[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 21 (Monday, May 31, 1993)]
[Pages 978-981]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at City Hall in Philadelphia

 May 28, 1993

    Thank you very much, Rosemary Greco. You know, she's the sort of 
person that I ran for President to support, a person who started out as 
a bank teller and became the president of a bank. That's the American 
dream.
    I want to say how glad I am to be here, back in Philadelphia, a city 
that has been so good to me for so long now, with your Mayor and Senator 
Wofford and with the members of the House delegation who are up here on 
the platform with me, and with your State treasurer, Catherine Baker 
Knoll. I'm glad to be here with all of them. Give them a hand, will you?
    My fellow Americans, since I became President I have been working to 
break the gridlock in Washington, to prove that Government could work 
for you again. And there have been some impressive examples of success 
in that regard. The Congress, after 8 years of rankling with the 
President and two vetoes, voted to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act 
to guarantee working people a little time off when the baby was born or 
a parent was sick, and eventually, after years of haggling, voted to 
pass the motor voter bill to open up the voter registration rolls to 
millions of Americans and bring them into the political process.
    But the real issue was whether we had the courage to come to grips 
with the economic problems which have paralyzed this country. After 
years and years and years of gridlock, after years of leaders talking 
about economic problems and not doing much about them, after years in 
which we ran our national debt from $1 trillion to $4 trillion and 
reduced our investment in our people, their jobs, and their future at 
the same time, last night the House of Representatives gave the American 
people a victory for economic growth over gridlock.
    The plan cuts the deficit by $500 billion, cuts a quarter of a 
trillion dollars in Government spending, asks the wealthy who can best 
afford to pay their fair share, invests in education and jobs, and 
rewards work instead of welfare.


[At this point, there was a disturbance in the audience.]

    Let me tell you something--wait a minute. You know one thing that's 
wrong with this country? Everybody gets a chance to have their fair say. 
My budget did more to fight AIDS than any in history, and we're having 
to put up with this. Tell them to let me talk. If you want to give a 
speech, go out there and raise your own crowd. We'll be glad to listen 
to you.
    So there were those--I'll make you a deal. I'll ignore them if you 
will.
    There were a lot of people who said we could never change the way 
things were in Washington, the same sort of people who picked the 
Phillies to finish last this year. By the way, I think the Phillies are 
looking pretty good, even that big fellow, Kruk, you know, is a big bat. 
I wonder who cuts his hair? [Laughter]
    Let me tell you something, folks, make no mistake about it, this 
National Capital of yours is beginning to change. After years in which 
our house was coming apart with higher deficits and less investment, a 
Government by special interests instead of the national interests, 
middle class working harder for less, things are really beginning to 
change.
    After years of a lot of hot air and no responsibility and no 
willingness to take the tough decisions, yesterday the House began to 
throw out the economic program that ran our debt to $4 trillion, ran the 
middle class into the ground, created a new class of poverty, and robbed 
our country of opportunity and any sense of community. We are now moving 
forward with a plan that reduces the deficit, asks the wealthy who can 
pay their fair share, gives the middle class the chance of having a 
future with real economic growth,

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and provides profound incentives to prefer work over welfare. These are 
the kinds of things you elected me to do.
    And I want to say one of the most rewarding things is the people who 
supported the program. I mean, after all, this is a program which asks 
that 75 percent of the money raised in taxes be paid for by people with 
incomes above $100,000. And yet, among the strongest supporters were 
people who had that income who believe their country was more important 
than their own pocketbook. And we ought to reward that. We had not just 
labor leaders and small business people and mayors of small and big 
cities and Governors for this program. There were people who led some of 
the biggest--lead some of the biggest companies in this country out 
there working to give our country a better chance and a brighter future, 
because they know that we have to stop reducing our investment and 
running up our debt. We need to reverse our priorities, and now we're on 
the way to doing it.
    A lot of these decisions were not easy, but they had to be made. I 
tried to set a good example. I reduced my own staff. We've had a 
reduction in this budget in the Federal work force by attrition, not by 
laying people off, but we're going to reduce the Federal Government by 
150,000 over the next 4 years. That's a lot. That's a lot of Government 
spending cuts. We cut more than 200 specific programs. We cut $2 in 
spending for every $1 in new investments and education and jobs and 
technology.
    There were things that had never been really seriously dealt with 
before, the budget's sacred cows: everything from agricultural subsidies 
to the REA to other problems that affect the cities; demonstration 
projects that had never been seriously reviewed; cuts in the Medicare 
program that couldn't be justified; and the Federal employees perhaps 
took the biggest hit of all, forgoing a pay raise and having a budget 
that lowers their raises below the cost of living for 4 years, because 
most of them agreed that they couldn't ask any of you to pay more, even 
the wealthiest Americans, unless they took less. That's the kind of 
spirit it's going to take to turn this country around and move the 
country forward.
    I'll tell you something else. Every dollar in taxes and all the 
budget cuts have to go into a deficit reduction trust fund. There will 
be no taxes without the budget cuts, and all the money will go to 
bringing the debt down. And we will have some left over to do things 
that need to be done. Here in Philadelphia, you know, because of defense 
cuts, we need to invest some money to help move our country from a 
defense to a domestic economy, new technologies for new jobs and new 
opportunities in the future. Because this debt turned out to be bigger 
even than we knew before the election, I did ask the Congress to adopt 
an energy tax, some of which will be paid by middle class Americans. But 
I want you to know exactly how it works, and you've got to decide 
whether you think it's worth it.
    First of all, we have income tax reductions to protect family 
incomes below $30,000 from the impact of the energy tax. For people 
above $30,000 up to $100,000, here's what it costs: $1 a month next 
year; $7 a month the year after; and if you've got a family of four, $17 
a month after that. But consider this: Look how much interest rates have 
gone down. If we keep interest rates down and people can refinance their 
homes, get car loans at lower rates, get consumer loans at lower rates, 
get lower business loans from good bankers like Rosemary, you will save 
more in interest rates than you'll ever pay in the energy tax, and 
you'll have a healthier economy and a lower deficit.
    Just for example, if someone had a $100,000 home mortgage that was 
financed at 10 percent, and they refinanced it at 7.5 percent, they'd 
save $175 a month, a month, not a year. This is going to be good 
economics. If we can keep interest rates down by bringing the debt down, 
that will release another $100 billion into this economy this year to 
put the American people back to work.
    Yesterday was a historic day, but it was just the beginning. Now the 
bill goes on to the Senate. And we must work to pass the bill that meets 
these principles: The wealthy must pay their fair share; we have to 
reduce the deficit by $500 billion; we have to keep the incentives for 
people to invest in our jobs and in our cities; and we've got to give 
people incentives to move from welfare to work, not

