Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29 Issue 40 (Monday, October 11, 1993)

[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 40 (Monday, October 11, 1993)]
[Pages 1982-1992]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the AFL-CIO Convention in San Francisco, California

October 4, 1993

Thank you very much. President Kirkland, distinguished platform
guests, and to the men and women of the American labor movement, let me
tell you first I am glad to be here. I feel like I'm home, and I hope
you feel like you have a home in Washington.
For most of the 20th century the union movement in America has
represented the effort to make sure that people who worked hard and
played by the rules were treated fairly, had a chance to become middle
class citizens, raise middle class kids, and give their children a
chance to have a better life than they did. You have worked for that.
You have done that.
For too long, in the face of deep and profound problems engulfing
all the world's advanced nations, you have been subjected to a political
climate in which you were asked to bear the blame for forces you did not
create, many times when you were trying to make the situation better. I
became President in part because I wanted a new partnership for the
labor movement in America.
Before I get into the remarks that I came here to make about all of
our challenges at home and the economic challenges facing us, I have to
make a few remarks this morning about developments in the world in the
last 48 hours.
The labor movement has been active, particularly in the last few
years with the end of the cold war, in the effort to promote democracy
abroad, to guarantee the right of people freely to join their own
unions, and to work for freedom within their own countries. In that
context most of you, I know, have strongly supported and looked with
great favor on the movement toward democracy in Russia.
The United States continues to stand firm in its support of
President Yeltsin because he is Russia's democratically elected leader.
We very much regret the loss of life in Moscow, but it is clear that the
opposition forces started the conflict and that President Yeltsin had no
other alternative than to try to restore order. It appears as of this
moment that that has been done. I have as of this moment absolutely no
reason to doubt the personal commitment that Boris Yeltsin made to let
the Russian people decide their own future, to secure a new Constitution
with democratic values and democratic processes, to have a new
legislative branch elected with democratic elections, and to subject
himself, yet again, to a democratic vote of the people. That is all that
we can ask.
I think also, most of you know that in a military action yesterday,
the United States sustained the loss of some young American soldiers in
Somalia. I deeply regret the loss of their lives. They are working to
ensure that anarchy and starvation do not return to a nation in which
over 300,000 people have lost their lives, many of them children, before
the United States led the U.N. mission there, starting late last year. I
want to offer my profound condolences to the families of the United
States Army personnel who died there. They were acting in the best
spirit of America.
As you know, the United States has long had plans to withdraw from
Somalia and leave it to others in the United Nations to pursue the
common objectives. I urged the United Nations and the Secretary-General
in my speech at the United Nations a few days ago to start a political
process so that the country could be turned back over to Somalis who
would not permit the kind of horrible bloodshed and devastation to
reoccur. And I hope and pray that that will happen. In the meanwhile,
you may be sure that we will do whatever is necessary to protect our own

[[Page 1983]]

