[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 27 (Monday, July 12, 1993)]
[Pages 1251-1259]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Town Meeting in Eldridge, Iowa

 July 4, 1993

    The President. Thank you very much. Folks, this is supposed to be 
informal, so I'm going to sit down if you don't mind. That introduction 
you just heard is a good illustration of Clinton's first law of 
politics, which is whenever possible, get somebody you've appointed to 
high office to introduce you. They'll lie about you every time. 
[Laughter]
    I'm glad to be here with your secretary of agriculture, your 
secretary of state, and your Governor, my longtime friend. We served 
together for a long time. And when he got elected Governor, he was 3 
months younger than me. He displaced me from being the youngest 
Governor. Now there are 10 or 12 Governors younger than we are. We've 
hung around too long and worked ourselves into middle age.
    I'm glad to be here with Congressman Jim Leach and with Congressman 
Lane Evans, who's the Congressman from across the river in Illinois. I 
want to say we had some contact with Senator Grassley before I came 
today, and Senator Harkin called me the day before yesterday and gave me 
a long litany of everything I was supposed to be doing. I said, ``Well, 
Tom, I only need to go to Iowa now; been educated, you know.'' 
[Laughter]
    It is true that there wasn't much of a sales job to get me to come 
here. If you could come to Iowa on the Fourth of July or stay in 
Washington and burn up, what would you do? [Laughter] So I'm glad to be 
back here. The last time I was in this part of Iowa was when I was on my 
bus trip. And actually, our bus trip went through almost every place 
that's badly flooded here, starting in northern Missouri and Iowa and 
Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin. And of course, you got some pretty 
substantial damage in South Dakota also.
    I am very glad to be back. I want to thank Secretary Espy for coming 
out here so promptly. I wish I could have come a few days earlier, but 
the legislative and other schedules in Washington just wouldn't permit 
it.
    I do want to say that I appreciate, Dale, what you said about 
Secretary Espy. One reason I asked him to be Secretary of Agriculture is 
that he represented a district in Congress that bordered my State, and I 
wanted to appoint somebody Secretary of Agriculture that actually 
represented farmers and that had seen crops flood and also seen crops 
burn, often on the same land. If you hang around long enough, you see it 
on the same land. And we are trying up there to be responsive and to be 
helpful. And I want to thank all the people here in Iowa and all the 
people throughout this Mississippi River area who have been very 
cooperative with us and helped us.
    I came here mostly to listen to you today, but I want to talk 
about--I've got three or four notes here. I want to just make sure I 
don't forget to say anything. Of the things we already know, we know 
that the damage from this flood is going to be somewhere in the 
neighborhood of a billion dollars. We feel that it is, anyway. I have 
only $100 million right now in my disaster fund under present law. And I 
signed a letter releasing that fund before I came out here. There is 
also a new law which has been passed by the Congress which provides 
disaster payments for 1993. It's got about $297 million in it. It is on 
my

[[Page 1252]]

