[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 42 (Monday, October 23, 1995)]
[Pages 1876-1880]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's News Conference

October 19, 1995

    The President. Good morning. The Congress is about to take some 
votes that I believe will move this country in the wrong direction. 
Before they do it, I want to urge them to think again. There's a right 
way to balance this budget and a wrong way. I strongly believe the 
Republicans in Congress are taking the wrong way.
    On Medicare, the House is voting on a $270 billion cut in Medicare 
that will eviscerate the health care system for our older Americans. It 
goes far beyond what is necessary to secure the Medicare Trust Fund. Our 
plan to secure the Medicare Trust Fund secures it for just as long as 
the Republican plan at less than half the cost and with far less burden 
on our seniors.
    The House plan, by contrast, actually weakens existing law on waste, 
fraud, and abuse in the Medicare program, which is a serious problem. 
And therefore, it will undermine our efforts to save funds through 
cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse, as the Attorney General has 
outlined. On the other hand, it increases costs on older Americans 
dramatically. That is the wrong way.
    So my message to the Republicans is simple: I hope you will think 
again; I will not let you destroy Medicare; and I will veto this bill. I 
have to do that to protect the people of the United States and to 
protect the integrity of this program.
    On taxes, just last night we learned from the Republicans' own Joint 
Committee on Taxation that more than half of the American people who 
live in the group earning under $30,000 will pay more taxes if the 
Republican economic plan passes. Why? Because they have a $43-billion 
tax hike targeted at working families. Now this doesn't count the cost 
to working families of the increases in college loans, the child support 
collection fees, the Medicare increases, the Medicaid increases, all 
told, over $140 billion of taxes, fees, and other increases on the most 
vulnerable people in our country and on working families.
    So again, I would say, think again. I won't let you raise taxes on 
working families $48

[[Page 1877]]

billion. That is not the right way to balance the budget. It isn't fair, 
and it won't happen. These bills undermine our values, our values of 
supporting both work and family, our values of being responsible and 
creating opportunity. They are not necessary to balance the budget.
    Meanwhile, Congress is lagging behind on its other business. For the 
budget this year--the fiscal year, as all of you know, ended 3 weeks 
ago, and they have still sent me only 3 of the 13 appropriations bills. 
Last year, all 13 were here and signed into law by the beginning of the 
fiscal year.
    It's been 6 months since the Oklahoma City bombing killed 169 of our 
fellow Americans and 6 months since congressional leaders promised that 
they would pass the anti-terrorism legislation by Memorial Day. They 
still haven't passed the bill. They haven't even scheduled it for a 
final vote. I might add also, one of the important items in their 
contract which I did support, the line-item veto, has still not been 
passed by the Congress and sent to me. And perhaps most troubling of 
all, because they refuse to extend the debt limit, they are threatening 
to plunge our country into default for the first time in the entire 
history of the Republic. This would, of course, mean higher interest 
rates, which would increase the deficit we both want to reduce, and it 
would also lead to higher home mortgage costs for millions of homeowners 
whose mortgages are tied to Federal interest rates.
    I was told this morning by the Council of Economic Advisers probably 
somewhere between 7 and 10 million homeowners have mortgages that are 
tied to Federal interest rates. So again, my message to Congress on this 
issue is simple: We must not play political games with the good faith 
and credit of the United States. Pass the debt limit, and I will sign 
it.
    It's time for Congress to turn back from passing extreme measures 
that never will become law and instead to work with me for the American 
people to balance this budget in a way that advances our values and 
supports our interests. That is what we ought to do. We can still do 
that, it is what I still believe we will do.

1993 Budget

    Now, I can only imagine what the first question is. [Laughter] Wait 
a minute, let me just say one thing. Before you ask this question, I 
want to say something about my speech--well, the two speeches I gave in 
which I made reference to the economic plan of 1993. If anything I said 
was interpreted by anybody to imply that I am not proud of that program, 
proud of the people who voted for it, or that I don't believe it was the 
right thing to do, then I shouldn't have said that, because I am very 
proud of it. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I am proud 
of the people in Congress who voted for it. And the results speak for 
themselves. After all, that program actually did reduce the deficit by 
$1 trillion over 7 years. That program drove down interest rates. That 
program created an economic climate in which the American people were 
able to produce 7\1/2\ million new jobs, 2\1/2\ million new homeowners, 
a record number of new businesses, and put this country moving in the 
right direction.
    So if I said anything which can be read in any other way, then I 
should not have said that. And I certainly did not mean to do that, and 
I accept responsibility for it, because I am very, very proud of what I 
did. And I have tried to make that clear in every talk I have made this 
year, and I reaffirm it to you here today--all of the parts of the 
program. We did the right thing for America, and I'm proud of it today, 
and I'm proud of the people who voted for it.
    Q. Mr. President, did you mean to say what you said, that you regret 
having raised taxes as much as you did?
    The President. What I said was--what I meant to say is, I think 
nobody enjoys raising taxes. I think our system works better when 
Democrats and Republicans work together to reach consensus, and I think 
it would work better now if we did. That's what I meant to say.
    But I do not believe that when we had the decision to make and we 
had the vote to cast, I take full responsibility, proudly, for what we 
did. It was the right thing to do. I believe all the people who have 
heard me talk about it knew what I meant to say, and I'm proud of the 
Congress for voting for it. And if we hadn't done it, we'd really be in

[[Page 1878]]

a fix today. And I might say, the Republicans who criticize us obviously 
think we did the right thing since they're not trying to undo much of it 
at all.
    Q. But did you raise taxes too much?