forces in Somalia and to complete our mission there.
From the struggle against communism in Eastern Europe to the
struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the union movement in
America has always answered the challenges of our time. It must be a
source of great pride to you to see these elections unfold, to see the
remarkable movement toward a genuine multiracial society within a
democratic framework in South Africa. It must, likewise, be a source of
continuing frustration to you to see that even as the ideas and the
values that you have espoused now for decades are being embraced around
the world, here in our country and in virtually every other wealthy
country in the world, middle class workers are under assault from global
economic forces that seem beyond the reach of virtually any government
policy.
We now know that every wealthy country in the world is having
trouble creating jobs. We now know that in the last several years,
inequality of income got worse in every major country. We know that we
had more growing inequality in America than anyplace else because we
actually embraced it. I mean, the whole idea of trickle-down economics
was to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, raise taxes on the middle
class, let the deficit balloon, and hope that the investment from the
wealthy would somehow expand opportunity to everybody else.
We know that didn't work, and it made the situation worse. It left
us with a $4 trillion debt. It left us with a deficit of over $300
billion a year. It left us with a legacy of weakened opportunities for
workers in the workplace, too little investment, a paralyzed budget, and
no strategy to compete and win in the global economy, and more
inequality in America than any of the other wealthy countries. But we
also know that the same problems we have are now being found in Germany,
in Japan, in all of Europe, in the other advanced nations.
So we have to face the honest fact that we are facing unprecedented
challenges in our own midst to the very way of life that the labor
movement has fought so hard to guarantee for others around the world for
decades. And therefore, it is important that we think through these
issues, that we take positions on them, that we agree and that we
disagree in the spirit of honest searching for what the real nature of
this world is we're living in and where we are going.
The most important thing to me today is that you know that this
administration shares your values and your hopes and your dreams and the
interest of your children, and that together--[applause]--and that I
believe together we can work our way through this very difficult and
challenging time, recognizing that no one fully understands the
dimensions of the age in which we live and exactly how we are going to
recreate opportunity for all Americans who are willing to do what it
takes to be worthy of it.
The labor movement, historically, has always been on the cutting
edge of change and the drive to empower workers and give them more
dignity on the job and in their lives. Almost a half a century ago, at
the end of World War II, labor helped to change America and the world.
At home and abroad, labor helped to create a generation of prosperity
and to create the broad middle class that we all cherish so much today.
Now we have to do it again. We're at a time of change that I am
convinced is as dramatic as the dawning of the Industrial Age. We can no
longer tell our sons and daughters--we know this now--that they will
enter a job at the age of 18 or 21, enjoy secure paychecks and health
benefits and retirement benefits for the rest of their working lives and
retire from the same job with the same company at the age of 65 or 62.
Our changing economy tells us now that the average 18-year-old will
change work seven times in a lifetime even if they stay with the same
company and certainly if they change; that when people lose their jobs
now, they really aren't on unemployment, they're looking for
reemployment; that most unemployment today is not like it used to be:
When people got unemployed for decades, it was because there was a
temporary downturn in the economy, and when the economy turned up again,
most people who were unemployed were hired back by their old employer.
Today, most people who are unemployed eventually get hired back usually
by a different employer for a different job and unless we are very good
at what we do for

[[Page 1984]]

them, often at lower wages and less benefits. So it is clear that what
we need is not an unemployment system but a reemployment system in
recognition of the way the world works today.
We know, too, that most American working people are working harder
than they ever have in their lives; that the average work week is longer
today than it was 20 years ago; that real hourly wages adjusted for
inflation peaked in 1973, and so most people are working harder for the
same or lower real wages than they were making 20 years ago.
We know that in the eighties there was a dramatic restructuring of
manufacturing; that being followed in the nineties with a dramatic
restructuring of the service industries. We know that for the last 12
years, in every single year, the Fortune 500 companies lowered
employment in the United States in six figures, and that in the years
where we have gained jobs, they've come primarily from starting new
businesses and from companies with between, say, 500 and 1,000 workers
expanding, as the whole nature of this economy changes.
We know that the cost of health care has increased so much that
millions of American workers who kept their jobs never got a pay raise
because all the increased money went to pay more for the same health
care. We know that some of our most powerful industrial engines,
especially in industries like autos and steel have shown breathtaking
increases in productivity with deep changes in the work force supported
by the labor movement, and still are having trouble competing in the
world, in part, because their health costs may be as much as a dime on
the dollar more than all of their competitors.
We know, as I said at the beginning, that all the wealthy countries
in the world are now having trouble creating jobs. If you look at
France, for example, in the late 1980's, they actually had an economy
that grew more rapidly than Germany's, and yet their unemployment rate
never went below 9.5 percent.
So what are we to do? It seems to me that we clearly have to make
some changes in the way we look at the world and the way we approach the
world. And in order to make those changes, we have to ask ourselves,
what do we have to do to make the American people secure enough to make
the changes? One of the things that has really bothered me in the late,
latter stages of this era that we're moving out of is that so few people
have been so little concerned about rampant insecurity among ordinary
American middle class citizens. It is impossible for people in their
personal lives to make necessary changes if they are wildly insecure.
You think about that in your own life. You think about a personal
challenge you faced, a challenge your family has faced. The same thing
is true in the workplace. The same thing is true of a community. The
same thing is true of a team. The same thing is true of our country. We
have to struggle to redefine a new balance between security and change
in this country because if we're not secure, we won't change, and if we
don't change, we'll get more insecure, because the circumstances of the
world will continue to grind us down.
And that's what makes this such a difficult time, because we have to
rethink so many things at once. I ran for President because I was tired
of 20 years of declining living standards, of 12 years of trickle-down
economics and antiworker policies, and rhetoric that blamed people who
are working harder for the problems that others did not respond to, and
because I believe that we needed a new partnership in America, a new
sense of community, not just business and labor and government but also
people without regard to their color or their region or anything else. I
thought we didn't have anybody to waste, and it looks to me like we were
wasting a lot of people and that we needed to put together. I thought
the country was going in the wrong direction, and we should turn it
around. But I was then and am now under no illusions that we could do it
overnight or that I could do it, unless we did it together.
The beginning of the security necessary to change, I think, is in
having a Government that is plainly on the side of working Americans. I
believe that any of your leaders who work with this administration will
tell you that we are replacing a Government that for years worked labor
over, with a Government that works with labor. We have a Secretary of
Labor in Bob Reich who understands that, at a time when money and
management can

