    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 31 (Monday, August 9, 1993)]
    [Pages 1561-1564]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks and an Exchange With Reporters on the Economic Program

     August 4, 1993

        The President. Thank you very much. Let me just briefly say I had
    the opportunity to meet with the House caucus today. We have been
    informed that several Members who voted no when the bill came up the
    first time for different reasons had decided to vote yes on the bill
    this time. Some of them are here with us today, and others are not. It
    was a very good meeting.
        I told them that for the last couple of months, and even last night
    in speaking to

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    the American people, I felt much as I did when I was a young man in
    school and I belonged to all these little clubs who would try to earn
    money for club events by washing cars. I felt like a lot of what I was
    doing was trying to clean dirt off of windshields so that the American
    people could see out of the windshield again. There has been so much
    misinformation put out about this plan, about who bears the burden of it
    and whether it reduces the deficit, exactly how it's going to be done,
    that a lot of what we have been doing in the last 6 weeks or so was just
    trying to get the facts out. All the evidence is that the more facts we
    get out, the better we do. And so I am encouraged on what has happened
    in the last few days. I'm very hopeful.
        The fact remains that every other plan which has been raised has
    gotten more opposition and less support than the administration's plan.
    Every other one had less fairness and/or less deficit reduction. And now
    the choice is whether we're going to do this, or do nothing and flail
    around for another 60 to 90 days.
        I think it is clear that the Congress will vote to act and to move
    forward and to make this enormous downpayment on solving the deficit
    problem and giving some incentives to the economy to grow. I'm very
    hopeful about it, very optimistic today. And I want to thank the Speaker
    and the leadership and the members of the House caucus for hearing me
    today.
        Mr. Speaker, you may want to say another word or two before we take
    questions. But this was a very, very good meeting this morning.

    [At this point, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley made brief remarks.]

    Economic Program

        Q. Mr. President, what would you say to those economists who say
    that this deal had been so diluted with compromises and deals that it
    would be ineffective?
        The President. I don't believe any economists are saying that. My
    response is, look what happened to interest rates after the speech last
    night and then after the progress we were making yesterday. I mean, the
    interest rates once again were lowered in anticipation of the plan's
    successful passage.
        The economic incentives that were in the House bill are in the final
    conference for job growth. They have been slightly scaled back because
    we reduced the tax burden by over $40 billion and reducing the energy
    tax. And that's another that some of the economists said that we ought
    to do.
        So I think that you've got the same deficit reduction. You've got
    the economic growth incentives. You have real fairness in the Tax Code,
    and you made 90 percent of the small businesses in this country eligible
    for a whole wide range of tax reductions if they invest in their
    businesses. So I think it's a good plan, and I think that they're wrong.
        Q. You're not concerned about the number of deals that have been cut
    to get this through?
        The President. No, absolutely not. Since when has a big piece of
    legislation like this ever moved through the Congress unamended? I mean,
    give me one example of that. Most things of this magnitude, when you
    turn the country around, take years to get done. We put it together in
    just a few months.
        I think that the things that I cared about are there. The plan has
    $500 billion in deficit reductions. There are now more spending cuts
    than taxes. The tax system is very fair, indeed, more progressive than
    it was when I presented it. Now 80 percent of the burden falls on
    couples with incomes above $200,000. There are enormous incentives in
    here for business growth which were not in any of the Republicans'
    plans--a new business capital gains tax; there are research and
    development incentives; we nearly double the expensing for small
    businesses in this country. Then finally, the thing which I think will
    really have a huge difference in terms of our society: The earned-income
    tax credit lifts working families out of poverty. It's a huge incentive
    to leave welfare and go to work. So the big guts of the things that I
    proposed way back in February have survived this whole legislative
    process. And I feel good about it.
        Q. Mr. President, you've apparently padded the margin here on the
    House side. But obviously the really, really close vote is going to come
    on the other end of this building. What are your feelings at this point?
    Does