desk, and I will sign it as soon as I get back. And don't think I'm 
derelict. You're going to get the money. Even if I signed it yesterday, 
it would take a while to get.
    So we're still going to be real short of funds. So I'm going to ask 
Congress on an emergency basis to provide some additional funding, and 
Secretary Espy is going to be working with the rest of the people in the 
executive branch and your Representatives from here to put together 
legislation that will adequately take care of the problems insofar as we 
can under Federal law.
    We are going to ask that the producers here receive the same 
benefits as the people who were affected by Hurricane Andrew and other 
major disasters last year, which is something that the congressional 
delegations and the Governors have asked us to do, and we're going to do 
that. And we'll eliminate the August 1st deadline for disaster filing, 
which is what is in the present law. And we'll present a bill to do 
that. I've already talked to the leadership in the House and the Senate 
on a bipartisan basis from other States, and they don't have any problem 
with doing that. They know that we need to.
    The last thing I'd like to mention before I open it to your comments 
and questions, because you may have some other specific things we can 
do, is that I have asked Secretary Espy to work with the other Federal 
agencies and with the appropriate people in Congress on a long-term 
reform of the crop insurance system. Any farmer who's ever fooled with 
it knows it's a good thing if you've got it, if you've got insured what 
goes wrong, and that's the way it's supposed to be. But it's nowhere 
near what it ought to be. If you don't get your beans planted in the 
first place, for example, you can't get any insurance on it, even if you 
pay and pay for years. That's a big issue. I come from a State that has 
not near as much corn as Iowa, just a little bit of corn, but a whole 
bunch of soybeans. It is not a program crop, and if you take out crop 
insurance against it and then it gets wet, you can't plant it at all. 
Under the present system you can't recover it. It's just not a very good 
or a comprehensive or appropriate system in my opinion. So we're going 
to try to see if we can't get some reforms up that people will agree to.
    And there are some other actions that Secretary Espy can take that 
he may want to talk about or you may want to ask about. But these are 
the specific things we think we can do. I hope it will be enough so that 
we don't lose a lot of farmers who are operating on the margins. I went 
through that whole thing in the 1980's when I was a Governor of a big 
farm State, and every other day I had a friend who was dropping out of 
farming. And we're going to do what we can to move as quickly and as 
aggressively as we can. I hope it will help.
    I think it's real, real important to get this long-term reform of 
the crop insurance system and work it out so that people can access it, 
and then if they got it, it amounts to something when they suffer a 
loss. So we're going to do what we can to get that done.
    I thank you for spending part of your Fourth of July with me. I know 
you could be out shooting fireworks, and I'm sorry about all the water. 
We had a whole lot of my State under water 3 or 4 years ago when the 
Arkansas River flooded, and we had towns under water, house under water 
like what I saw today, a town and an awful lot of farmland. I know what 
you're going through. I'm very sorry. I hope this will help, and I 
assure you we'll be very diligent in pushing to get this action through 
Congress. If you have any other ideas or suggestions we would be glad to 
have them.
    And thank you again, Governor. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, 
Madam Secretary. Congressman Leach, I'm glad to be in your district and 
see you looking so hale and hearty. And thank you all very much for 
having us.

[At this point, a participant expressed appreciation for the President's 
visit and discussed the drought of 1988 and the early frost of 1991.]

    The President. Can I ask just one fact question before we start, 
just for my interest because we're a little bit further north than my 
home State. Can you plant soybeans this late here?
    Q. This is the cutoff.
    The President. You mean 3 weeks from now, if the land dries off, 
it's too late to plant, isn't it?

[[Page 1253]]

    Q. Right. Some people have planted as late as the Fourth of July and 
get a half a crop. At this point it's not worth the risk of planting a 
crop. The cost you have of putting it in the ground, you're not going to 
recover that. So at this point, it's just too late, I think, in the 
State of Iowa to plant soybeans. There was some corn ground that was 
switched to soybeans, but it's too late to do that now, too.
    Q. Thank you, Mr. President, for your interest in agriculture. I 
really appreciate it. And my question to you is, will you require 
repayment of the advance deficiency payments even though the fellow 
didn't get the corn planted? I would think that would be a very great 
help to those that didn't get planted to not have that burden of 
repayment.
    The President. I think I'll let Secretary Espy answer that. We 
talked about that very thing on the airplane when we were about to land, 
and we saw how much land was under water. It was the first thing that 
came up when we were looking at the damage.
    Secretary Espy. This is something that we've been looking at a lot 
lately, as you might imagine. And since I returned to Washington from 
Iowa I've reviewed the law. And any outright waiver of the advanced 
deficiency payment that you've already gotten is going to be really, 
really difficult to do, certainly if you're not in the program.
    But what we want to do is to extend the signing date for program 
crops, and we'll probably do it until the end of the month, July 31st, 
so that you can come in and declare your intent to plant another crop, 
particularly corn. Then you will fall in the 0-92, and then you could 
keep your advance deficiency payment.
    For those farmers that already have the payment, we can't waive it 
outright, but we'll certainly work with you to make sure we stretch out 
the payment, or we can go to Congress to ask that we have fallback 
authority to do some other things.
    The President. Under the law, just to flat out do it, we don't have 
the authority right now. So you either have to change the law or do what 
Mike said in terms of putting back the filing date and having people 
come in and make a declaration.

[A participant expressed appreciation for the President's visit and 
discussed other conditions adversely affecting the crop yield, the 
special stress the flood places on young farmers, and the possibility of 
an assessment fee on commodities traded to be set aside for disaster 
assistance.]