[[Page 1985]]

travel across the globe in a microsecond, our prosperity depends more
than anything else on the skills and the strengths of our working
people. No one can take that away from us. And our people are still our
most important asset, even more than they were 20 years ago.
We have nominated a Chair of the National Labor Relations Board in
Bill Gould, and a new member, Peggy Browning, who believe in collective
bargaining. We have a Director of the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration in Joseph Dear who comes from the labor movement and
believes that workers should be protected in the workplace. We have two
people in executive positions in the Labor Department in Joyce Miller
and Jack Otero who were on your executive council. We have two people in
the SEIU in executive positions in Karen Nussbaum and Jerry Polas who
are leading us to make progress.
This administration rescinded President Reagan's order banning all
reemployment of PATCO workers forever. And we rescinded President Bush's
orders with regard to Government-funded contracting and one-sided
information given to workers in the workplace. And this week I will sign
the Hatch Act Reform Act to give Government employees political rights
they have been denied for too long.
One week ago yesterday, on a Sunday morning, I came in from my early
morning run, and I turned to my right as I walked into the White House,
and I saw a family standing there, a father, a mother, and three
daughters, one of whom was in a wheelchair. And the person who was with
them who worked for me said, ``Mr. President, this little girl has got
terminal cancer, and she was asked by the Make A Wish Foundation what
she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to come to the White House and
visit you. So we're giving her a special tour.''
So I went over, and I shook hands with them and apologized for my
condition and told them I'd get cleaned up and come back, and we'd take
a picture. And a few minutes later I showed up, looking more like my
job. And I visited with this wonderful child, desperately ill, for a
while. And then I talked to her sisters, and then I talked to her
mother. And I talked to her father. And as I turned around to go off,
the father grabbed me by the arm and he said, he said, ``Let me tell you
something. If you ever get to wondering whether it makes a difference
who's the President,'' he said, ``look at my child. She's probably not
going to make it, and the weeks I've spent with her have been the most
precious time of my life. And if you hadn't been elected, we wouldn't
have had a family and medical leave law that made it possible for me to
be with my child in this time.''
Now, I believe, in short, that it ought to be possible to be a good
parent and a good worker. I believe that it ought to be possible for
people to make their own judgments about whether they want to be
organized at work or not and how they're going to be--[applause]. And I
believe if we're really going to preserve the American workplace as a
model of global productivity, we have to let people who know how to do
their jobs better than other people do have more empowerment to do those
jobs and to make those changes in the workplace.
That's why, as we work on the Vice President's reinventing
Government initiative, we work so closely with Federal employees and
their unions. When the Vice President spoke with business leaders and
workers who had changed their companies, they all said the same thing:
You've got to have the workers; you have to have them do it, tell you
how to do it, tell you how to make the companies more productive.
Now, that's why yesterday I signed an Executive order--on Friday--
creating a National Partnership Council. For the next several months the
leaders of Federal employee unions, including John Sturdivant, the
president of the American Federation of Government Employees, who is
here today, will work with the leaders of our administration to make our
Government more effective, cost less, and more importantly, to make the
jobs of the rank and file Federal employees more interesting, more
stimulating, more customer-oriented, by doing things that they have been
telling us they should be able to do, but that the system has not
permitted them to do in the past. I applaud John and the other people in
the unions representing Federal employees for what they have done.

