    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 25 (Monday, June 27, 1994)]
    [Pages 1309-1316]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks to the Business Roundtable

    June 21, 1994

        Thank you very much, John. I'm trying to fix this lectern, if you're
    wondering what I'm doing up here. I'm proving that I don't have
    sufficient mechanical skills. [Laughter]
        I want to thank John for his leadership as the chairman of this
    distinguished group and welcome the incoming chair, John Snow, with whom
    I just shared a few words about some of our common interests in Europe.
    I'd also like to say a special word of appreciation to two of your
    members for working on issues that we share a common concern about, Joe
    Gorman, who's chairing your session on education, and Larry Perlman,
    who's chairing the work force development section and discussing the
    reemployment act that he's helping us to work on and about which I wish
    to talk today. I want to thank the Business Roundtable for sharing a
    belief with me and with our administration that we have to move
    aggressively to embrace the challenges of the global economy. That,
    after all, is why we worked hard on the North American Free Trade
    Agreement and why we are working together to pass the GATT agreement.
        I also want to thank you for our common understanding of a simple
    but powerful truth, which is that even as we lower barriers to trade
    around the world, we must work hard to lift our people up here at home
    so that they can compete and win and carry on their work and build their
    lives. Investing in our people's God-given potential is good economics.
    You know that, and I do. It pays off in higher productivity, more
    incomes, a competitive edge for our companies and our country in the
    global marketplace. We talk about this all the time in the White House.
    I see my Chief of Staff, Mr. McLarty, and our Economic Adviser, Mr.
    Rubin; the Deputy Treasury Secretary, Mr. Altman, is here. There may be
    others here from the administration. These are things that we say all
    the time in our meetings. I appreciate the work that you did in helping
    us to pass the Goals 2000 legislation, one of the most important
    education reforms in a generation in this country. When we work
    together, we can do things that help America prepare for the future.
        I think today is an especially appropriate day for me to be here,
    speaking with you about how we can better prepare our country for
    change. Fifty years ago tomorrow, as the Allied armies advanced from the
    beaches of Normandy, President Roosevelt signed a bill that was called
    the Serviceman's Readjustment Act, better known as the GI bill of
    rights. Just as D-Day was the greatest military action in history, the
    GI bill arguably was the greatest investment in our people

    [[Page 1310]]