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the other way around. That's the kind of bill that needs to come to my 
desk.
    There are 80,000 lobbyists in Washington. Many of them don't want 
Washington to change. Think of that. Maybe some of you all are in the 
wrong line of work--80,000. Special interests that work in the Senate 
who have now proposed that we cut Social Security and put more of a 
burden on the middle class in order to relieve the burden on the 
wealthiest Americans, when many of them are leading the crusade for 
change. I think we can do better. I think we can do better. And we're 
going to do better in the United States Senate with your help.
    The process of changing is not easy, not even, and not quick. But we 
are moving in the right direction. The budget is on the way to being 
realized. There is a program now in the United States Congress with 
broad bipartisan support to fulfill the commitment I made to you to open 
the doors of college education to all Americans and give our young 
people a chance to pay off their college through national service 
through their communities here at home.
    Very soon the national commission on health care which my wife has 
chaired will present their plan to provide affordable health care to all 
Americans and bring down the cost of health care that threatens our 
economic stability. How many millions of Americans not only lack health 
insurance but have it and are terrified of losing it because somebody in 
their family has been sick, and they think they'll never be able to 
change jobs. We can do better, and we will with your support.
    Finally, there are bills in the Congress which will help to change 
the very way your National Government works: A bill that will require 
every lobbyist to register and to say how much money they spend lobbying 
all the rest of us and report it to you--I think that would be a good 
thing--already passed the Senate; can pass the House. And Mayor Rendell 
was talking about the campaign finance reform bill, which at long last 
will lower the cost of congressional campaigns, limit the influence of 
political action committees, and open the airwaves to candidates so they 
can have an honest debate. That bill is in the Congress, and we ought to 
pass it this year.
    When I was running for President, I was profoundly influenced by the 
series in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Donald Bartlett and James Steele, 
the stories they made into a book called ``America, What Went Wrong?'' 
They said that after 50 years, the middle class and small business had 
been helped for 50 years, but things began to change about a dozen years 
ago. About a dozen years ago, the National Government adopted tax 
policies and economic policies that rewarded those who shut jobs down in 
America and sent them somewhere else; rewarded those who laid their 
workers off and bailed out with golden parachutes to better lives. We 
stopped rewarding responsibility and work and rigged the game of 
economic life against the broad American middle class. They were right, 
but we're fighting to change that.
    And Americans from all walks of life are helping. I will say again, 
to me the most moving thing of all has been how many genuinely 
successful Americans, people this country has been good to, people who 
have made a lot of money, have come forward and said, ``Go ahead and 
raise my taxes if it will bring the deficit down and put the American 
people back to work and get this country going again.'' That's the kind 
of statesmanship we need everywhere in this country.
    Yesterday we began the process of saying no to gridlock, no to 
special interests, no to the spiraling deficit, no to increased 
unemployment, no to the conditions which lead so many of you to work 
harder for lower wages every year. We said yes to a brighter future to 
America, yes to lower deficits, yes to more jobs, yes to higher incomes, 
yes to a future in which we have a real chance to compete and win.
    Things are going in the right direction. Stay with us. Fight with 
us. Help to lift this country up, and believe in its future. And we can 
do it.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:19 p.m. in the courtyard. In his 
remarks, he referred to Edward G. Rendell, Mayor of Philadelphia, and 
Rosemary Greco, president and CEO, CoreStates Bank. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of these remarks.

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