[[Page 1986]]

This is an unprecedented partnership that I think will benefit every
American.
We want to make worker empowerment and labor-management cooperation
a way of life in this country, from the factory floor to the board room.
We've created a commission on the future of labor and management
relations, with leaders from labor, business, and the academy, chaired
by former Labor Secretary John Dunlap. And I've asked Secretary Reich to
create a commission to study and improve relationships in government
workplaces at every level, at the State and county and local level, as
well as at the Federal level.
I believe this is something that a person like Bob Reich is uniquely
situated to do. And it's the kind of thing that we ought to be promoting
because we have to use this opportunity we have to try to take what has
worked for workers and their businesses and spread it around the
country.
For the last 12 years we've had a lot of finger-pointing and blame-
placing, and we've got these stirring examples of success that we could
be trying to replicate. That's what we ought to be doing, taking what
works. And it always is a workplace in which workers have more say. And
we're going to do what we can to get that done.
Now, on the security issue, let me just mention some other things.
In addition to the family leave act, the budget bill which passed by
such a landslide in the Congress contained what may well be the most
important piece of economic reform for working people in 20 years, by
expanding the earned-income tax credit so that you can say to people, if
you work 40 hours a week and you have children in your home, you will
not be poor. We are bringing new hope and new dignity into the lives of
15 million working families that make $27,000 a year or less. They'll no
longer be taxed into poverty. There won't be a Government program to try
to lift them out of poverty. Their own efforts will lift them out of
poverty because the tax system will be changed to reward them. And there
will never again be an incentive for people to be on welfare instead of
work because the tax system will say, if you're willing to go to work
and work 40 hours a week, no matter how tough it is, we will lift you
out of poverty. That is the kind of prowork, profamily policy this
country ought to have.
Something else that was in that bill that most Americans don't even
know about yet that will benefit many, many of you in this room and the
people you represent is a dramatic reform of the student loan system
that will eliminate waste, lower the interest rates on student loans,
make the repayment terms easier so that young people can repay their
loans no matter how much they borrow as a percentage of their income,
limited so they can repay it. Even though we'll have tougher repayment
terms, they'll be able to do it. We'll collect the money, but people
will be able to borrow money and pay it back at lower interest rates, at
better repayment terms. And therefore, no one will ever be denied access
to a college education because of the cost.
When you put that with our Goals 2000 program, the education reform
program for the public schools, and the work that the Education
Secretary Dick Riley is doing with Secretary Reich to redo the worker
training programs in the country, you have a commitment to raise
standards in education and open opportunities to our young people.
We need higher standards in our public schools. Al Shanker has long
been a voice for that. He now has allies in the NEA and other places in
the country who are saying, ``Let's have national standards and evaluate
what our kids are learning and how our schools are doing.''
I believe we need to give our young people more choices within the
public school system, and I have advocated letting States try a lot of
things within districts. Let kids choose which schools they attend. Let
school districts decide how they want to set up and organize schools. I
think that a lot of changes need to be made in a lot of school
districts. But let me say that we don't want to throw out the baby with
the bath water. There are also a lot of school districts that are doing
a great job under difficult circumstances. There are a lot of schools
within school districts that are performing well under difficult
circumstances.
And if we've learned anything, we've learned that the best way to
increase the quality of education is to find better prin-

[[Page 1987]]