    The President. You know, there's another issue that you alluded to 
there that I don't have an answer to, but I worked on it quite a lot 
when I was a Governor, and that is the whole question of the small 
number of young farmers, unless there are just young farmers that farm 
their parents' land, and it's all paid for, and they've got their debt 
paid down. The average age of a farmer is pushing 60, just on the near 
side of 60. That looks younger to me all the time--[laughter]--but still 
it doesn't quite qualify as young.
    We spent a lot of time when I was a Governor trying to work out 
financing operations and some other things for first-time farmers. 
Secretary Espy and I spent a good deal of time talking about that. Maybe 
this is not a discussion for tonight because we're all here worried 
about the floods, but if you had any specific ideas about kinds of 
initiatives we might undertake or partnerships for the States for first-
time farmers to get young people in or help them get through those first 
rough years if they've got some accumulated mortgage or other debt, I'd 
really like to know it, because I think it's a pretty serious social 
problem for this country to have the average age of farmers going up 
every year and almost no young farmers coming in.
    Governor Terry Branstad. Mr. President, there is one thing that 
can--we have a program called the Family Farm Beginning Farm Loan 
Program which right now we're waiting for an extension--that 
authorization. It's financed through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. And 
we've used it. The secretary of agriculture administers it. I have to 
sign off on each of those loans. It's been very successful in the State 
of Iowa and if that could be extended and made permanent, I know under 
consideration in the Congress, and you've been supportive of it. We 
think that if this could be made permanent, not just extended for a year 
or so, could be really helpful because right now we have several hundred 
of those loans, I think, that are wait- 

[[Page 1254]]

ing to be approved. The banks already approved them, but the Congress 
has to extend the law; right now it's expired. So, that's something that 
could be done that we'd really appreciate.
    The President. That whole tax-exempt bond law is now part of the 
discussion now being held on the budget, and I am strongly in favor of 
extending it. We had a program like that at home. It works, and I'm 
strong for it. I think it will be extended.
    Governor Branstad. It could be made permanent as opposed to extended 
for a year or so.
    The President. I think it will be extended. We're trying to make it 
permanent, and I hope we can do it.
  
[A participant discussed the loss of crops that had not yet been planted 
and the requirement that a certain percent of any county must be damaged 
before the disaster assistance program provides assistance. Secretary 
Espy then advocated reform of the crop insurance program.]

    The President. Let me just mention one other thing. You asked a 
question about the county loss thing. That's always been in the Federal 
law, at least as long as I've been fooling with it. And under normal 
circumstances it's a pretty good rule of thumb, you know, for example, 
if there's, I don't know, a tornado or heavy rains that are uniform 
across the State. But when you have something that comes directly out of 
the flooding of a river like this, it's possible, depending on the size 
and shape of the county, that people could be wiped out and could be 
living just across the county line and their county not trigger.
    So what I think we're going to have to do on that--I can't promise, 
but I'm aware of it because I've been through it before--what we're 
going to do is wait until all the reports come in, and we can see what 
the shape of the damage is. And if we've got substantial numbers of 
people who are really wiped out who are in counties where they don't 
have the 35 percent county loss for just pure geographical fluke, then 
we need to make some provisions for that, and I think we'll be able to.
    Q. We need to have a crop insurance program with a catastrophic 
feature to it, and we don't have that now.
    Q. I would like to say one thing. I'm from Illinois just across the 
way here, but I'm not from Iowa, but it's been bad over there, too.
    Q. Mr. President, I'm 23 years old, and this is my first year of 
farming. I had been planning on starting, and I grew up on a farm, but 
everything I've done I've done myself. And I'm kind of wondering where 
the money's coming from that you're planning on helping everybody with.
    The President. Where's the money coming from, the $850 million?
    Q. Exactly.
    The President. Well, I don't think we'll have any trouble getting it 
because this year we're way below the spending targets established by 
the Congress before I became President. We've got the deficit way down; 
it's much lower than they thought it was going to be. Our interest 
payments are much lower because interest payments are down. And I think 
the Congress will--they'll do one of two things: They'll either 
appropriate it as an extra expense, or they'll just cut the money out of 
somewhere else and pay it.
    Everything we've done so far since I've been there, we've just cut 
something else and put it into some supplemental bill, which is what we 
did, for example, to add another 200,000 summer jobs this summer.
    So they'll either find something else to cut and pay for it, or they 
may, because it's a genuine one-time emergency, just appropriate the 
money since we're well under the spending limits approved by the 
previous Congress.
    Q. In my opinion, what would help us out now and in the future would 
be not this new tax. We're taxed enough the way it is right now. We only 
get 50 cents on the dollar. By the time we spend it, I would just as 
soon be able to spend my money the way I want to spend it.
    The President. You won't have to worry about this causing taxes 
because it's a tiny fraction of a huge Federal budget anyway.
    Q. The whole United States is getting taxed on this. What's the 
percentage of the United States population is farmers?

