    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 32 (Monday, August 16, 1993)]
    [Pages 1597-1600]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Signing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993

     August 10, 1993

        Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice
    President has given me a very generous introduction and has fairly
    characterized the struggle in which we have been engaged. I might say
    also, for all of you sports fans, he's given a whole new meaning to the
    term ``tie-breaker.'' [Laughter]
        But I think it would really be unfortunate if this event were to
    come and go without recognizing the fact that the people in Congress who
    voted for this plan had to labor under historically difficult
    circumstances. They had to reverse a plan of trickle-down economics in
    which it was the accepted path always to say the right thing but never
    to do it, and in which, if you tried to do the right thing, people would
    say the wrong things about you and cloud the debate with a fog of
    misinformation.
        In this incredible series of events that have unfolded, there were
    many Members of Congress who never appeared on the evening news, whose
    names never appeared in the newspapers simply because of their quiet
    courage and determination to do what they thought was right and to see
    this process through to the end. And I think I would be remiss,
    therefore, if on this occasion I did not ask at least all the sitting
    Members of the United States Congress who are here to stand and to
    receive a round of applause. Would you all please stand? I also want to
    explicitly thank all the many members of the Cabinet and the
    administration who are here who worked so hard on this program, as well
    as the many citizens throughout the country who helped us to lobby it
    through.
        Today we come here for more than a bill signing. We come here to
    begin a new direction for our Nation. We are taking steps necessary and
    long overdue to revive our economy, to renew our American dream, to
    restore confidence in our own ability to take charge of our own affairs.
    This was clearly not an easy fight. When I presented this program to
    Congress, I had hoped for something quite different: I had hoped that it
    would spark a genuine, open, honest, bipartisan national debate about
    the serious choices before us, about the world economy we face as we
    move toward the 21st century, about the problems we have here at home
    and all the people whose lives and potential we lose and what economic
    consequence that has for all the rest of Americans. I had hoped that we
    could discuss whether and to what extent the revival of the competitive
    skills of our work force could raise incomes and generate

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    jobs; how we could both reduce the deficit and increase investment in
    our future; whether we could escape the trap that has afflicted so many
    wealthy countries, that even when their economies are growing now they
    don't seem to be creating jobs; how we could escape the policies of the
    seventies and the eighties which led middle class Americans to work
    longer work weeks for lower pay while they paid more for the essentials
    of life; whether we could bring the power of free enterprise to bear in
    the poor inner cities and rural areas of this country and lift people up
    with the force of the American dream; whether the short-term
    consequences of bringing the deficit down would be more than overweighed
    by the short-term benefits of lower interest rates and the long-term
    benefits of being in control of our economic destiny.
        These are the kinds of things that I wanted to see debated. And to
    be sure, to some extent, we did debate them. But for 5 months the
    American people heard too little about the real debate and too much from
    those who oversimplified and often downright misrepresented the
    questions of tax increases and spending cuts because they had narrow
    economic or political or personal reasons to do so.
        So today, as we sign this landmark legislation, I say again, now we
    can talk about the national interests, how this plan will begin to bring
    the change we need in America, how we can have economic revival and hope
    if this is a beginning and we move forward from here. After all, after
    12 years of the most rapid increase in deficits in our country's
    history, when the national debt went from $1 to $4 trillion in only 12
    years, this is the largest deficit reduction plan in history, with $255
    billion in real enforceable spending cuts in very specific areas, not
    generalized hot air and tomorrow's promises but specific cuts. After 12
    years of trickle-down economics where taxes were lowered on the
    wealthiest Americans, raised on the middle class, hoping that
    investments would be made which would reverse the trends of the last 20
    years, we now have real fairness in the Tax Code with over 80 percent of
    the new tax burden being borne by those who make over $200,000 a year,
    with the middle class asked to pay only $3 a month, and with a tax cut
    to working families with children who make under $27,000 a year. By
    expanding this earned-income tax credit to working families and
    especially to the working poor, this Congress has made history by
    enabling us to say for the first time now, if you work hard and you have
    children in your home and you spend 40 hours a week at work, you can be
    a successful worker and a successful parent, and you will be lifted out
    of poverty.
        Every elected public official in America sometime in the last 10
    years has given someplace between one and a thousand speeches decrying
    the welfare system, extolling the values of work and family. But
    finally, the people who voted yes on this plan put a down payment toward
    ending welfare as we know it by finally doing something to reward work
    and family instead of just talking about it.
        Everybody in this debate talked about small business, and the people
    who opposed this plan said it was bad for small business. But in truth,
    the opposition plan actually increased the burden on small business
    people who took out their own health insurance by taking away their
    deduction for it, while this plan increases by 75 percent the expensing
    allowance for small businesses in ways that will give over 90 percent of
    the small businesses in America a tax cut if they do what they ought to
    do, invest more money in their business. Others talked about it; we did
    it. And we should be proud of it, and we should tell the small business
    community about it.
        Others talked about the importance of small business as a job
    generator. This plan passed a projobs capital gains tax that reduces tax
    rates by 50 percent for people who invest their money in new and small
    businesses and hold those investments for 5 years or more, the most
    dramatic incentive we have ever had to encourage people to take money
    out of their savings and take a chance on the free enterprise sector in
    America in the places where the jobs are being created, in the small
    business sector. That's what this plan does. Instead of talking about
    doing something for small business, this plan actually did it. And all
    of you need to be proud of that.
        The plan offers incentives to Americans to invest to revive the
    homebuilding market; to invest in research and development, some-

