[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 42 (Monday, October 24, 1994)]
[Pages 2069-2075]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
New York City

October 19, 1994

    Thank you very much. You know, after the last several months in 
Washington, I'm sort of disoriented. I don't know how to react to that 
sort of reception. When I came in and you were so wonderful and warm and 
you were cheering, I said to the Governor, I said, ``Well, shall we sit 
down now?'' He said, ``No, no, no.'' He said, ``That's part of your 
problem.'' He said, ``Let them cheer. When they boo, you sit down.'' 
[Laughter]
    When Andrew Cuomo, who as you know is a Presidential appointee, 
wrote his father a note and said, ``Ten minutes, don't be too long,'' 
and then the Governor came up and embarrassed his son by telling you 
that, I wrote a note on the note. I said, ``Clinton's Eighth Law: Blood 
is thicker than water, but

[[Page 2070]]

the paycheck is thicker than blood.'' [Laughter]
    I appreciated what Governor Lundine said about my supporting tourism 
in New York. I have supported it in two ways. I brought the Democratic 
Convention here, and I come here. And then when I come here, no one else 
can get out, so they have to spend money. [Laughter] And so you know, 
I've gotten to feeling like a thief when I come to New York. I have to 
leave in the middle of the night so I don't inconvenience anybody. But I 
love to come, and I am delighted to be here. And I am delighted to be 
here with so many of you.
    I want to say a special word of thanks to Congressman Schumer for 
his work on the crime bill. Thank you, sir. And to Congressman Rangel 
for many things, but especially for supporting our policy on Haiti 
before anybody else was for it. Thank you, sir.
    I appreciate the presence here of my longtime friend Bob Reich and 
the other members of our administration who are here, and those who have 
been here already. I'm proud that they are a part of this.
    You know, we're kind of practical people of this administration. 
There are a lot of folks who worked in State government and local 
government and the private sector who came to Washington. As a matter of 
fact, we think it's kind of strange that Congressman Gingrich says his 
goal in life is to convince you that I am the enemy of normal Americans. 
As somebody pointed out to me the other day, before I came to 
Washington, I was one. [Laughter] And we tried to bring a lot of normal 
Americans to Washington who would not forget that most of what counts in 
this country is done somewhere else and that our job was to change the 
role of Government away from this back-and-forth pendulum of either 
trying to solve all the problem or sitting on the sidelines and acting 
as if they didn't exist. We have tried to bring a genuine constructive 
partnership to this country. And I must say, it is a lot easier in New 
York State and New York City because we've had good leadership to work 
with, and I thank the Governor and I thank the mayor for that.
    I must tell you that because I was a Governor for a good long while, 
I have a sympathy for people who like to be Governor for a good long 
while. [Laughter] It's the best job I ever had, in some ways. And I like 
it because it was a real job, dealing with real peoples and real 
problems and real opportunities.
    I think it makes a difference whether you have a partnership for 
growth in New York; I really do. And whether you think that or not is a 
big part of whether you will make any kind of difference. I think it 
makes a difference who's in the partnership. It makes a difference 
whether you have new ideas. Long before I ever dreamed of running for 
President and thought it was a practical option for me, I read the first 
volume of the Cuomo commission report. And I remember both volumes very 
well, all the ideas that they had, all the suggestions they gave not 
only to States but to our country for dealing with these problems. To 
me, that's what we ought to be doing in government, being catalysts for 
helping people take responsibility for their own lives and get together 
in their communities and reach across the lines that divide them and 
solve their problems and seize their opportunities.
    Twenty-one months ago I went to Washington, determined to do what I 
could to restore the economy, to make our Government work for ordinary 
Americans again, and to empower people to compete and win in the 21st 
century. After 21 months, there's a lot we still have to do. But it is 
clear that America is in better shape. We have more jobs, a lower 
deficit, low inflation, a smaller Federal Government doing much more. 
We're doing things that make Government work for ordinary people, 
valuing work and family with things like the family leave law, our 
initiatives in welfare reform, tax credits for working families just 
above the poverty line so they don't fall into the poverty line--no one 
who raises kids and works 40 hours a week should fail at either task--
immunizing all the children in the country under the age of 2 by 1996.
    We've made a serious assault on crime. You've already talked about 
it a lot. Let me just say that a lot of the ideas in that crime bill 
have been pioneered here by Governor Cuomo, including the boot camps and 
the after-school programs as prevention. It is a bill of punishment, 
police, and prevention,