Medicare Legislation

    Q. Mr. President, you said that you'd veto the Republican Medicare 
bill for $270 billion worth of cuts. Your own Medicare bill is $124 
billion in cuts. Where do you see a compromise between the two? How far 
are you willing to go?
    The President. Well, first of all, I think we have to draw a--I am 
willing to do what they want to do, which is to extend the life of the 
Medicare Trust Fund to 2006. That's what we both do. Now beyond that, I 
don't believe we ought to be raising costs on the elderly poor through 
the Medicare program and the far worse things that are in the Medicaid 
program. You know, the Medicaid program supplies the copays and the 
deductible for very poor elderly people, and they propose to stop doing 
that.
    It's estimated we could lose a million seniors out of the Medicare 
program, and I just don't think we need to do that. We can balance the 
budget with the cuts that I have proposed, and that's what I think we 
ought to do. I believe that they are more than adequate to balance the 
budget and to secure the Medicare Trust Fund without really burning our 
seniors.
    Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International].

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, slight change of subject. Would you send 
peacekeeping troops to Bosnia if we do not get congressional approval? 
And you have never stated that you would only keep them for one year. 
Your people have and the Cabinet has, but is that a flat commitment?
    The President. Let me answer the question carefully. The reason I 
have never said that is that I wanted to define our mission and have the 
mission be defined in the way that we did in Haiti. We defined our 
mission in Haiti, and we said, okay, this is when we think we will 
complete our mission, and we did it. And then we said the United Nations 
would complete its mission with the next Presidential election, which 
occurs early next year.
    In Bosnia, I wanted to make sure that we had a clear notion of what 
our mission was. Yesterday, General Joulwan, who is our NATO Commander, 
came in with the national security team, and we had a very extended 
session about the plans that are now being developed, which, of course, 
cannot be finalized until we get a peace agreement, because the nature 
of the map and the nature of the agreement among the parties will 
determine in part the nature of the commitments that the United Nations 
and that NATO will have to make.
    But our commanders believe we can complete our mission in a year. 
That's what they believe. Before I make that pledge to the American 
people, I want to know what the peace agreement is finally, and I want 
to have a very high level of confidence that I can make that commitment 
and keep it. But it looks like we're talking about a commitment in the 
nature--in the range of a year.
    Q. Wait a minute. Would you go ahead, then, and send the troops, 
even if Congress does not approve?
    The President. I am not going to lay down any of my constitutional 
prerogatives here today. I have said before and I will say again, I 
would welcome and I hope I get an expression of congressional support. I 
think it's important for the United States to be united in doing this. I 
believe that we had a very good meeting with the Speaker and Senator 
Dole and a large number of Congressmen, as you know, a couple of weeks 
ago. I expect that our people will be asked and will have to answer 
difficult questions; that's the job of the Congress. But I believe in 
the end, the Congress will support this operation.

1993 Budget

    Q. Mr. President, may we take it--just a final followup on this--may 
we take it from what you said here today that what you meant to say on 
taxes was that while you raised them more than you would have liked to, 
that it was perhaps a mistake to say you raised them too much?
    The President. If I said anything which implies that I think that we 
didn't do what

[[Page 1879]]

we should have done, given the choices we faced at the time, I shouldn't 
have said that.
    My mother once said I should never give a talk after 7 p.m. at 
night, especially if I'm tired, and she sure turned out to be right is 
all I can say. [Laughter]

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, back on the subject of the deployment in Bosnia, 
many experts feel that by the very nature of a deployment, American 
troops would become targets for various groups who want to disrupt the 
situation. How do you prevent that? And having committed troops to 
Europe twice in this century because they got into a mess they couldn't 
resolve, why does the United States have to continue to come to Europe's 
rescue?
    The President. Because now what we're trying to do is to avoid just 
what drug us into Europe. If you remember, I said we would not go into a 
situation in which we'd be in combat in Bosnia on one side of the 
conflict, nor would we be engaged with the United Nations mission 
because of the rules of engagement there, but that if we can make a 
peace, since NATO would have to be involved in implementing the peace 
agreement and assuring its success and we are the leaders of NATO, we 
would have to go into it. The reason we need to do this is to--precisely 
to avoid the kind of convulsive conflict with massive consequences that 
drug us into Europe twice before and got huge numbers of Americans 
killed in the defense of freedom and decency. I strongly believe we can 
do that.
    Now one of the things we are concerned about, obviously, is that if 
a peace is made, even in good faith, there may be people who don't like 
the peace. And we don't want--not only the United States but any of the 
NATO soldiers or any of our allies not in NATO who will be taking part 
in this, and we expect a significant number of non-NATO members to 
contribute--we don't want anybody to be targets, and we've given quite a 
bit of thought to that. And as this plan proceeds, we'll see what 
happens.
    Let me just emphasize--first of all, first things first: The leaders 
of the three countries have agreed to come here to the United States to 
meet in Ohio at the end of this month. We are very pleased by that, and 
that is the next big step. The most important thing, the thing that will 
reduce danger to everybody, is if these leaders will agree to an 
honorable peace and then do everything they can in good faith to keep 
it.
    I must tell you, I'm somewhat encouraged by the fact that the cease-
fire seems to be taking hold. The incidents seem to be dropping 
throughout Bosnia. There seems to be an atmosphere of mutual commitment 
taking hold there, and we obviously hope that can be sustained.