    in American history. Its legacy is the world's largest middle class, the
    world's strongest economy. Its lesson is, in large measure, the mission
    of our administration: If you give people a chance to help themselves,
    they'll do it and they'll do extraordinary things.
        Before World War II, our country often failed to prepare returning
    veterans after wars. We gave them pensions and bonuses, but they had
    nothing left to build their future with. That's why jobless and
    despairing veterans of World War I actually marched on Washington in
    1932, why President Roosevelt declared that the GI bill, quote, ``gave
    emphatic notice to the men and women of our Armed Forces that the
    American people do not intend to let them down.''
        We know why the GI bill didn't let them down. It relied on American
    values of work and responsibility. It offered a hand up, not a handout.
    The veterans of World War I, by contrast, got a handout. To be sure, one
    they earned and one the country was grateful for, but they got cash and
    a train ticket home. But the veterans of World War II got a ticket to
    the future instead. Uncle Sam helped them to go to college, to get job
    training, to finance homes and businesses of their own. But it was up to
    them to seize the opportunities. They did, and all of us are the better.
        The GI bill helped 8 million returning veterans begin that journey.
    They flooded colleges and trade schools: 450,000 veterans became
    engineers; 360,000 became school teachers; 240,000 became accountants;
    180,000 became doctors and nurses; 150,000 became scientists. Millions
    more bought homes or built businesses. Maybe some of them are among you
    who invited me here to be with you today.
        We really can't even begin to calculate how much our Nation was
    enriched by the GI bill, how many communities sprung up, how many
    companies prospered, how many families earned their share of the
    American dream. This much we do know: Together all those people built
    the American middle class that has been the bulwark of our prosperity
    since World War II.
        Fifty years after the signing of the GI bill, the world's changed a
    lot. Our economy has clearly changed. But what it takes for our people
    to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow has not changed. Now as
    then, we stand at a pivot point in history. In the five decades between,
    our country mustered another great international commitment, the
    commitment to stand strong in the cold war. That succeeded. Now we see a
    world economy taking shape where investment and information flow rapidly
    across national borders. Competition for jobs and incomes is
    international and highly intense. And once again, we are being called
    upon to decide our future.
        I have a vision, a mission, a strategy for how I believe all this
    should take place; how we can move forward in the 21st century; what the
    partnership between Government and business ought to be; what the whole
    atmospherics in this country, the feeling about our mission ought to be.
    I must say, it doesn't fit very well into the established categories of
    left and right and liberal and conservative and Democratic and
    Republican. And I feel frustrated sometimes at my ability to pierce the
    atmosphere that prevails here. But it is clear to me that if we are
    going to make a future that is consistent with our values, we're going
    to have to do it with a different approach.
        Still, it has to be built on the spirit that animated the GI bill:
    Give Americans the chance to make their own lives in this fast-changing
    world so the changes can be their friends and not their enemies. To do
    it we have to move on many fronts. We have to create an environment
    where business can create new jobs and new growth. We have to open
    markets for our goods and services, for our companies and our workers.
    We have to invest in our people's work and security.
        When I assumed this office, the deficit had been increasing
    exponentially for 12 years; trade agreements were stalled; job growth
    was agonizingly slow; consumer confidence was shaky. We were actually
    facing the prospect that, for the first time, a generation of Americans
    would grow up to a future that was more limited than that which their
    parents enjoyed.
        I adopted a strategy to, first, work on expanding the economy and
    getting our own economic house in order; second, to make Government work
    for ordinary citizens and

    [[Page 1311]]

    end gridlock; third, to empower people and strengthen communities; and
    fourth, to secure our role in the world, defending our fundamental
    security interests, expanding our economic interests, promoting
    democracy, human rights, and limiting the spread of destructive chaos
    arising out of ethnic and other hatreds.
        The atmosphere, frankly, here has been more hostile to change than I
    had imagined it would be. The American people desperately wanted change
    but were often unwilling to listen to the complex debates and make the
    difficult decisions that are inherent in it. And this town still is, in
    my judgment, too partisan, too negative, too obsessed with process and
    conflict instead of results and progress, too interested in blame, and
    too little interested in responsibility.
        Nonetheless, we have been able to put together an economic strategy
    for putting our house in order, making hard decisions that will make it
    possible next year, for the first time since Truman was President, to
    have 3 years in a row of deficit reduction, eliminating over 100
    Government programs outright, cutting 200 others, cutting domestic
    discretionary spending--that's everything besides Social Security,
    Medicare, and Medicaid, the other entitlements--cutting discretionary
    spending on the domestic side, not just defense, for the first time in
    25 years.
        All of that will enable us to reduce the deficit 3 years in a row
    for the first time since the Truman Presidency. It means we've had to
    slash the Federal Government, to bring more responsibility into the
    budgeting process. We completed the budget by the May 15 deadline for 2
    years in a row for the first time in 17 years.
        We are making progress. We've adopted a very aggressive attitude on
    trade, which you've been a part of, as all of you know: NAFTA, GATT, the
    APEC meetings--I'm going to a second one in Indonesia this fall--a
    hemispheric summit at the end of the year with all the leaders of the
    Latin American democracies. And 33 of the 35 countries in Latin America,
    along with the United States, are now headed by elected governmental
    officials.
        We've now got the first investment-led, low-inflation-based economic
    recovery since the early 1960's. In addition to that, we have worked
    hard to make Government work. With the reinventing Government program
    that the Vice President has spearheaded, at the end of 5 years, we will
    have a Federal bureaucracy that has 250,000 fewer Federal employees and
    is under 2 million in civilian workers for the first time since the
    Kennedy Presidency.
        We have Federal agencies that are working again in fundamental ways
    to engage the business community in the growth of the economy all around
    the world. The Export-Import Bank--I see Mr. Brody over there. I don't
    know how many businessmen have come up to me and said, ``For the first
    time in my life, I travel overseas and I see the State Department and
    the Commerce Department actually working together trying to promote
    American business interests. And I appreciate it.''
        The Small Business Administration has been virtually revolutionized
    in the way it works with small businesses. You can now apply for a loan
    on a one-page form. People talk to me everywhere I go in America about
    the emergency management agency, FEMA, of the Federal Government, saying
    it finally has become the shining light of what a Government ought to be
    when people are in trouble instead of just a pain in the neck that has
    to be dealt with. We are trying to make Government work.
        The Congress has before it major campaign finance reform and lobby
    reform legislation that has passed both Houses of the Congress, awaiting
    now a conference that will iron out the differences and send that to me
    for signature.
        Maybe most important of all, in spite of everything, gridlock is
    being dealt with. Last year, the Congress passed the Brady bill and the
    family leave bill after 7 years of gridlock. We got agreement among the
    great nations on GATT after 7 years of debate. This year the Congress is
    going to pass a crime bill after 6 years of gridlock, one that will be
    the most sweeping anticrime legislation ever adopted by the Congress:
    100,000 more police officers on our streets, tougher punishment,
    innovative prevention programs, a ban on assault weapons that people
    said could