[[Page 2071]]

and it's a bill which will lower crime, not because of what the Federal 
Government will do but because of what the Federal Government has 
empowered you to do.
    One of the things that we're doing is hammering over and over and 
over again on the need to implement this crime bill, every single part 
of it, in the proper way: the safe schools provision, the violence 
against women provision, the victims rights provision, a lot of things 
most people don't even know are in there. If you do them all in New 
York, you will lower the rate of crime and violence, not because of what 
the Federal Government did but because of what you will be empowered to 
do with the tools that are in the bill.
    We also supported, as I'm sure the Secretary of Labor has already 
said, the idea of lifetime learning. The average 18-year-old will change 
jobs six or seven times in a lifetime. Many Americans today with good 
jobs still feel insecure because they keep reading about big companies 
laying people off, and they're afraid to change jobs when they're 45 or 
50. We have to make these kinds of changes the friend of ordinary 
Americans, because nothing any public official can do will repeal the 
laws of global economic change. But if we are prepared to seize them and 
make them our own, then all these changes will make life more exciting, 
more interesting for ordinary people. The changes in work will be an 
opportunity to move up, to broaden one's horizons, not to be undermined 
or have your family lose their security or have people lose their sense 
of self-worth. So this issue of developing a system of lifetime learning 
is hugely important in preserving the sense of optimism and strength and 
inner confidence that has always been at the core of what is America's 
greatness.
    We also clearly are working to make the world a safe and a more 
democratic and a freer place. For the first time since the dawn of the 
nuclear age, Russian missiles are no longer pointed at the United 
States. We have played a major role in trying to promote peace in 
Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, and of course, in Haiti. We have 
secured an agreement with North Korea to end that nation's nuclear 
program, which is terribly important. And we have told Iraq that we 
still believe the territorial integrity of its neighbors are inviolate 
and that it must not be enabled to intimidate the United Nations.
    All of this is exhausting work and sometimes frustrating work in a 
world that is ever changing. But it is clear to me that the rewards will 
go to people with vision and energy and discipline and an upbeat outlook 
on the future, and people who are not deterred.
    Let me say today the saddest moment for me in the morning was 
reading about the horrible bombing in Israel, the deaths of innocent 
civilians by a terrorist determined to wreck the quest of the Arabs and 
the Israelis for peace in the Middle East. If you think about the kind 
of disappointments and obstacles those people have to face every day--
and they're still out there determined to sign that peace treaty with 
Jordan next week, to make a comprehensive peace in the Middle East to go 
forward--now those are real problems.
    The American people should look at the strengths and assets we have 
and say there is nothing that can stop us, look at strengths and assets 
New York has and just say there is nothing that can stop us. This is a 
very big deal when you see Americans feeling a little more pessimistic 
than the facts warrant.
    So I'm glad you're here. And if you don't do anything else when you 
leave but to pat each other on the back and convince yourselves that if 
you work together you will make a difference, you will have done more 
than half of the good you can do by showing up in the first place. And I 
hope you believe that.
    I want to talk very briefly about what we tried to do here. A big 
reason we've had some success in the last 2 years is that our 
administration came into office with an economic mission. We wanted to 
rebuild the American dream and make sure every American was empowered to 
take advantage of it. We had a long-term strategy as well as a short-
term strategy. And we organized the White House and the administration 
in a completely different way.
    The key figure in that reorganization was Bob Rubin from New York, 
my National Economic Adviser. I don't even know if he's still here. But 
if it hadn't been for him, this