cipals, get better leaders among the teachers, let them have more say
over how school is run, and evaluate them based on their results rather
than telling them how to do every last jot and tiddle of their job every
day.
We have learned these things--and if I might, since we're in
California, say a special word--therefore, I believe that having worked
for 12 years for higher standards, more choices and greater changes in
public education, I'm in a little bit of a position to say that if I
were a citizen of the State of California, I would not vote for
Proposition 174, The Private Voucher Initiative.
Now, and let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. First of all,
keep in mind a lot of the schools out here are doing a good job. I can
say this, you know, I never was part of the California education system.
I have studied this system out here for more than a decade. They have
undertaken a lot of very impressive reforms and many of their schools
are doing a good job. I was interviewed last night by two people from a
newspaper in Sacramento, and one of them just volunteered that he had
two children in the public schools there, and they were getting a
terrific education.
This bill would start by taking $1.3 billion right off the top to
send a check to people who already have their kids in private schools,
and who didn't need any Government money to do it, and taking it right
off the top away from a school system that doesn't have enough money to
educate the kids it's got in it in the first place.
Second thing it would do is to impose no real standards on the
quality of the programs which could be funded: who could set up a
school; what standards they'd have to meet; what tests the kids would
have to pass. Just take your voucher, and who cares whether a private
school is a legitimate school or not. That is a significant issue. And
all you have to do is to work in this field for a few years to
understand that that is a significant issue.
Wouldn't it be ironic that at the very moment we're finally trying
to find a way to measure the performance and raise the standards of the
public schools, we turn around and start sending tax money to private
schools that didn't have to meet any standards at all. When we're trying
to get one part of our business, we're going to make the other part
worse.
And finally, let me just say, I have always supported the notion
that American schools ought to have competition and the fact that we
have a vibrant tradition of pluralistic education and private schools
and religious private schools was a good thing, not a bad thing for
America. But all the years when I grew up, and all the times I saw that,
and for a couple years of my life when I was a little boy, when I went
to a Catholic school, when my folks moved from one place to another, and
we lived way out in the country and didn't know much about the schools
in the new area where we were, no one ever thought that the church would
want any money from the taxpayers to run their schools. In fact, they
said just the opposite, ``We don't want to be involved in that.'' That's
what the First Amendment is all about.
So I think we have to really think through--I have spent 12 years
before I became President overwhelmingly obsessed with reform of the
public school system, wanting more choices in the system, wanting more
accountability, wanting more flexibility about how schools were
organized and established and operated. But I can tell you that this is
not the way to get it done, and the people will regret this if they pass
it. I hope the people of California don't do that.
Now, you can educate people all you want--and I wanted to say a
little more about that. The Labor Secretary and I are working on trying
to take all these 150 different Government training programs and give
local communities and States the power to consolidate them, working with
you, and just fund the things that work on a State-by-State basis, and
to set up a system of lifetime education and training.
I don't know how many of you saw the television program I did last
night in California, but one man, looked to be in his early fifties,
saying, ``We need a training program that gives my company some
incentives to retrain me, not just people who are 25, but people who are
55.'' And we are trying to do that. We're trying to set up a lifetime
education and training program that starts when young people are in high
school, so if they

[[Page 1988]]