    [[Page 1312]]

    never be passed over the opposition of the NRA.
        And at the end of last year, according to nonpartisan sources, we
    had the best first year in working with Congress of any Presidency since
    the end of World War II, except the Eisenhower first year and President
    Johnson's first year, which were about the same. And if I may be
    forgiven a little bit of bragging rights, I think the things we tried to
    do and the atmosphere in which we tried to do them were far more
    difficult.
        So we are trying to make Government work. I say that to say that,
    yes, there have been some good results. And a lot of them are because
    you did a lot of work in the 1980's and the early nineties to become
    more productive and to be more competitive. And in the first 16 months
    of this administration, over 3 million new jobs in the private sector
    came into this economy, 2\1/2\ times as many than in the previous 4
    years alone. We had, the first quarter of this year, the first time in
    well over a decade when there was no bank failure in a quarter. There
    were more incorporations of new businesses than at any time since World
    War II in 1993.
        But I will say again, we can do these things, and unless we also
    empower our people to deal with the challenges of the global economy, as
    we did with the GI bill, we're going to have a tough time.
        With your help and support, a lot of things have already been done.
    A bigger and better Head Start program will improve the quality of the
    program and serve 40,000 more children this year and 90,000 more
    children next year than were being served previously. Goals 2000 will
    link grassroots reform with world-class standards for our public
    schools, the first time we have ever had any national standards for
    achievement.
        The School-to-Work Opportunities Act will help high school students
    learn real skills and provide America with better trained, higher
    skilled workers. Student loan reforms, which the Secretary of Education,
    who's here, has done so much to administer, will make it possible for 20
    million American students to repay their loans--some $50 billion of
    them--on more favorable terms and make it possible for students in the
    future to borrow money to go to college at lower interest rates and
    better repayment terms. But it will make it harder for them to avoid
    paying their bills.
        These things are very hopeful signs. The national service program,
    AmeriCorps, will make it possible for 20,000 young people to serve their
    country at the grassroots level and earn money to go to college this
    year; the year after next, 100,000 young Americans doing that. The Peace
    Corps in its largest year had 16,000 Americans serving. This national
    service program literally has the potential to change the way our young
    people think about themselves, their country, and their role as
    citizens.
        So many of you have helped us on all these issues. And this summer,
    we're going to have two or three more things that I want to ask you to
    help us on. First of all, as I go to the G-7 conference, there will be a
    lot of discussion about GATT. Everybody that I know sort of treats GATT
    as if it's already done. But as you know, the Congress has not yet
    passed the enabling legislation. I will submit that legislation
    implementing the agreement this summer. We have worked very, very hard
    on meeting the strict budget rules to find a way to pay for GATT. You
    and I know GATT will make the Government money, but under our budget
    rules, we have to pretend that it's going to cost us money because we're
    getting rid of tariffs.
        I want to urge you in the strongest possible terms: Do everything
    you can to persuade the Congress to give this high priority, to pass it
    with as little controversy and as little delay as possible, and to move
    on it this year. Only the United States, of all our trading partners,
    has to go through the budget hoops we do to pass GATT. All of our
    trading partners look at me and say, ``You're the person that got us all
    together and made us do this last year. How can you not ratify it?'' We
    need your help, and we must do it this year, not next year.
        Secondly, I ask for your help to pass the reemployment act which
    will change the whole way our unemployment system works. It will turn a
    bewildering array of training programs into a system where workers who
    lose their jobs can present themselves at a one-stop service center and
    get the guidance, the training opportunities, and the informa-