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    it still come down to that one vote over there? Is there any other
    outlook for you at this point?
        The President. I think it depends upon, obviously, what happens in
    the next couple of days. I think if we carry the House, I think we'll
    carry in the Senate. I don't think the Senate will let this plan go
    down. I don't think they will do that to the country.
        There are two groups of Senators that basically are either declared
    against or leaning against, some who have said forthrightly to me,
    ``This is the right thing for the country, but there's been so much
    misinformation about it, people will never know the real truth, and I
    will never recover politically if I vote for it, even though it's
    good,'' and others who say that ``This is a very good first step, but it
    doesn't do everything that needs to be done. Therefore, I won't vote for
    it.''
        And my argument to the second group is going to be that this bill
    cannot possibly be expected to carry the burden of solving all the
    problems of the last 12 years; that we do have to control entitlement
    spending; we do have to control health care spending. I will be for such
    controls in the context of reforming the health care system, and I still
    think we've got a shot to get a lot of those.
        Also, the spending reductions, for those who say there ought to be
    more spending cuts, I remind them that the House of Representatives has
    already adopted over $10 billion in spending cuts in excess of those in
    a reconciliation bill which the Senate will have a chance to adopt. The
    Vice President's report on reinventing Government is coming up, and the
    health care debate is coming up. There will be further spending
    reductions by this Congress and this administration.
        So I'm going to keep making that argument to them, and I think we'll
    prevail.
        Q. What's it going to take for you to get in the Senate the security
    that you apparently now feel in the House?
        The President. I don't know if that will ever happen. [Laughter] We
    need the votes to win over there, and as I said, I believe that the
    Senate will pass the plan if the House does. I think that there clearly
    is a majority in the Senate who know that this is far better than the
    alternative--there is no other available alternative--and that the worst
    thing this country could do would just be to flail around for 60 to 90
    days, instead of moving on with all the things that are there before us:
    the health care issue, further efforts to deal with the budgetary
    problem.
        Helen Thomas. Mr. President, did you hear Senator Dole's rebuttal,
    and what did you think of it?
        The President. My response to Senator Dole's rebuttal is to wish you
    a happy birthday. [Laughter]
        Ms. Thomas. Oh, no. [Applause] Thank you.
        The President. I would like to respond to a couple of those things.
    First of all, Senator Dole says too many of our budget cuts are in the
    latter half of our plan. My response to that is he has a higher
    percentage of his budget cuts in the last 2 years than we do. That is a
    smokescreen to continue the intransigent Republican position that we
    should not ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of the
    burden, even though they got the tax cuts in the eighties and received
    well over half the economic gains of the eighties.
        Secondly, my response to Senator Dole's claim that this bill imposes
    burdens on people who are no longer living--you heard all that--that
    implies that somehow the Democrats are voting to raise the estate taxes
    on people who have--estate taxes are not imposed on people who have no
    estate, that is, who have not yet died. But that is totally misleading.
    All the Congress did was to extend the estate tax rates imposed back in
    the late eighties. And I haven't checked this this morning, but I
    believe Senator Dole voted for that. I believe that this bill extends
    the estate tax rates that Senator Dole voted for. I believe that. In any
    case, the Congress voted for it. He knows that this bill does not
    somehow increase taxes on citizens after they die. That is totally
    misleading.
        Let me see what else he said. Oh, he said we didn't cut the deficit
    enough. My answer to that is we don't cut it all the way to zero, but we
    will. And we cut the deficit much more than the Dole plan did, and we do
    it specifically. We have a lot more deficit reduction than he did, and
    in his plan he had $66 billion in, quote, unspecified cuts. He

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    wouldn't even say where the tough cuts were coming from.
        Q. Retroactivity is what he----
        The President. Well, the retroactivity, my answer to that is
    twofold. Number one, on the merits, it applies to the same couples with
    incomes above $200,000, individuals with incomes above $150,000 to
    $160,000; that they will be given 3 years without penalty, a subsequent
    3 years to pay the taxes; that all the tax cuts are retroactive and some
    of the tax incentives go back to the middle of 1992, not just to the
    first of '93.
        So those would be my answers to the attacks he made on the program.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:07 a.m. in Statuary Hall at the Capitol.
    A tape was not available for verification of the content of these
    remarks.