[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 49 (Monday, December 11, 1995)]
[Pages 2139-2140]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Vetoing Budget Reconciliation Legislation and an Exchange 
With Reporters

December 6, 1995

    The President: Throughout our history, American Presidents have used 
the power of the veto to protect our values as a country. In that spirit 
today, I am acting to protect the values that bind us together in our 
national community.
    My goals as President have been to preserve the American dream for 
all of our people, to bring the American people together, and to keep 
America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and 
prosperity. In pursuit of that strategy, I have sought to grow the 
economy, to shrink the Government but leave it strong enough to do the 
job, and most important, to elevate mainstream values that all Americans 
share: opportunity and responsibility, work and family, and bringing our 
community together so that we can be stronger.
    I have consistently said that if Congress sends me a budget that 
violates our values, I'll veto it. Three decades ago, this pen you see 
here was used to honor our values when President Johnson used it to sign 
Medicare into law. Today, I am vetoing the biggest Medicare and Medicaid 
cuts in history, deep cuts in education, a rollback in environmental 
protection, and a tax increase on working families. I am using this pen 
to preserve our commitment to our parents, to protect opportunity for 
our children, to defend the public health and our natural resources and 
natural beauty, and to stop a tax increase that actually undercuts the 
value of work.
    We must balance the budget, but we must do it in a way that honors 
the commitments that we all have and that keeps our people together.
    Therefore, today, I am vetoing this Republican budget because it 
would break those commitments and would lead us toward weakness and 
division when we must move toward strength and unity.

[At this point, the President signed the veto message.]

    Can you bring me some more ink, boys? Here, Todd, I knew you had 
some. It's a small well. Leave it here and see if I need it.
    Q. Mr. President, what happens next?
    The President. I'm about to say. As I have said repeatedly, America 
must balance its budget. It's wrong to pass a legacy of debt onto our 
children. Our long-term growth depends on it. But we must do it in a way 
that is good for economic growth and for our values.
    The budget I have vetoed in a very real sense, in very concrete 
ways, undermines our values and would restrict the future of families 
like the ones that are here with me today. American families want to 
make the most of their own lives and to pass opportunity onto their 
children. They deserve our respect and our support. Above all, we 
shouldn't make it harder for them to fulfill their dreams.
    When it comes to health care, we owe a duty to our parents. We have 
to secure Medicare, and I've spelled out how to do that. But the budget 
I just vetoed would turn Medicare into a second-class system. The 
Medicare system has served all senior citizens well for 30 years; it 
would be over.
    This budget would end Medicaid's guarantee that no senior citizen 
and no American in need would be denied medical care, including poor 
children and children with disabilities. It would deny care for hundreds 
of thousands of pregnant women and disabled children. It would repeal 
standards that ensure quality for nursing homes.
    Education means opportunity, and opportunity is the key to the 
American dream. But this budget cuts education by $30 billion, even in 
this high technology age when education is more important than ever 
before. It would essentially end the direct student loan program. It 
would deny college scholarships to 360,000 deserving students. It would 
deny preschool opportunities to 180,000 children in the Head Start 
program.
    We must protect the Earth that God gave us and guarantee our 
children safe food and clean water. This budget would give oil companies 
the right to drill in the last unspoiled arctic wilderness in Alaska. 
And it is loaded with special-interest provisions that squander our 
natural resources. Already, short-term budget cuts have forced us to 
pull back enforcement of clean air, clean water, even in- 

[[Page 2140]]

spections of toxic waste sites in our neighborhoods.
    People who work hard and save for retirement ought to be able to 
retire with dignity. We worked hard last year to secure the pension 
benefits of 40 million Americans with landmark reform legislation. This 
bill would give companies the green light to raid pension funds and put 
those retirements at risk again.
    Americans know we have to reform the broken welfare system. But 
cutting child care that helps mothers move from welfare to work, cutting 
help for abused and disabled children, cutting school lunch, that's not 
welfare reform. Real welfare reform should be tough on work and tough on 
responsibility but not tough on children or tough on parents who are 
responsible and who want to work. We shouldn't lose this historic chance 
to end welfare as we know it by using the words welfare reform as just 
another cover to violate our values.
    No one who works hard should be taxed into poverty. In 1993, we 
nearly doubled the earned-income tax credits so that we could say, ``If 
you work 40 hours a week, you've got children in the home, you won't be 
taxed into poverty. The tax system will help lift you out of poverty.'' 
But this budget raises taxes on our hardest pressed working people, even 
as it gives unnecessarily large income tax relief and other tax relief 
to those who need it least. Nearly 8 million working families would pay 
more in new taxes than they would receive from any tax cut in this bill.
    Beyond our principles, let me just say this budget is bad for the 
economy. No business on the edge of the 21st century would cut its 
investment in education and training, in research. No business would do 
that. No business would cut back on technology on the edge of the 21st 
century. The Japanese are in a recession, and they recently doubled 
their research budget. We are voting in this budget, if I were to allow 
it to become law, to cut our research budget by a year when we're in a 
period of economic growth, while another country, looking to the future 
in a recession, is doubling theirs. So this not only violates our 
values, it is bad, bad economics.
    Now, with this veto, the extreme Republican effort to balance the 
budget through wrongheaded cuts and misplaced priorities is over. Now, 
it's up to all of us to go back to work together to show we can balance 
the budget and be true to our values and our economic interests.
    Tomorrow, I will present to the congressional leadership a plan that 
does balance the budget in 7 years, but it also protects health care, 
education, and the environment, and it does not raise taxes on working 
families. It is up to the Republicans now to show that they, too, want 
to protect these principles, as they pledged to do.
    Let me say again, our country is on the move; our economy is 
growing; many of our most difficult social problems are beginning to 
yield to the effort and commonsense values of the American people. We 
have proved again that we are a model for the entire world of peace and 
reconciliation. With all of our difficult problems, we are moving in the 
right direction. Now is not the time to derail this movement.
    I have vetoed the budget. Now, the question is: Will we get together 
and balance the budget in a way that is consistent with our values? It's 
time to finish the job of balancing the budget and do it in the right 
way.
    Thank you.
    Q. Mr. President,--[inaudible]--Medicare and Medicaid, how are you 
going to--where are you going to find----
    The President. Tune in tomorrow.

Note: The President spoke at 3:36 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to White House Staff Secretary Todd 
Stern.