    [[Page 1313]]

    tion they need for real jobs in the private sector. The boards that
    supervise these programs will be controlled by people who know most
    about the opportunities, the private sector. And I want Congress to
    enact that this year. This is very, very important.
        The average person does not go back to the job from which he or she
    is laid off, but the unemployment system is still built on the premise
    that they do. The consequence of that is that employers pay too much in
    unemployment for people to just hang around on the system instead of
    prepare to take new jobs, and employees spend too much time doing just
    that instead of moving more quickly into a new economy. We can change
    this, but we need to do it this year.
        Let me finally say that, on this issue, a lot of you have expressed
    support to me personally for the welfare reform efforts. Whether that
    can pass this year or not depends upon how much fire it catches in
    Congress and how much controversy we can avoid in how to fund it. But we
    have to change the culture of welfare. And this program that I have
    presented to Congress, along with the others that have been presented,
    go right at the heart of parents who don't pay child support they owe,
    to the heart of the teen pregnancy problem, to the heart of requiring
    people to work once they have the skills to do so. And I hope you will
    continue to support that.
        Now, despite all these efforts, I have to tell you that I do not
    believe that the American people, as individuals, will be able to
    embrace the changes of the global economy as successful workers unless
    and until we address the health care crisis.
        This goes to the heart of our debate on all of the other things in
    the strategy I outlined. It goes to the heart of whether we can get our
    own economic house in order. It goes to the heart of whether we can make
    Government work for ordinary people. It goes to the heart of whether we
    can empower people to view change as a friend instead of an enemy.
    Unless we can provide coverage for every American in a reform system
    which focuses on both quality and control of costs, the deficit will
    grow, your costs will continue to grow and undermine productivity, and
    more and more Americans will lose their coverage or be at risk.
        Let me briefly discuss this whole thing from my point of view, from
    your point of view, and from the American citizen's point of view, from
    a worker's point of view.
        From my point of view, as the President in charge of the budget,
    I've worked hard to get this deficit down for 3 years in a row for the
    first time since Truman was President. I have done things that people
    who say they're more conservative than me talk about but don't do. We're
    eliminating over 100 Government programs. We're cutting 200 others.
    We're reducing discretionary spending for the first time in 25 years and
    still with the discipline to increase investment in education and new
    technologies and training. We have reduced defense all we can reduce it.
    And I think we are right at the margin, and we should not reduce it any
    more, given the challenges we face in this economy.
        A lot of you will probably be called to testify or to support the
    work of Senator Kerrey, Senator Danforth, and others in this
    entitlements commission, because you know that the only thing that is
    increasing our deficit now is entitlements. But keep in mind, when you
    strip all that away, some of the entitlements are going down; Social
    Security is going up only with the rate of inflation and is roughly the
    same percentage of our GDP it was 20 years ago. The only part of the
    entitlements going up much more rapidly than inflation are Medicare and
    Medicaid, the Government's programs for the elderly and the poor.
        And I can tell you that unless we can bring them in line with
    inflation, we will be forced to either let the deficit go up again,
    raise taxes more than we should, or cut our investment in public
    investment, in things you support, to a dangerously low level in a
    global economy. So that's what it looks like from my point of view, just
    from a budget perspective.
        From your point of view, you know already that the Government does
    not reimburse Medicare and Medicaid providers at 100 percent of cost, so
    the costs are being shifted to you. The other people who are shifting
    costs to you are businesses and employers who do not have health
    insurance but who get health care. They are shifting the cost to you.