[[Page 1255]]

    The President. Three percent, but 100 percent of them eat.
    Q. Yes, and 100 percent of them are going to get taxed, too. I would 
just as soon that you not tax me as a farmer, and I would just as soon 
if you didn't raise taxes on the rest of the Nation, too.
    The President. Well, if we had a decent crop insurance program, we 
wouldn't have to worry about disaster payments. In other words, if we 
had one that worked, if there was a system of crop insurance that 
worked, we wouldn't have to worry about it.
    Q. As a farmer we've got enough to gamble on with the weather, let 
alone gambling on our Government raising taxes. And I remember somebody 
saying no new taxes about 6 months ago, I believe.
    The President. Well, you didn't hear me say no new taxes. I've 
promised to raise taxes on the wealthy because their incomes were 
produced----
    Q. I'm far from wealthy, Mr. President.
    The President. Well, if your income is under $30,000, you'll 
probably get a tax cut under my plan. If it's between $30,000 and 
$100,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will cost you 
a very little amount of money.
    Q. Thirty thousand is a wealthy man then?
    The President. No, that's not what I said. But when I took office, 
sir--let's have a political debate. I didn't think we were going to talk 
about this, but I'd be more than happy to. Let me tell you something. 
After the election--not during the election when they had all the 
figures--the previous government announced after the election that the 
deficit was going to be $165 billion bigger than they said before the 
election. We just discovered we're going to have $50 billion more in 
deficit. This is just for 4 years, not the whole 5-year period.
    So my choice was pretty simple. I could ignore that, or I could ask 
middle class people between $30,000 and $100,000 to pay a modest 
contribution to the deficit, get almost all the money from people above 
$100,000, and cut spending by as much as we would raise in taxes, reduce 
the deficit $500 million, and bring interest rates down.
    Let me finish. You've started to talk so you're going to listen to 
me now. [Laughter] Since I became President we dropped long-term 
interest rates a point; they're at their lowest rate in 20 years, only 
because there's finally a Government in Washington trying to bring this 
deficit down. Millions of Americans have refinanced their homes since 
January, and they've saved more money in one year than they're going to 
pay in 5 years by far if this small fuel tax passes that the Congress 
has approved, by far.
    The people whose taxes were raised substantially are people whose 
taxes were lower in the 1980's while taxes on the middle class were 
raised. And for every dollar that the taxes were raised, even on the 
wealthy, we cut spending. We have cut everything in the Federal 
Government. We have a 5-year hard freeze on all domestic spending which 
includes the increases we're putting into Head Start, job training, and 
new technologies. We have slashed spending. We have raised 74 percent of 
the taxes on people with incomes above $100,000, and we held harmless 
everybody below $30,000.
    I think it's a fair deal. And not only that, if it gets the interest 
rates down, the country will get more money out of it than they'll pay 
in taxes. Even the people who don't agree with me admit, right in the 
Wall Street Journal, if we keep interest rates down this low, it will 
put $100 billion a year back in the pockets of ordinary Americans to 
refinance their homes, their business loans, their farm loans, their 
consumer loans, their car loans, their college loans. And it's because 
we have let the deficit get out of hand and we're bringing it down. 
We've got interest rates down. We can turn the country around. I think 
it is a fair plan. And you may believe you're taxed to death, but our 
taxes are lower than all of our competitors. And now our interest rates 
are, too, because we're finally doing something about the deficit.
    I might say--all the people who talk about how terrible this was--we 
just had a hearing in the Senate last week, and it was a straight party 
line vote voting this bill out of the Senate Finance Committee. But all 
those people that said the issue was spending in the Senate Finance 
Committee, you know how many amendments the other side offered to cut 
spending--they said, you know, ``It's spending, stupid. It's not taxes. 
It's spending''--

[[Page 1256]]

zero. Not one, not one amendment, because I had taken all these 
politically tough spending cuts. We slashed education, slashed veterans, 
slashed--we cut everything in the world in a wide budget.

