've got to have a health 
care strategy. Because if you don't have a health care strategy, the 
American people can't stay well, the American economy can't get well, 
and you cannot reduce the deficit to zero in this decade. Those things 
must be done together. We cannot be forced to make that false choice.

    And so I ask you--you represent 1.8 million people who know the 
heartache, the heartbreak, and the problems of this system, and who also 
know that that which is right about our system makes it the best in the 
world for those who can access it. We are determined to come forward to 
the Congress with a plan that keeps the best of America's health care 
system, keeps the private provider system, keeps a lot of choice in the 
system, but deals with the awful problems that you know better than 
anybody. And I ask you to commit today not to let the special interests 
tell us that we can't deal with health care, not to let the special 
interests spook and scare the Members of Congress away from doing what 
is our manifest duty to the people of this country who are working hard 
and playing by the rules and falling further behind, and instead, to 
give us all a chance to do the work of a generation.

    And that is really what's being given us in this time, in this 
Congress: the opportunity to do something that comes along once in a 
generation to change the whole course of America's future. By dealing 
with these things together, providing security and quality and control 
of cost in this health care system, bringing this deficit down and 
pursuing a long-term strategy for a high-wage, high-growth, low-
unemployment economy. And they're all together. If you'll help me take 
that message to the Congress, this will be one of the best years the 
American people ever had.
    Thank you very much.

Bosnia

    Q. Have you heard anything from Bosnia, sir?

    The President. No.

    Q. How quickly are you prepared to move once you do?

[[Page 759]]

    The President. Well, let's wait and see what they do first.
    Q. Mr. President, there is word that the parliament has agreed to 
the peace agreement. Mr. President, there is----
    The President. I hope they--I'm waiting for a call from Secretary 
Christopher right now. Let me go take the call, and I'll give you----
    Q. And then what, sir?

Child Immunization

    Q. Sir, what happened to your immunization program on the Hill? Why 
did you have to dog back on that?
    The President. Well, Secretary Shalala says we're going to get a 
program that can immunize a lot more people. We did the best we could 
with the money we had. You know, a lot of these things are going to be a 
function of how much money we have. But I feel pretty good about it. I 
talked to her about it. She feels good about it. We think it's a big 
advance over where we are.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 4:27 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. A portion of the remarks could not be verified because the tape 
was incomplete.