want to work and learn in high school they can work and learn in high
school, so that we can have the kind of school-to-work transition that
many of our competitors have for all those kids that won't go to college
and won't get 4-year educations. We've got to do that.
But if you do all that, you still have to have someplace for people
to work. We can educate and train people all we want, but we have to be
able to create more jobs. How are we going to do that at a time when the
Government is not directly funding the defense jobs that have kept
America's job base up for so long?
Well, the first thing we've got to do is make up our mind we're
going to be serious about defense conversion. Last year when I was a
candidate for President--[applause]--last year when I was a candidate
for President, I went all over the country--and I wasn't in the Congress
and didn't have a vote--pleading with the Congress to pass the defense
conversion bill. They did it, and the previous administration absolutely
refused to spend $500 million to help convert from a defense to a high-
tech domestic economy. So we have released the money. And we're going to
try to get up to $20 billion spent on defense conversion and
reinvestment in the jobs of tomorrow over the next 5 years. It is very
important.
We have got over 2,800 proposals in this country for technology-
reinvestment initiatives, to match with what will soon be about a
billion dollars in Government money that can create hundreds of
thousands of jobs in America. People are brimming with ideas out there
to create new jobs.
I was at McClellan Air Force Base yesterday, and the airbase is
working with people in the local community and the local universities
and with the Federal defense labs. They have made new electric cars.
They have made new manufacturing component parts to try to come up with
economical ways to do it and allow those parts to be made in America.
And they are targeting things that are now made overseas and imported
here. That's the sort of thing that we can use our high-tech defense
base to do, and we should be doing it. It's going to make for more jobs
for America.
They have developed a prototype car that gets 80 miles per gallon at
55 miles per hour on the highway, goes to 60 miles per hour in 12
seconds, has a maximum speed of 100 miles an hour. That's not bad. If we
can just figure out how people can afford it, we can put people to work
making them. But it's a good beginning.
We announced last week that ground-breaking project with the UAW and
Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors are working with the defense labs and
all the Government labs on a project to triple the average mileage of
American autos within the next 10 years. If they do that, that will
create untold numbers of new jobs here, and we'll be selling cars to
people overseas who want that instead of the reverse.
And by the way, I want to compliment the UAW. You know, this year we
have regained a lot of our market share in America. People are buying
more American cars in America, and we should compliment them for it.
So we have to find ways to create these new jobs. Now, I want to
talk a little about health care, but before I do, I want to mention
something we disagree on in the context of the trade issue. And listen
to this. Since 1986, a significant portion of America's net new jobs
have come from trade growth. That's something we can all find from the
figures. In California, where we now are, a lot of that has come from
Asia, which is the fastest growing part of the world. Asia's growing
faster than any other part of the world; Latin America the second
fastest growing part of the world. Everybody knows that is true.
Now, that's why, when I went to Tokyo and met with the leaders of
the G-7, the seven big industrial countries, we made an agreement that
we should dramatically reduce tariffs on manufactured products around
the world in ways that all analysts agree would generate a lot of new
manufacturing jobs here in America. There was virtually no dispute about
that, because we were largely in competition with other countries that
were paying the same or higher wages with the same or better benefits,
with high-tech and other manufacturing products that we wanted to sell
everywhere. And we're

[[Page 1989]]

working like crazy to get that done between now and the end of the year.
What is the difference between that and the trade agreement with
Mexico? And let's talk about that just a minute, because it's very
important, not so you'll agree with me but so you will know what I want
you to know, which is that I would never knowingly do anything to cost
an American a job. That's not the business I'm in.
I was a Governor during the last 12 years, when the maquilladora
system was in place. What did it do? It created a border zone on the
other side of the border in Mexico in which people were free to set up
plants, operate them by the standards that were enforced there--or not
enforced, as the case may be--on labor and environmental issues, and
then send their products back into this country, produced at much lower
labor costs with no tariffs. That was the system set up to try to foster
growth there.
But in the 1980's, because of all the economic problems we had, and
because of the climate that was promoted in this country that the most
important thing you could do was slash your labor costs and who cared
about your working people anyway, you had the movement of hundreds of
plants down there. And you didn't like it worth a flip. And you were
right to be upset about what happened.
Now, I was a Governor of a State that lost plants to Mexico. And my
State was so small that when people lost their jobs I was likely to know
who they were. This was a big deal to me. I'm also proud of the fact we
got one of them to come back before I left office. I'm proud of that,
too. But I understand this.
Now, that is the system we have. You also saw this system,
ironically, accelerating illegal immigration. Why? For the same reason
that a lot of the Chinese boat people were coming over here after they
moved to the coastal towns in China, got a job where they made a little
more money than they did before, but didn't much like their life, but
they got enough money to try to come here. That's what was happening
along the maquilladora area. A lot of people would come up there, work
for a while, then come on up here.
So I understand what the American working people don't like about
the present system. The real issue: Will the trade agreement make it
worse or better? You think it will make it worse. I think it will make
it better. And I'll tell you, I think you're entitled to know why I
think that. Because there is no question that, no matter what you think
about the adequacy of the side agreements, they will raise the cost of
labor and environmental investments above the point where they are now.
There is no question that the agreement lowers domestic content
requirements in Mexico, so that we'll go from selling say 1,000 to
50,000 or 60,000 American cars down there next year. There's no question
that their tariffs are 2\1/2\ times higher than ours. And there's no
question that we have a trade surplus there, as compared with a $49
billion trade deficit with Japan, an $18 billion trade deficit with
China, a $9 billion trade deficit with Taiwan.
We've got a trade problem, all right. It is that the Asian economies
are not as open to us as we are to them. That's our huge trade problem.
And we're going to have to do better there, because that's where a lot
of the money is. So my reasoning is that if their tariffs are higher
than ours and their costs go up faster than they're otherwise going to
go up, and they're already buying $350-a-person worth of American goods,
second only to Canada--replaced Japan as the number two purchaser of
manufacturing products this year--and we got a $5.8 billion trade
surplus, it will get better, not worse.
Is it a perfect agreement? No. But I don't want to make the perfect
the enemy of the better. I think it is better than the present.
There are two other points I want to make. If the deal is not made
with the United States, and instead it's made with Germany or Japan, we
could lose access to an 80-million person market and cost ourselves more
jobs. And if the deal is made, it could lead to further similar
agreements with the emerging market economies of Latin America. And no
one believes that anybody's going to invest in Argentina, for example,
to export back to the American market. So all barrier dropping the
further you get away from here because of transportation costs will lead
to more jobs in America through greater trade.
So that's why I think it makes it better, not worse. You're entitled
to know that. I