    And I just think it was worth it to get the deficit down. If you 
don't believe that you should have any tax increase at all, even a very 
modest one, to reduce the deficit, you're entitled to that opinion. But 
I think you'll make more money from lower interest rates than you'll pay 
in higher taxes. And I think it's fair.

    Q. Not if I don't borrow money. I've got my money saved from earning 
it, and I wish the Government could----

    The President. Most 22-year-olds don't have that kind of money. 
Lucky you. I'm proud of you.

[A participant thanked the President for visiting and advocated action 
during the G-7 summit to improve market access overseas. He also stated 
that commodity organizations across the country would support the 
NAFTA.]

    The President. Thank you. Yes, give him a hand.

    If I might, let me just say one thing, to go back to the comment the 
young man who just spoke made about the taxes. If everybody in this 
country who wanted to work had a job and we had free and open markets in 
the world, then we could lower taxes and reduce the deficit. That's the 
real truth. The real answer to this whole issue is how to get growth 
back into the economy. That is the ultimate answer. It's not to have the 
argument he and I just had. But the argument is how can you have more 
people working and have more markets open.

    And if I might just make two comments on that. Since 1987, about 
two-thirds of the new jobs generated in the American economy have come 
from expanded trade. That's how you add jobs in a world where you're 
already a wealthy country and most people are working. I'm glad to hear 
you say what you did about the North American Free Trade Agreement. I 
believe that most of the fears the American people have are not well-
founded about that. There are some problems with it. We're trying to get 
side agreements on labor standards and the environment to make sure the 
Mexican Government strengthens those things. But believe me, folks, 
anybody who wants to move a plant to Mexico and work people for low 
wages and export products back in here, they can do that today. In other 
words, if we don't hit a lick at this NAFTA deal, everything that people 
are worried about with NAFTA can happen today.

    But before Mr. Salinas became President of Mexico, we had a $5 
billion trade deficit with Mexico. Today, we have a $6 billion trade 
surplus. Last month Mexico replaced Japan as the second biggest 
purchaser of our industrial products. And you know what it does for you 
folks here and the kinds of crops you raise. It's a good deal.

    So we're going to try to pass it. The people who are against it are 
genuine and passionate, and they represent folks just like you who work 
hard, play by the rules, and are getting the shaft and are scared to 
death and are afraid this will make it worse. But I honestly believe it 
will make it better. If I didn't think it would be more incomes and more 
jobs and better for the farmers, I wouldn't do it.

    And I assure you, when I go to Japan, I'll carry the message you 
sent me with.

[Another participant supported improved market access through NAFTA and 
the GATT.]

    Q. Thank you for coming. My question is have you given any 
consideration to possibly reopening the farmer reserve? The decision not 
to enter that was made when everybody thought they were going to get a 
big crop, and some of the farmers might want to reconsider that decision 
at this time.

    Secretary Espy. Well, we've already opened the farmers' own reserve, 
as you know. We took it to the highest applicable ceiling. Now that we 
have problems here, we'll consider reopening it for a brief period. We 
will.

[A participant discussed the need for adequate drainage of farmland as 
part of the effort to rebuild the infrastructure of the coun- 

[[Page 1257]]

try. He also indicated that efforts to save wetlands and ducks had gone 
too far. He also discussed the issue of foreclosure resulting from 
inadequate drainage.]

    The President. I don't know--Iowa--is this thing on? I don't know 
what to say. Where I come from, we grow more rice than anybody else in 
the country. We're kind of interested in that market access you're 
talking about. And the rice land floods anyway. So our ducks don't give 
us that kind of trouble. I never knew I was supposed to be as hard on 
ducks. I may have to reassess my position on this. I'm not kidding. I 
mean, I'm really not. Where I come from it's a big deal, but it's not a 
problem because the rice land's flooded anyway at duck season.

    You want to say anything about the other issue?

[Secretary Espy discussed farm legislation planned for 1995. He 
announced that based upon the Presidential emergency declaration farmers 
would be allowed to modify their conserving use acreage and stated that 
farm foreclosures not presently under purview of the courts would be 
suspended pending review. Following his remarks, a participant asked if 
the farm legislation planned for 1995 would provide for increased farm 
subsidies which would allow farmers a profit margin.]

