[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 30 (Monday, July 31, 1995)]
[Pages 1295-1296]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on House Action on Appropriations Legislation

July 24, 1995

    I proposed a reasonable plan to balance the budget while investing 
more in education and training. Republicans want to balance the budget 
through cuts that hurt working families while providing a huge tax cut 
that goes largely to people who don't need it. They are cutting deeply 
into Medicare and Medicaid, and they are cutting the very education and 
training programs that our working families need.
    Nowhere are the differences between my approach and theirs more 
clear than the extreme bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee 
today. That measure slashes critical resources for education, training, 
and jobs for our people. If Congress sends me this bill in its present 
form, I will have to veto it.
    I want to invest in our people, not turn back the clock on them. 
There has always been a strong bipartisan consensus for investment in 
quality education, training, health, and worker protections. These 
harsh, partisan, and unwise cuts undermine that consensus as well as the 
future income and living standards of working families and their 
children.

[[Page 1296]]

    In addition, I believe abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. But 
this bill effectively ends the family planning program that Republicans 
and Democrats have long agreed is needed to help prevent the need for 
abortion. Furthermore, it changes existing law to allow States to deny 
poor women access to abortions under Medicaid even if they are victims 
of rape or incest. That is wrong.
    I once again urge the Congress to begin the work of making 
commonsense corrections in this and other appropriations bills. I will 
not allow our people to be sacrificed for the sake of political 
ideology.