[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 38 (Monday, September 25, 1995)]
[Pages 1664-1665]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Prior to Departure From Santa Monica, California, and an 
Exchange With Reporters

September 22, 1995

    The President. If I might, just listening to the county supervisors 
talk, it occurred to me that, for the benefit of the people in this 
county and this State who are interested in this problem, I ought to 
make two general points. First of all, this is an example of the kind of 
teamwork we need to solve the transitional problems, the many kinds of 
transitional problems that are plaguing the United States today as we 
move into a different kind of economy and a different kind of world.
    They don't necessarily have a partisan tinge. They really require 
people to be creative, to be willing to embrace new ideas, to remember 
what the fundamental mission is, and to achieve that mission. And I want 
to applaud the people here who have spoken today for the way they work 
together across party lines. We need to do more of that in Washington 
right now in this budget process.
    The second thing I want to emphasize to the people of this county--
and this is true, by the way, to a greater or lesser extent in every 
State in this country and in very rural areas as well as more urbanized 
areas--you heard one of the commissioners say that one in three people 
in this county is uninsured. Well, one in three people in this county is 
not unemployed. Most uninsured people today are working people. And the 
reason the Medicaid program is so important is that it provides places 
like Los Angeles County with that extra amount of assistance, even 
though it's targeted to the poor, that helps them to keep their public 
health clinics and public hospitals open to deal with what is an 
increasingly difficult problem in America, which is working families 
without health insurance.
    I tried to fix that last year, and my proposed solution didn't find 
favor. But if we're not going to have a comprehensive solution to it, 
then the only other alternative, if you believe as I do that you can't 
simply turn working families away when their children are sick or when 
the breadwinners are sick, the only alternative is to place greater 
emphasis on public health clinics and hospitals that can help with 
primary and preventive care, as well as with people when they get very 
ill.
    So this is a very important model, this restructuring that will take 
place over the next few years. And it won't be easy for them. But what 
they're trying to do is absolutely critical, given the fact that another 
million Americans every year who are in working families are without 
insurance. It would have been criminal to permit all of these clinics to 
close and all of this crisis to develop, not just because of the very 
poorest people in this county, but because of the working families on 
very limited incomes who don't have insurance.
    And that's a national issue, it's not a Los Angeles County issue. 
And if it can be solved here with the restructuring, a lot of people all 
over America will be learning a lot from what you're doing, and the 
working families of our country will be better served by it.
    Thank you very much.

Debt Limit Legislation

    Q. Mr. President, what does that say about the spirit of cooperation 
and problem solving: Speaker Gingrich says that he won't bring a debt 
limit bill to the floor of the House unless you agree to the Republican 
budget tax cuts.
    The President. Well, a lot of things have been said, you know. All I 
can say is that it's important for me to try to keep the rhetoric down 
and to keep calm. But I will say this: The United States has never 
failed to recognize it's obligations to pay its debts. And the failure 
to raise the debt limit has nothing to do with holding the deficit down 
or balancing the budget. It is basically saying you're going to be a 
piker and welsh on your debts, and the United States has never done 
that. And it would be irresponsible to do that.
    And let me emphasize that if the United States were to refuse to 
raise its debt limit, the real consequence to the Speaker and to the 
Republican majority in Congress would be to dramatically raise the risk 
that their own budget plan would fail because what would happen 
immediately is people would start to charge us more interest on our 
debt.
    And most of the leaders in the Congress were around in the 12 years 
that we quad- 

[[Page 1665]]

rupled the national debt. I wasn't there. But I can tell you today that 
our budget would be balanced but for the debts run up in the 12 years 
before I showed up in Washington. And if we don't--if we didn't raise 
the debt limit, the only practical impact would be, since we eventually 
would have to pay our debts, is that interest rates would go up, more 
and more of our budget would go to interest on the debt. It could raise 
our interest rates for a decade, and it could wreck their own budget 
plan.
    So I just don't believe in the end that they will do that. There's 
going to be a lot of verbal back-and-forth between now and then, but it 
would be so irresponsible and it would undermine their own objectives, 
that I can't believe that it would happen.
    The United States is a good citizen. We don't welsh on our debts, 
and we're not about to start doing it now.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:20 a.m. at the Santa Monica Airport. A 
tape was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.