[[Page 2072]]

whole thing would not have worked in the proper way. We have regular, 
disciplined, sustained efforts involving the Secretary of the Treasury, 
the Secretary of Labor, the Trade Ambassador, the Council of Economic 
Advisers Chair, our Commerce Secretary, who's clearly the most active 
Commerce Secretary in my lifetime, the SBA Director, who has changed the 
Small Business Administration dramatically. You now apply for an SBA 
loan on a one-page form and get an answer in 3 days.
    We work with all the other Departments you see here: The Education 
Department is a part of our economic strategy; the Health and Human 
Services Department and welfare reform is a part of our economic 
strategy; HUD is a huge part of our economic strategy. And we all work 
together in a disciplined way to think about where America is going in 
the rest of the world and what America has to do at home. And we work 
very hard to support and cooperate with and move forward with Governors 
and mayors and folks in the private sector, with whom we meet on a 
regular basis and work through the major issues.
    Now, if you look at the economy we confront, we all know what the 
strengths of it are. We also all know we have some problems: 30 years of 
accumulated social problems; 20 years of stagnant wages for hourly wage 
earners with limited educations, increasingly buffeted by a global 
economy; and 12 years of an economic theory that I don't think worked 
very well, except to give us a big debt and reduced investment.
    Our strategy was pretty simple and straightforward: reduce the 
deficit; increase investment in education and training, new 
technologies, and defense conversion; increase trade and the sales of 
American products and services around the world; work with business to 
sell abroad when it is appropriate and proper to do so; give special 
incentives to forgotten areas--you heard the talk earlier about the 
community development banks and the empowerment zones--so that we can 
get free enterprise into inner cities and isolated rural areas; reduce 
the role of Government wherever we can, reduce regulation, reduce 
bureaucracy, but increase the effective leverage the Federal Government 
has and be a good partner. That has been our strategy.
    Now, if you look at what's happened, the deficit is going down 
dramatically. It's about half of what it was when I took office, as a 
percentage of our national income. Trade has increased dramatically. 
Since NAFTA was ratified, trade to Mexico is up 19 percent this year; 
that's 3 times as much as our overall trade. The GATT world trade 
agreement will bring hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs into the 
country, and the Congress will adopt it, I believe, in late November. 
We're selling everything from rice and apples to telephones and Mustangs 
in Japan now, some of them for the first time. Every country in our 
hemisphere but one is now a democracy, and they're all going to meet in 
Miami in December and talk about how we can increase our common wealth 
and prosperity by working together. We are doing things, in short, that 
make a lot of sense.
    We've increased our investment in Head Start and apprenticeships, in 
providing more affordable college loans to middle class kids, in spite 
of the fact that the overall deficit has been reduced on the domestic 
side for the first time in 25 years this year. We still were able to 
increase our investment in education and training.
    Governor Cuomo mentioned in passing a very important thing about 
Long Island in defense conversion. We are investing hundreds of millions 
of dollars around this country to help communities where bases have 
closed that need to rebuild themselves and to help businesses that used 
to depend on defense business that's not there anymore. Defense 
spending's peak in 1987--it peaked in 1987. In 1993 when I took office, 
there was still $500 million in funds the Congress of the United States 
had appropriated for defense conversion that had not been spent. We were 
just leaving these companies and these communities out there floating in 
the wind with no strategy to bring them back into the industrial base of 
America and the industrial future of America.
    We are changing that now, and it is very important. If you look at 
New York, if you look at the economic profile of New York, especially 
out on Long Island, it is criminal to walk away from these companies 
that

[[Page 2073]]