    The President. If I could just--Mike might want to say something 
about that, but if I could comment on that, just make two points. First 
of all, on the disaster issue, we're either going to have to have an 
adequate, reliable, comprehensive disaster program or a decent crop 
insurance program that works. And if we had one, wouldn't need the 
other.

    On the question of supports, I can tell you again, the last two farm 
bills I went through as the Governor, with my farmers on the receiving 
end of them. As you know because you're a farmer, we had a 20 percent 
unilateral cut in farm supports in the '90 farm bill. So American 
farmers have really done their part to reach out to our competitors 
overseas and ask them to open their markets and stop their supports.

    I think it's fair to say that the '95 farm bill, at least from my 
point of view, since I'm in a different position now, my attitude about 
it is going to be determined by a couple of things, one of which is, 
what are these other countries doing? That is, what's it going to take 
for our people to make a decent living? And if other countries make an 
appropriate reduction so we got a fair chance to compete in a market 
system, well, that's one thing. If they don't, then I think we're going 
to have to take a completely different look at this '95 farm bill about 
how it's structured. And I think it's fair to say it's up in the air 
now, and it depends on what happens and what our competitors do. But I'm 
going to be very sensitive to people like you because, you know, there's 
a limit below which we ought not to go in terms of how many farmers 
we've got in this country as long as we're the most productive in the 
world. It's just crazy to stay on that trend.

[A participant suggested that the problems of fuel availability and 
pollution could be effectively addressed by use of ethanol.]

    The President. I agree with that. Let Mike talk a little about what 
we're doing.

[Secretary Espy indicated that the USDA strongly supported the use of 
ethanol as a viable alternative resource.]

    The President. You know, if I might say, when that whole energy tax 
issue was being debated, we recommended that ethanol be exempt. And then 
we had an alternative that was effectively going to just take the tax 
out of the production sector, out of agriculture and industry 
altogether. But the Senate decided that rather than do that, they'd go 
to some more broad-based fuel tax. But if they do it in a way that's 
consistent with State law, it's okay for the farmers, I think.

[Secretary Espy indicated that during the budget process the 
administration had supported an exemption for ethanol production in the 
energy tax.]

    The President. Can we take one more question?

[Governor Branstad indicated that he had testified on behalf of a 
coalition of Governors about ethanol before the Environmental Protection 
Agency and expressed his concern

[[Page 1258]]

about what position EPA would take concerning ethanol. He requested that 
the President watch the issue and ensure that ethanol production had an 
opportunity to compete.]

    The President. Yeah, I've noticed them doing that. [Laughter] Go 
ahead.

    Q.  President Clinton, I'm a local small businessman and employ 
approximately 30 people. And just to let you shift gears for a second 
here, can you or would you please tell me something that can alleviate 
my concerns about the upcoming striker bill. I'm concerned that it will 
be detrimental not only to the small businessmen but to the economy in 
general, which again is going to directly affect the farmer.

    The President. Well, you know that I have expressed my support for 
the bill, and I knew you knew that or you wouldn't have asked the 
question. I don't have any idea of whether it can pass the Senate or 
whether it will at this time.

    Here is the problem. Let's just talk about the problem. For many 
years the Federal law was that strikers could not be permanently 
replaced if they went on strike once a group voted to unionize, if the 
allegation behind the strike was that there had been an unfair labor 
practice. But if it was just an economic strike, that is, if the 
strikers say, ``We ought to be getting a better deal than we're getting, 
and we're fighting over this contract,'' that they could be permanently 
replaced. That gave the management of unionized firms a little more 
leverage in dealing with strikes where the argument was wages and 
benefits instead of, ``They did something wrong to us.''

    And it worked pretty well until the 1980's when the economy became 
more global and there was more pressure to keep down wages and benefits 
and when the public mood became decidedly more antiunion in the United 
States. The reason it worked pretty well is management had the right to 
do that under a court decision, but they never did it. I mean, it was 
unheard of. It never happened. For decades no strikes were just broken 
and people were run off on that account.

    Then in the 1980's it started to happen with some significant 
frequency, and that's what led to the pressure for the striker 
replacement bill. There was almost a compromise adopted in the--and let 
me just say that this gentleman's question is related to something else. 
Very few small businesses in America are unionized. A lot of small 
businesses believe that maybe they'd be more of a target for a union if 
people thought they could strike over wages and benefits. I personally 
doubt that very much because of the relationships people have with their 
employees in small business. But that's really the fear, I think, behind 
your question.

