[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 30 (Monday, August 2, 1993)]
[Pages 1464-1465]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks and an Exchange With Reporters Prior to a Meeting With 
Midwestern Governors

 July 27, 1993

    Q. Mr. President, do you have any problem with Senator Boren's idea 
for a budget summit?

    The President. Let me make a statement, first of all, about what 
we're here for.

    I want to welcome the Governors from the States afflicted by the 
floods to Washington,

[[Page 1465]]

and I'm very encouraged by the work they've been doing here today. Of 
course, we hope the legislation will pass the House today, and if it 
does then when it moves on to the Senate it is our intention, as I 
indicated when I was in St. Louis, based on Mr. Panetta's figures, to 
ask that the relief package be increased by another $1.1 billion which 
will take us to just slightly above $4 billion. And of course, we're 
still collecting damage estimates. It may get worse because it's still 
going on in some places. But I'm very hopeful that we can push this 
through and work this through. And of course, there are a lot of other 
issues the Governors want to talk about and deal with that we're going 
to try to help them on some. I'm encouraged by that.

    In terms of the other question you asked me, go back to 1990. You 
know, I will say again, that the strongest reaction I got yesterday in 
Chicago with that highly bipartisan crowd was when I said we need to 
make a decision and go on with other things.

    If you look at what happened in 1990, there was this sort of delay. 
If you delay it a couple of months you're going to have less deficit 
reduction, higher interest rates, more fragility and uncertainty in the 
economy, more consumer confidence going down. We have been working on 
this.

    We have other things to do. The American people want us to solve the 
health care crisis, deal with welfare reform, to pass a crime bill. We 
have a whole range of other issues out there. The Congress is strangled 
from doing anything else until we put this budget issue behind us. So 
the time has come to act. We just need to move and go on and almost 
everything else that needs to be done, I hope and believe we'll have 
bipartisan support and we'll meet the needs of this country. Nobody 
wants to reduce the deficit because--the reason it got so bad as it did 
is that there were tough decisions required to turn it around. And I 
think to delay it while we nibble around the edges would be a serious 
error.

Note: The exchange began at 1:54 p.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White 
House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these 
remarks.