    [[Page 1314]]

        Now, if our deficit goes up, and we have to bring the deficit down,
    and we cut Medicare and Medicaid without fundamental reform, we're going
    to shift more cost to you. And you will be put in the position of paying
    more or covering less. And keep in mind, in the last 3 years, 3 million
    American workers have lost their health insurance. There are 3 million
    more Americans without health coverage today than there were 3 years
    ago. You are also paying for them in cost shifting.
        So unless we have comprehensive reform, you will be put in the
    position of someday coming to the end of how much you can do managing
    your health care costs on your own--which you've done a very good job
    of, almost all of you. And you will be facing the cost shift coming at
    you from the Federal Government and from the increasing numbers of
    employers who don't provide any coverage.
        Now, the third and the most important thing of all: What does this
    look like if you're out there working in this country, and you hadn't
    had much of a pay increase in the last 10 years, but you know that your
    country's becoming more competitive, and you're excited about the 21st
    century, and you know that you're raising children who will have to
    change jobs eight times in a lifetime? What are you going to do?
        If you're a man and you have a premature heart attack, or your wife
    gets breast cancer, your kid develops some strange disease, and you have
    a preexisting condition, and you're being told, ``It's a brave new world
    out there. Don't worry if you have to change jobs. Just get some new
    retraining. You'll do fine.'' And then it turns out nobody wants to hire
    you because you've got a preexisting condition.
        Oh, I know there are those who say we can just legislate these
    things. We'll just legislate the insurance reforms, say you can't
    discriminate against anybody, and it will be fixed. Look at the study
    that many of my adversaries in the Congress on this issue keep citing,
    the Lewin VHI study. They say that all you can get out of insurance
    reforms is coverage in the short run for 2.2 million more people. You
    look at the experience of New York that tried to mandate insurance
    reforms alone. What happens? A lot of people's insurance goes up, and a
    lot more people opt out of the system.
        I say, if you look at the rest of the world and you look at us, we
    have 81 million Americans out of a population of only 255 million, 81
    million of us live in families with people who have preexisting
    conditions. But they all still need to be able to change work seven
    times in a lifetime.
        Thirty-nine million of us do not have health insurance. There is no
    compelling evidence that we can both have quality and cost control and
    stop cost-shifting in the absence of covering everyone. There is no
    compelling evidence. The Lewin VHI study, so often cited by those who
    say, ``Well, we could get 91 percent coverage in America, up from 83
    percent, covering 97 percent of the cost of health care if only we did
    this stuff, which doesn't require employer mandates or of some other
    universal coverage''--that's being talked about. But if you notice,
    there's not been a bill really pushing that. Why? Because when you strip
    it away, you see that it costs literally hundreds of billions of dollars
    over the next 5 or 6 years to finance that in massive subsidies which
    basically benefit poor people, most of whom are not working, some of
    whom are working, and does nothing for middle-class workers. Which means
    to do that instead of an employer mandate, we would have to go back and
    raise the heck out of everybody's taxes, which we are not about to do.
    At that level it would not be fair.
        Now, how is it that every other advanced country in the world and
    all of our competitors--we're only too happy to learn from our
    competitors in every other way, and we're very proud when we beat our
    competitors. And I don't know how many of you have told me personally,
    ``We're better now than anybody else in the world at what we do. And we
    went through all kinds of agonies in the eighties, and we faced all
    these challenges, and now we're better than our competitors.''
        Well, our competitors, not a single, solitary one of them spends
    more than 10 percent of GDP on health care. We spend 14, and we're the
    only people that can't figure out how to cover everybody. Now, I refuse
    to declare defeat. Why should we jump in the tank?