    But where it is now is that it's passed the House. They don't have 
the votes in the Senate yet, and we're talking about whether they can 
get some sort of compromise to deal with the balance issue that I talked 
about. The people who are for it in the Congress--I don't mean everybody 
that's supporting it, but the people who are for it in the Congress have 
no interest in trying to make it either easier or harder than it is 
right now for people to organize themselves into unions. The question is 
whether that once the workers vote to join a union, the bargaining 
process plays out in a fair and balanced way.

    And so I think there will be a lot of debate in the next few weeks 
about whether some compromise along the lines of what they were talking 
about last time be passed to alleviate some of the fears that you've 
expressed and still deal with the balance question that came up in the 
eighties.

    Governor Branstad. Mr. President, that will be the last question. We 
know that you have to get on to California and on to Japan yet in the 
next day or two. We certainly appreciate you, Mr. President, and you, 
Mr. Secretary, coming to Iowa this evening and showing your frankness 
and both of you showing that you are very farmer friendly. And so we 
appreciate that, and of course the crowd certainly appreciates that 
opportunity. We had some very frank questions, some very frank answers 
this evening, and I think that it was very meaningful. And I think that 
from this as you go back to Washington you will have a better 
understanding and can serve the people even better and keep on serving 
the people as you have in the past. And thank you.

[[Page 1259]]

    The President. Thank you very much for what you said. I'd like to 
say one thing in closing if I might. First, I have very much enjoyed 
being here, and I appreciate your taking some of your family time away 
on the Fourth of July to come out and visit about these farm issues.
    Second thing I'd like to say is I really wish I had more time to do 
a little town meeting about the larger economic issues like the one the 
young man raised about the tax issue.
    This is a very difficult time for this country. And a lot of the 
decisions that I have to make as President are not simple or easy. 
Before I became President I never raised any taxes from anybody to 
balance a budget or reduce a debt. I lived in a State that had a 
balanced budget law that made my chief budget officer a criminal if he 
let 3 months go by where spending outstripped revenues and where I 
literally had the power to cut spending once a week if I wanted to, to 
keep the budget in balance. And we did what we did while having one of 
the fifth lowest tax burdens in the country as a percentage of income. 
So this whole experience dealing with this deficit has been very painful 
to me. And I guess we split the difference, he and I did, on what we 
said.
    When I was running for President I said that I thought we ought to 
raise some taxes to pay the deficit down on upper income people but that 
we shouldn't raise taxes on the middle class, and I meant it. When the 
deficit got written up $165 billion, the choice I had was to take the 
politically difficult decision in the short run to ask for a modest 
contribution from middle class folks, cut as much as I could in spending 
without really getting into hurting older people on Medicare or 
essential investments in education, and take three-quarters of the money 
from the top 6 percent of the income earners in the country, or stick 
with literally what I talked about in the campaign and risk not being 
able to do enough to really get interest rates down and try to get the 
economy going again.
    It's a very tough call. It is not an easy call. But as you will see 
when you read in the papers about this trip I'm about to take to Japan, 
as tough a shape as we're in, we're doing better than Europe is. They're 
having negative growth. Japan's got the slowest growth they've had in 40 
years. And all these people have been after us for 10 years to get our 
deficit down. They said, ``If you'll get your deficit down, we'll do 
some things.'' And together we can grow the world economy.
    So I'm doing the best I can, believe me. You may think I'm wrong, 
and maybe time will prove me wrong, but I'm trying to make the best 
decision I can to create jobs and incomes for the American people so 
that we come out ahead on this deal, not behind. It is a complicated, 
difficult time that the goal ought to be to ask every question in terms 
of: Is it good for jobs? Is it good for incomes? Will it help the 
economy to grow? Will it help people to have security and health care 
and educating their children and to make this a stronger and better 
country?
    And on this, the Fourth of July, we're always going to have our 
partisan and philosophical differences, and that's what makes this 
country wonderful. But if we can always keep that goal in mind, then 
when we differ, at least we'll be arguing about the right things.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. at the Schneckloth farm. In his 
remarks, he referred to Iowa secretary of agriculture Dale M. Cochran 
and Iowa secretary of state Elaine Baxter. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.