[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 31 (Monday, August 7, 1995)]
[Pages 1350-1353]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Congressional Action on Appropriations Legislation and an 
Exchange With Reporters

August 1, 1995

    The President. Good morning. Looking over the last few days, it is 
clear that this Congress is on the wrong track. I began the year hoping 
to make bipartisan progress on balancing the budget, on reducing 
paperwork, reforming regulation and welfare. And therefore, I was very 
pleased last week when a bipartisan majority voted to reject the extreme 
anti-environment provisions adopted in the House committee. That was the 
right thing to do.
    But then the lobbyists for the polluters went to work. They got the 
leadership of the House of Representatives to call the bill back up. And 
last night, in a remarkable exercise of special interest power, the 
House voted to gut environmental and public health protections. It was a 
stealth attack on our environment in the guise of a budget bill.
    The bill would effectively end Federal enforcement of the Clean 
Water Act and the Clean Air Act, a bill that my Republican predecessor 
said was his proudest legislative achievement. It allows poisons in our 
drinking water, raw sewage on our beaches, oil refineries to pollute, 
and limits a community's right to know what chemicals are toxic which 
are released in their neighborhoods. It would be bad for our children, 
our health, and our environment.

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    This is Washington special interest politics at its most effective 
and at its worst. Even before the 17 special interest provisions were 
added, the bill had already dramatically undercut environmental 
protection by cutting environmental enforcement in half.
    You don't need to damage the environment to balance the budget. Our 
budget demonstrates that, and the budget the American people get out of 
this session of Congress ought to demonstrate that. In the past few 
days, a battalion of lobbyists has swarmed Capitol Hill, exerting 
enormous pressure to save these loopholes. I said I would use the power 
of my office to help people, not polluters. I believe we can protect the 
environment and grow the economy.
    So on this so-called environmental bill, my message to the American 
people should be very, very clear: Don't worry. We'll make commonsense 
reforms. But the minute this polluter's protection act hits my desk, I 
will veto it.
    One of the most interesting things that has achieved not too much 
notice in the last few days is that while Congress has been taking care 
of the special interests, it's also taking care of itself. It is way 
behind schedule on virtually every budget bill, in the hope, apparently, 
of enforcing a choice at the end of this fiscal year between shutting 
the Government down and adopting extreme budget cuts which will be bad 
for our country, bad for our economy, and bad for our future. 
Apparently, they don't even plan on letting the American people see 
their planned Medicare cuts until the last possible minute. But one 
bill, wouldn't you know it, is right on schedule--the bill that funds 
the Congress, its staff, and its operations.
    I don't think Congress should take care of its own business before 
it takes care of the people's business. If the congressional leadership 
follows through on its plan to send me its own funding bill before it 
finishes work on the rest of the budget, I will be compelled to veto it.
    I want to work with Congress to pass a balanced budget that protects 
the health and the security of the American people, a balanced budget 
that strengthens our economy and raises the incomes of our people and 
the future prospects of our children. But we have to remember in order 
to do this that all the special interests have to be subordinated to the 
broader public interest. That is not happening now, but we can still get 
things back on track. That's what I want to do, and I still ask, again, 
the Congress to work with me to do it.
    Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International].

Opposition From Congress

    Q. Mr. President, your policies and your judgment calls appear to be 
under siege on Capitol Hill, Waco, Whitewater, Bosnia, social programs, 
and so forth. How debilitating has this been on you personally, on your 
administration, on the country? And obviously, you're whistling in the 
dark if you think you're going to have common ground.
    The President. I disagree. It's not been debilitating; it's been 
invigorating. And I wouldn't be so surprised. There are two significant 
things that--I would say big issues--that have become clear in the last 
few days. One is you can see who's in control in this Congress, who's in 
control of the people that compelled this unusual revolt on the 
environmental issues. You see the story on the NRA today: No gun control 
measures will be voted out of committee or on the floor of the House. 
I'm sure glad we got the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban first, 
and I still think we ought to have a ban on the cop-killer bullets. You 
see--we're investigating--this Congress is investigating the AARP and 
letting the NRA run one of its own investigations. So you see who's in 
control. That's the first thing you see.
    The second thing you see is more hopeful. There were, after all, 50 
Republicans who broke ranks in the House and said that they would put 
the environment ahead of party. Senator Dole yesterday said that--in 
Vermont at the Governors' conference--that he wanted to pass a welfare 
reform bill free of the extremist provisions which the members of his 
caucus, some of them, had demanded that he put on a welfare reform bill. 
And so we may be moving toward finding common ground in welfare reform.
    So you see two things. You see who's in control, and it's not good. 
You see some people feeling uncomfortable about it, and we

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may be able to make some progress. And so I don't think we know what the 
outcome will be.

Waco Hearings

    Q. There's a report today that Mack McLarty said in a memo that 
there would be no significant action on Waco without White House 
approval. When did you know of the plan to tear-gas the compound, and 
did you personally approve it?
    The President. Mr. Mikva has said in the letter exactly what my role 
in that was, and it's consistent with what I've said all along. And I 
don't have anything new to add to that.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, have you made a final decision that there will be 
no retaliation for the shoot-down of Captain O'Grady? And if so, why 
not?
    The President. I have no comment on that.