[[Page 1990]]

don't ask you to agree, but I ask you to make the same arguments inside
your own mind, because I would never knowingly do anything to cost
America jobs. I'm trying to create jobs in this country.
Now, I'll tell you what I really think. What I really believe is
that this is become the symbol of the legitimate grievances of the
American working people about the way they've been worked over the last
12 years. That's what I think. And I think those grievances are
legitimate. And I think that people are so insecure in their jobs,
they're so uncertain that the people they work for really care about
them, they're so uncertain about what their kids are looking at in the
future, that people are reluctant to take any risks for change.
And so let me close with what I started with. I have got to lay a
foundation of personal security for the working people of this country
and their families in order to succeed as your President, and you have
to help me do it. We have got to reform the job training system of this
country, to make it a reemployment system, not an unemployment system,
and to give it to kids starting when they're in high school.
We have got to have an investment strategy that will create jobs
here. And that's why we removed all those export controls that were cold
war relics on computers and supercomputers and telecommunications
equipment, opening just this month $37 billion worth of American
products to exports. That is important.
That's why I want to pass a crime bill to put 50,000 more police
officers on the street, pass the Brady bill and take those automatic
weapons out of the hands of the teenagers that are vandalizing and
brutalizing our children in this country. And, my fellow Americans, that
is why we have got to pass a comprehensive health care bill to provide
security to all Americans. And we've got to do it now.
How many Americans do you know who lost their health insurance
because they lost their jobs? Who never got a pay increase because of
the rising cost of their health care? Who can never change jobs because
they have a sick child? Millions of them. How many companies are
represented in this room who could be selling more everywhere across the
board, more abroad and more at home, if their health care costs were no
greater than their competitors around the world?
Let's face it folks, we're spending over 14 percent of our income on
health care. Canada's at 10. Germany and Japan are under nine. The
Germans went up toward 9 percent of their income on health care, they
had a national outbreak of hysteria about how they were losing control
of their health care system. And yet they all cover everybody and no one
loses their health insurance. And when I say we can do that and we can
do it without a broad-based tax increase, people look at me like I have
slipped a gear. [Laughter]
But I have spent over 3 years studying this system. And the First
Lady and her task force have mobilized thousands of experts in the most
intense effort to examine social reform in my lifetime. And they have
recommended that we adopt a system which, first of all, builds on the
system that you enjoy: an employer-based system where the employer
contributes and, in some cases, the employee does and some not; a system
that is focused on keeping what is good about American health care--
doctors, and nurses, and medical research and technology--and fixing
what is wrong--not covering everybody, kicking them off after they have
a serious illness, not letting people move their jobs, having some
people in such tiny groups of insurance that 40 percent of their premium
goes to profit and administrative costs, and spending a dime on the
dollar, a dime on every dollar in a $90 billion system goes to paperwork
that wouldn't go in any other system in the world--$90 billion a year on
that alone. Never mind the fraud and the abuse, and the incentives in
this system to churn it, to perform unnecessary procedures just because
the more you do the more you earn.
We can do better than that. So I want to just say, this system will
be a good one. Everybody will get a health care security card like this.
I feel like that guy in the ad. I'm supposed to say, ``Don't leave home
without it,'' when I pull it out. [Laughter] But I want everybody to
have a health care security card like this. Just like a Social Security
card. And