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        I heard the messages about what people didn't like about our
    original proposal: Don't put restrictions on experimental drugs; don't
    make businesses go into alliances if they don't want to, let it be
    voluntary, people know their own interests; let multistate businesses
    have an approach which makes sense for all their employers. We're making
    the changes that we heard people complain about. Those changes are being
    made. We know we needed to make some changes. But if you remember, when
    I offered my health care plan, I said, ``This is not the end-all and be-
    all. It's the beginning of a debate.'' But what we need to decide is
    whether we're going to walk away from this session of Congress without
    the debate.
        Harry Truman said 50 years ago, Americans will never be secure
    unless we did something about health care. Everybody thinks of Harry
    Truman now as the fount of all wisdom. I come from a family that liked
    him when he was unpopular. [Laughter] But most Americans didn't like him
    too much at the time. He kept telling them uncomfortable truths. He was
    right 50 years ago, and it's still true. So, yes, we need to make some
    changes in the original proposal I made. We put them out there. But what
    we need is a quick, honest, forthright debate. We need to deal with this
    issue this year because until we do, we will continue to spend a higher
    percentage on health care than our competitors; you will continue to
    have costs shifted to you; your Government will continue to face the
    agonizing choice of continuing to spend more and more of your tax money
    on entitlements, less on investment, and still increasing the deficit
    and still shifting costs to you.
        So, I ask you, enter the debate and just tell people what you have
    to do every day in your own businesses. You get a real hard decision; if
    you don't want the thing to collapse, you can't walk away. And almost
    always, you make a decision that is less than perfect but is better than
    making no decision.
        So I ask you, help me pass the reemployment bill. Help us pass GATT.
    Help us pass welfare reform. But don't walk away from health care. The
    numbers are big; they're enormous. And we can't tell an average
    American, can't tell a mother on welfare, ``Get off of welfare and take
    a job so you can lose your children's health insurance and start paying
    taxes for people to pay for their kids' health care who stayed on
    welfare.'' We can't tell a worker, ``Give up your job security and find
    a new security in your mind, in your ability to learn and change,'' if
    your illness or the illness of someone in your family will put you out
    of the job market. We must not ask people to choose between being good
    parents and good workers. We cannot ask people to risk their children's
    health to participate in the global economy. And most importantly, we
    can't just keep working with a system that is fundamentally flawed that
    we can fix. We can look around the world; we know there are all kinds of
    fixes here. We may have to do more for small business; I'm willing to do
    that. We may have to do more, and we should, to make the thing less
    regulatory; I've already made a lot of those changes. But let us not
    walk away.
        When I spoke at Normandy a couple of weeks ago, in the greatest
    honor of my Presidency, to represent our country in commemorating the
    50th anniversary of D-Day, the thing that overwhelmed me about that was
    that people did what they had to do because there was no option, and
    they measured up and literally saved the world. And that in that moment,
    there was no option to be cynical. There was no luxury available for
    people to avoid the decisions before them, and they did not have the
    option to be cynical.
        Today, I tell you, we have fundamental decisions to make about what
    kind of people we are going to be into the future. Walking away is an
    option that's not really there. Being cynical or negative is always an
    option that's there, but it's something we pay a terrible price for.
    This country can do what we have to do. We have to be what the people
    that led the D-Day invasion were; they were called pathfinders, the
    people that went first. That's what we're being asked to do.
        You live in an age which glorifies commerce and success and
    international trade more than any other in the lifetime of anybody in
    this room. Therefore, you have enormous responsibilities. And you have
    to light the path to the future in the way that the

    [[Page 1316]]

    GI bill did 50 years ago. We can do it. We can do it if we make the
    right choices.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:55 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the
    J.W. Marriott Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to John Ong, outgoing
    chair, and John Snow, incoming chair, Business Roundtable.