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    thing that especially helps high-tech companies; to invest in new plant
    and equipment. Even the biggest companies in America now will be able to
    have tax incentives if they are willing to invest in growing more jobs
    here at home. These are the right ways to cut taxes, my fellow
    Americans, cutting taxes for people because they spent their money in
    growing this economy and putting their fellow Americans to work. And
    that's what this plan does.
        This plan was criticized in some quarters because it did spend some
    new money on some new things. I would argue to you that anybody who
    thinks that all Government spending is the same might just as well say
    all kinds of bread tastes the same. We did not come here to leave our
    judgment and our knowledge about the global economy at the city borders
    of Washington, DC.
        So yes, I plead guilty: We reformed the student loan program to
    lower the interest rates on student loans and make it easier for people
    to take out college loans and to repay them. We did, finally, after 6
    long years of reducing defense spending at rapid rates, at throwing
    people in the street from California to Connecticut, we finally did put
    some more money in here for defense conversion to give those people a
    chance to go back to work in a peacetime economy, to contribute to the
    American dream. We did spend some more money on Head Start and on poor
    pregnant mothers to try to get their children into the world in good
    shape, to try to lower the tax burden on other people and increase their
    productivity. We did spend some money to try to give 6 million more
    children inoculations, because no one can explain to me why the United
    States of America has the third worst immunization record in the Western
    Hemisphere and we're paying a fortune for it.
        This plan has already begun to work. Ever since it was clear that we
    were working to bring down the deficit, and every time we made progress
    along the way, long-term interest rates dropped, enabling millions of
    Americans to refinance their home either to lower their monthly payments
    or to build up their own savings, enabling businesses to refinance their
    loans and, over the long run, lowering the cost of new investment in new
    jobs.
        Because of the leadership of the Speaker of the House, Senator
    Mitchell, Congressman Gephardt, the hard work of the committee chairs,
    Senator Moynihan, Congressman Rostenkowski, Senator Sasser, Congressman
    Sabo, the committee chairs in all the other committees in the Congress,
    and as I said earlier, the simple courage of millions of Americans in
    supporting this plan and the quiet courage of so many Members of
    Congress who literally put their careers on the line, this country has
    begun to take responsibility for itself.
        I say to those Members who took a big chance in voting for this,
    with all the rhetoric that was thrown against them, if you go home and
    look your people in the eye and tell them you were willing to put your
    job on the line so that they can keep their jobs, I think they will
    understand and reward you with reelection.
        This plan is only the beginning. As I said on February 17th and
    would like to say again today as we close, this administration views job
    creation and deficit reduction, expanding international trade and
    providing health care at affordable rates to all Americans, training and
    educating our work force, making our families healthier and our streets
    safer, reforming our welfare system and reinventing our Government not
    as different challenges requiring disparate solutions in different
    coalitions but part of the fabric of reviving the dream that we were all
    raised with.
        We cannot simply say, ``This is a complicated time and we're unequal
    to the challenge. So we'll do this, and 4 or 5 years from now we'll
    worry about that.'' We have to think about what it takes to build the
    fabric of community, to rebuild the fabric of our families, to give our
    children a good shot, and to have sensible economic policies at home and
    with our allies around the world. Toward this end let me say again, in
    the long run we cannot succeed in an endless season of partisan
    bitterness and rancor and bickering. If some of us have to make hard
    choices while others stand aside and hope that the house collapses,
    nothing will in the end get done.
        And so I ask today of the American people and the American people's
    representatives, without regard to your party or philosophy,

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    when the August recess is over, let us join again in the common work of
    American renewal. There is so much to be done that can only be done if
    we're all willing to carry our share of the load. Clearly, that is what
    the American people want us to do.
        In the very first week when the Congress comes back, the Senate will
    have a chance to demonstrate that bipartisan spirit by passing the
    national service plan that the House has already passed and opening up
    the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of young Americans to pay
    their college way by serving their communities and rebuilding a sense of
    community in this country. And then we will move on to the other great
    issues of the day. And move on we must. We cannot stand still.
        I remember every time I do something like this who we're really
    working for: I remember the people that Senator Moynihan and I saw lined
    along the long way from the airport to Hyde Park in New York; the people
    who stood out in 3-degree weather in Chillicothe, Ohio, to visit with me
    about their hopes for America; the young people I saw at Rutgers in New
    Jersey, in New Orleans, and in Boston, so deeply committed to the idea
    of national service because they want to be in a position to give
    something back to their country and to believe that their country can
    work for them again; high school students in Chicago who for the first
    time are dreaming of an affordable college education; and inner-city
    youths I saw at the playground in Los Angeles who believe that there's
    no reason they can't live in a neighborhood that is free of crime and
    full of opportunity. These are the people that we all came here to work
    for. These are the people that we celebrate for today.
        This is a beginning. Let us resolve when this recess is over to come
    back with a new determination to finish the work. And let us again hold
    our hands out to those who were not part of this process and say,
    ``America needs us all. Let us go forward together.''
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:33 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House. H.R. 2264, approved August 10, was assigned Public Law No. 103-
    66.