Political Reform Commission

    Q. Mr. President, speaking of special interests, do you feel that 
the Speaker is dragging his feet on the bipartisan campaign finance 
reform commission? And what else are you willing to do to make sure that 
that happens?
    The President. Dragging his feet is an apt, but inadequate, 
description of what has happened. [Laughter] I mean, we shook hands on 
that in New Hampshire. I thought it was a fairly simple deal. The man 
said--the gentleman who asked us the question, he said ``Why don't you 
guys do a base closing commission.'' We said okay. Five days later I 
wrote a letter to the Speaker. I didn't get an answer. Five weeks later, 
I wrote--I said, again, okay, here are two people that are the kind of 
people that I would put on this commission, and I'd like for them to get 
with someone you designate, and we'll set it up--Doris Kearns Goodwin 
and John Gardner. Those are pretty respectable Americans. So far, they 
have not gotten any response or had any success either.
    So we're going to keep trying. I mean, I think that it is wrong to 
say you're going to do something and not do it. So I hope we can do it.
    Q. Have you met with them--have you met with the two of them 
already, Goodwin and----
    The President. I have not, but we've obviously been in touch with 
them. And we're trying to--we're going to keep pushing until we get an 
answer one way or the other. If the Speaker does not want to do this, he 
ought to say that he has no intention of doing it. But we shouldn't just 
let it hang out here. What we ought to do is to do it.

Whitewater Hearings

    Q. Mr. President, is there anything you or the First Lady could do 
to end all of the hearings on the continuing interest in the Whitewater 
business, especially in the aftermath of the Vince Foster suicide? For 
example, there's a proposal in Newsweek magazine by Joe Klein that Mrs. 
Clinton volunteer to testify before the committees to explain her role.
    The President. I don't know what in the world we could do. I mean 
there's basically been this big--you know, I don't have anything new to 
add. We've answered all the questions. There has been a $3.6 million RTC 
investigation which basically says that what we said was there all the 
time. You know, no one questions--no serious person questions all the 
reports on whether Vince Foster committed suicide or not. I don't know 
what to do. I think these hearings will proceed and our people will 
cooperate, and we'll just see what happens.
    Yes, Bill [Bill Plante, CBS News].

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, we know that you just met with the leadership to 
try and make your veto of the Bosnia arms embargo lifting stick. But in 
the event that it doesn't, and not knowing as we speak what the size of 
the margin is going to be, what's the next step? What else would you 
look to do?
    The President. Well, whatever the vote is, we still might sustain a 
veto. But I was encouraged by a few people who told me that they had 
decided on reflection that it was not the thing to do now. The Rapid 
Reaction Force, after all, is showing some strength there. And I would 
remind you that the only thing that has ever worked in the last 2\1/2\

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years is when the Bosnian Serbs thought the United Nations would permit 
NATO and the Americans who are working with NATO to use air power to 
stop the aggression so that there would have to be a negotiated 
settlement. And in the last several days, the last couple of weeks in 
Gorazde, you know, we've gotten five convoys through; there has been no 
assault on it.
    And I think that this new strategy will work if we can hammer out a 
negotiated settlement and there's a new effort there. So I believe that 
is the best strategy. I've said it all along, and I haven't changed my 
position. I'm going to try to see that position prevail.

Whitewater and Waco Hearings

    Q.  Mr. President, on both the ongoing hearings, Waco and 
Whitewater, are you convinced and can you say for the record that 
everything that is going to come out is out vis-a-vis where you stand in 
the White House and your policy decisions on both?
    The President. As far as I know--we have not added anything new to 
what was already known, but as far as I know we have been totally 
forthcoming and have said everything there is to be said on it.

Telecommunications Reform

    Q.  Mr. President, can you tell us, first of all, why you want to 
veto the telecommunications bill? I understand that you're concerned 
about concentration of media power. And in regard to that, can you 
comment on the merger yesterday between ABC and Walt Disney and the 
proposed merger that may happen today between CBS and Westinghouse and 
whether you see this concentration of power happening?
    The President. Well, I think first of all, you have to take--on 
these mergers, under our law and as a matter of economics, you have to 
take them case by case and analyze them. And all I know about the 
proposed mergers is what I read this morning when I woke up. So I can't 
comment on that.
    I do think it would be an error to set up a situation in the United 
States where one person could own half the television stations in the 
country or half of the media outlets. And we don't have a fairness 
doctrine anymore, and we don't have--particularly if we took the Federal 
Government out of--all the Federal agencies out of any kind of 
maintenance of competition or maintenance of competitive environment, by 
taking the Justice Department out of it, for example.
    I would remind you that we have the most successful 
telecommunications operations in the world partly because we have had 
the proper balance between a highly competitive environment and an 
openness to new forces and new technologies and new entries in it from 
all around the world.
    I want very badly to sign a telecommunications bill. We tried to 
pass one, this administration did, during the last session of Congress. 
One of the interest groups affected by this great drama that's unfolding 
in the telecommunications area prevented, through its supporters in the 
Senate, prevented the bill from passing in the last session of Congress. 
I hope we can get it, but we want to get it right.
    The Vice President has done a lot of work on this over the years. He 
and I have talked about this at great length. And we have negotiated in 
good faith with the Congress to try to get it right. We want very much 
to sign a bill. We believe it will be good for the American economy and 
good for the American consumers if it's the right kind of bill. So we'll 
keep working on it.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:17 a.m. in the Briefing Room at the 
White House.