[[Page 1991]]

I want people to have their health care access whether they're working
or unemployed, whether they work for a little business or a big one.
Under the system we have proposed, if you've got a better deal now,
you can keep it. If your employer pays 100 percent of benefits now, you
can keep it. And we don't propose to tax any benefits that are above the
minimum package. We told those who wanted that to give us 10 years
before we put that provision in because within 10 years we'll have the
minimum benefit package we start with, plus full dental benefits and
full mental-health benefits and full preventive-care benefits, so it
will be as good or better than any package now offered by any employer
in America. Then, if somebody wants to buy something over and above
that, we can talk about it. But we are not going to take anything away
from you, you have.
What we are going to do is two things for you if you have a good
policy. We're going to make it easier for your employer to keep these
benefits you have now by slowing the rate of health care cost inflation,
not by cutting health care spending, by slowing the rate of inflation in
health care cost, and by removing the enormous burden of retiree
benefits from our most productive companies. That will stabilize the
health care benefits of working people and good plans.
The other thing we're going to do for you is to limit what can be
taken away from you which is worth something. So by saying that for
people who don't have any insurance now, their employer will pay 80
percent and the employees will pay 20, we are saying that no matter what
happens to you, there's a limit to what can be taken away from you. So
it will be easy for you to keep, easier for your employer to keep what
you've got, and for you, and there will be a limit to what can be taken
away.
Is it fair to ask all those employers and employees who don't have
any coverage now to contribute something? You bet it is. Why? Because
your premium's higher than it otherwise would be because you're paying
for them now.
Can we do that without bankrupting small business? Of course, we
can. We have a plan that gives a significant discount to smaller new
businesses, and to smaller established businesses with lower wage
employees that are operating on narrow margins.
How are we going to pay for this? Two-thirds of it will be paid for
by employers and employees contributing into the system that they get a
free ride in now. One-sixth of it will be paid for with a cigarette tax
and with a fee on very large companies who opt out of the system so they
can pay for the cost of insuring the poor and the discounts to small
business, and most important, for the health education and research that
makes us all richer because we are going to pay for that and for
expanded public health clinics. And one-sixth of it will come from
slowing the rate of growth. When you hear people say, ``Oh, Clinton
wants to cut Medicare and Medicaid, let me tell you something folks,
we're cutting defense. We've held all domestic investment that's
discretionary flat, which means if I want to spend more money on job
training, on defense conversion, or on Head Start, I have to go cut
something else dollar for dollar for the next 5 years. That's what we've
done. We've cut defense as much as we possibly can right at the edge,
held everything else flat.
You know what Medicare and Medicaid are doing? They're going up at 3
times the rate of inflation. What have I proposed to do? Let them go up
at twice the rate of inflation. They say in Washington I can't do it. I
don't talk to a single doctor who understands what we're going to do who
doesn't think we can achieve those savings without hurting the quality
of health care. If we can't get down to twice the rate of inflation from
3 times the rate of inflation, there's something wrong somewhere.
Now, that's how we propose to finance this. And I am pleading with
you to help me pass this bill. No matter how good your health care plan
is now, don't you believe for a minute you could never lose it, or at
least get locked into your present job. And I am pleading with you to do
it so that we can give to the rest of America, as well as to you and
your families, the kind of personal security we have got to have to face
the bewildering array of challenges that are out there before us.

[[Page 1992]]

You know as well as I do that we are hurtling toward the 21st
century into a world that none of us can fully perceive. But we have to
imagine what we want it to be like. We want it to be a world in which
the old rules that you grew up believing in apply in a new and more
exciting age, in which, if you don't have job security, you at least
have employment security; in which the Government puts the people first,
and in which people have security in their homes, on their streets, in
their education benefits, in their health care benefits so that they are
capable of seizing these changes and making life richer and more
different and more exciting than it has ever been.
That is the great challenge before us. And if we don't adopt the
health care reform, we won't get there. If we do, it will open the way
to the most incredible unleashing of American energy that we have seen
in more than a generation. Together we can do it, and I need your help.
Thank you very much, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the San
Francisco Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Albert Shanker,
president, American Federation of Teachers.