helped us win the cold war just because we are reaping the benefits of 
the cold war by reducing defense spending. So that's a big, big part of 
our economic strategy.
    These things are working. The community development bank legislation 
I just signed, but you will see when it comes out that we'll be able to 
create, we estimate, about 150,000 jobs in very isolated inner-city and 
rural areas just with the community development bank authority that has 
already been provided. So I am very hopeful about that.
    We're also shrinking the Government. It's an unusual thing for the 
Democrats to be doing, but we did it anyway. We passed bank reform 
legislation that was hung up for 7 years--we'll save a billion dollars a 
year in compliance costs; trucking reform legislation that will save 
billions of dollars a year. There are already 70,000 fewer people 
working for the National Government than there were on the day I became 
President, and we are reducing the overall size of the Government by 
270,000, and all the money's going back to you to fight crime. That's 
how we're funding the crime bill.
    Now, what are the results? The smallest Federal Government since 
President Kennedy; 3 years of deficit reduction for the first time since 
President Truman; 4.6 million new jobs; more than half the new jobs this 
year above average wage; more high-wage jobs this year in our economy 
than in the previous 5 years combined; the first time in 15 years this 
year American companies will sell more automobiles around the world than 
Japanese companies; the first time in 9 years in the annual vote of 
international economists, the United States was voted the most 
productive economy in the world. We are moving in the right direction, 
and you should be proud of that.
    In the State of New York, the unemployment rate has dropped about 
1\1/2\ percent. There are over 100,000 more jobs. Two million New 
Yorkers are eligible for lower interest, longer repayment terms on their 
college loans; 3.1 million New Yorkers are protected by the family leave 
law. You'll get another 6,100 police in the crime bill; you've already 
gotten 108, within 2 weeks after the crime bill was signed, to New York. 
You've got 20 percent more funding in Head Start and $400 million for 
prisons. We are making a good beginning. We are moving forward, and 
we're doing it together. That's what partnerships are about.
    Do we have more to do? Of course, we do. And I want to mention just 
some of the things that were left undone by this Congress and some of 
the things we need to do in our own partnership. We walked away from 
some very important environmental legislation. And I'll just mention 
one: The Superfund bill was filibustered at the end of the Congress. The 
Superfund bill to clean up toxic waste dumps was supported by the 
chemical companies, the unions, and the Sierra Club. I never saw 
anything they were all for at the same time. There was no one in America 
against the Superfund bill except more than 40 Republican Senators who 
didn't want any Member of Congress who happened to be in the other party 
or the President to come to New York and say, we're helping you to clean 
up toxic waste dumps. So the poison is in the ground because the 
filibuster poisoned the political atmosphere. And we have to change 
that. We have to change that.
    We walked away from three bills that will help to change the culture 
of Washington: campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, and a bill to 
say--and the business people ought to like this--a bill to say that when 
Congress imposes a requirement on private employers, the Congress has to 
observe the same requirement, live under the laws you impose on the 
private sector. And we're going to do our best to pass all three of 
those next year.
    And then--Governor Cuomo has already talked about health care. Let 
me say that it was interesting to me, the day after the health care 
legislation was declared over for this session, all the papers were all 
of a sudden filled with articles about how all the problems are still 
there: more and more Americans losing their right to choose their 
doctor; '93 census shows that another 1.1 million Americans in working 
families, in working families, lost their health insurance; the cost of 
health care is still going up at well over the rate of inflation. So 
this will not go away.

[[Page 2074]]

    And I also want to say--and I don't think I've ever said this in 
public before, but I finally made a study of this. When I came to 
Washington, I came to Washington from a State that was both low in per 
capita income and had a high percentage of poor people. So I never had 
to worry about the problems of New York, which is high in per capita 
income but has a high percentage of poor people. I am convinced now that 
that Medicaid formula is unfair to you, and I think we should change it. 
And I think that's fair. [Applause] Thank you.
    You all--you need to sit down, or you'll increase my mail from 
someplace else. [Laughter]
    But it is--I will work with Governor Cuomo, with Mayor Giuliani, 
with others. We will work through this. It's not going to be easy, but 
this is an error, I think, in policy that the Congress did not make on 
purpose. It was something that had not been fully accounted for. I mean, 
in the last couple of years when Charlie's been trying to get more for 
New York, there were people who were on purpose trying to get more for 
their States. I didn't mean it like that. Rangel's eyes nearly popped 
out when I said that. [Laughter] But I think it is very important, and 
we will work through it.
    The other thing I want to say is something about welfare. Now 
welfare reform has become like God, motherhood, and apple pie; 
everybody's for it. And that's good. Franklin Roosevelt said in the 
Depression that to dole out relief in this way is a subtle destroyer of 
the human spirit. No one ever intended for it to work this way. And I 
think I would be fair in saying that no President has ever spent as much 
time as I have had the opportunity to spend, because I was a Governor, 
actually talking with people on welfare. I find that the people on 
welfare would rather us change the system than almost any other group of 
people in America; they're not very satisfied with it either.
    So what we have to do is to find a way that rewards work, that 
requires work, but that also enables people who work to be responsible 
workers and good parents at the same time. That is very important. I 
sent a welfare reform bill to Congress last spring. The Congress did not 
act on it this year. I hope and believe they will act on it next year. 
It will work to reduce teen pregnancy, to toughen child support 
enforcement, to educate people more, and also to give them the support 
they need for their kids if they go to work. And we will ask Congress to 
pass that plan.
    In the meanwhile, we have to keep granting these waivers. I saw when 
all of you were clapping before that you actually know what a waiver is. 
If you know what a waiver is, this is the largest group ever gathered in 
the history of the United States that knew what a waiver was--which is 
amazing to me, I mean, that's something which is truly laudable. A 
waiver means that the Federal Government has a bunch of rules and 
regulations it ought not to have to tell you not to do things you ought 
to be able to do, but we'll let you do it anyway. That's what a waiver 
is. And today I guess the most important thing I have to announce is 
that I'm going to give one of those waivers to New York for your welfare 
reform proposal.
    I believe very strongly in this. Everybody talks about welfare 
reform, but some people do it, and some people just talk about it. I 
want you to have a chance to prove that jobs first works. I want you to 
have a chance to prove that you can either move 21,000 families off of 
welfare or keep them from going on in the first place. I want you to 
have a chance to prove what I know, that most people on welfare want to 
work if it will work for them in their family situation. And so that's 
what this welfare reform waiver will do. And I know you will make the 
most of it.
    I want to say again, this administration is dedicated to 
partnership. I am a Democrat by heritage, instinct, and conviction, but 
I don't believe the National Government has all the answers. I believe 
that we need a smaller but more effective National Government. I think 
that we need more activism at the grassroots level. Tomorrow I'm going 
to Massachusetts to sign an education bill that clears away for all 
States a lot of the rules and regulations that kept people from 
educating our children, especially our poor children, as well as they 
are capable of doing. This is a direction we must continue.