Budget Negotiations

    Q. Mr. President, yesterday you said you were perhaps genetically 
optimistic by nature that there would in the end be a deal when all is 
said and done. But Speaker Gingrich keeps saying he's willing to 
cooperate, but he's not willing to compromise on his bottom line in the 
tax cut, the Medicare cuts, and all these other issues. Why are you 
optimistic that there still will be a deal?
    The President. Because this is America and people usually do the 
right thing, and because we've been around here for a long, long time. 
Now, I know that at least in reading between the lines, it appears that 
the extreme conservative wing in the House continues to move the Speaker 
back and affect what happens in the Senate and make the possibility of 
honorable compromise more remote. But I believe in the end, that's the 
right thing for the country.
    My goal--I will say again, and what I try to capture from time to 
time, sometimes not too well, as we see, is that if you have two people 
who both make a good-faith effort at reaching a common stated goal, the 
balanced budget in this case, and they have different approaches, if 
they get together in genuine honesty and openness--I think there's a way 
for me to meet their stated objectives, which is a balanced budget in 7 
years with a family tax cut, and I think they want a capital gains tax 
cut and extending the Medicare Trust Fund until 2006, and for them to 
meet our stated goals, which is to maintain our commitments to our 
investments in education and our obligations to the elderly through the 
Medicare program and to the elderly and our children, the disabled 
people in America

[[Page 1880]]

through the Medicaid program, and our obligations to the environment and 
to technology and to the things that will make our economy grow--we can 
both meet our objectives. And if we do it in good faith, we might wind 
up with a budget that is better than either one of us proposed. That's 
what I hope will happen, and I'm going to leave the door open for that. 
But meanwhile, my job is to protect the American people if something 
happens that I think is very wrong. And I think the Medicare budget is 
wrong for America.

Presidential Commission on Race

    Q. Mr. President, the University of Texas speech included several 
challenges on race to blacks and whites, alike. How do you plan to 
further the conversation? Are there any next steps? What are your 
thoughts about a Presidential commission on race?
    The President. Well, as you know, I received a letter signed by a 
number of House Members asking for that. And I have that and a number of 
other ideas under consideration. After I spoke at the University of 
Texas, and after so many came here to Washington in that march in what I 
thought was such a profoundly moving spirit, an open spirit and is 
clearly a manifestation of a desire to assume more responsibilities for 
themselves, for their families, their communities, and to reach out to 
the white community and their fellow Americans and to try to figure out 
how we can work together, I think that there is a big responsibility on 
me and on others to carry forward with that. And as you know, in the 
last few days I've been quite active with previously scheduled events. 
But we are turning our attention now very carefully to what should be 
done to follow up. I think we owe the country a followup, and I'm going 
to do my best to do it right.
    I'll take one more question. Mara [Mara Liasson, National Public 
Radio].

Budget Negotiations

    Q. Mr. President, just to follow up. This, I believe, is the first 
time you've said that you think you can reach a balanced budget in 7 
years. How would the Republicans' plans need to alter so that you could 
reach that goal and still meet your----
    The President. Well, I think we could reach it in 7 years; I think 
we could reach it in 8 years; I think we could reach it in 9 years. Our 
budget has moved forward from 10 to 9 years just because of the 
improvements in the economy and our deficit reduction package since we 
started. So we're between 7 and 9 now.
    So I think it's obvious--what would have to happen is that we would 
have to find a formula in which we would monitor the reduction of the 
deficit as we go toward balance because under either of these programs, 
no one can predict with any exactitude--I mean, no American corporation 
has a 7-year budget. They may have a 7-year plan or a 10-year plan or a 
5-year plan, but they don't have budgets in that sense, because you 
can't project what all will happen.
    So we have to have sort of checks along the way to make sure we're 
on our downward target. And then we'd have to find a way to take care of 
these concerns that I have repeatedly expressed. I do not want us to 
make education less available. I don't want us to have retrenchment on 
technology and research. I do not want us to burden, unnecessarily, 
people who barely have enough money to get by on, who depend on Medicare 
and Medicaid. I don't want to damage the university hospitals, the 
children's hospitals, and the urban and rural hospital network of this 
country with what I think the Medicare budget will do. I don't want to 
damage the environment. And I do not want to tolerate a $48-billion tax 
increase on working families with incomes under $30,000. That's wrong.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President's 103d news conference began at 11:29 a.m. in the 
Briefing Room at the White House.