[[Page 2075]]

    The last thing I want to say is that this is not entirely a job for 
government, and attitude and personal conduct count. You know, those 
kids that beat up that New York City transit detective the other night, 
they should have been home. They shouldn't have been out on the street 
beating him up. There's nothing I can do as President to change that. 
But all of us together, if we talk about the responsibilities of parents 
and neighborhoods and community groups, if we take some of that crime 
money and use it to provide opportunities for kids to go someplace 
constructive late at night and to have role models that are positive 
role models, if they don't have a home to go home to, that will make a 
difference.
    And that's something you have to do. That's something you have to 
do. We need more people who will do what those two men did on the Upper 
East Side yesterday when they put their own lives at risk to help that 
man who was stabbed at the automated teller machine and then go get the 
people who stabbed him. That's what America ought to be about. We ought 
to lift people like that up, we ought to follow them, and we ought to do 
what they do. That's the last point I want to make to you. None of this 
is going to work unless most of us have our heads on straight.
    I've become a friend of Ken Burns, the wonderful filmmaker who did 
the series on the Civil War and did the baseball series. And so I 
watched it all. It's the only baseball I got this year. Reich is going 
to fix that for next year, or he'll need three boxes to get up here when 
he comes back. [Laughter]
    But listen to this. Listen to what your Governor said in the 
baseball film. Baseball--Mario Cuomo is talking about why he always 
liked Joe DiMaggio. He said, ``Always you look for heroes. Always the 
people look up to see something that represents them, to something that 
is larger than them, and if it's perfect, something they might become.'' 
Well, we can't all be Joe DiMaggio, but we could have all done what 
those guys did at the teller machine yesterday, every one of us. And we 
can all take one kid in trouble and give that boy or girl somebody to 
look up to. And we can all do less bellyaching and more visionary talk 
about the future. And every one of us, including me, every one of us 
could spend a little less time placing blame and a little more time 
assuming responsibility. That is what is great about your country.
    And I just want to leave you with this thought: When President 
Aristide went back to Haiti this weekend, there were all these Haitian 
people in the street with these little signs with their messages on it. 
And the most frequent message was, in Creole, a simple ``Thank you, 
America.'' And if you had seen just the eyes, the faces of our young men 
and women down there in uniform who brought them their freedom back, 
some of them Haitian-Americans, Americans of all different races and 
sizes and both genders, it would be impossible for you not to want to do 
whatever you could to make this country and this State what it ought to 
be.
    So the Governor will try to do his part. I'll try to do mine. If you 
do yours, the 21st century will be the best time this country ever had.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:45 p.m. in the Imperial Ballroom at the 
Sheraton New York Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gov. Stan 
Lundine of New York.