[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 29 (Monday, July 22, 1996)]
[Pages 1258-1265]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the United States Agricultural Communicators Congress

July 16, 1996

    Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you 
for that warm welcome. And I was listening to Dan Glickman say all those 
outrageously positive things, and it reminded me that that was a living 
example of Clinton's third law of politics, which is, whenever possible, 
be introduced by someone you've appointed to high position. [Laughter]
    Steve and I were talking up here; he said, ``You know, the last time 
I was on a platform with you, you fell through a hole in it.'' And it's 
really true. It was--what was it--a soybean meeting in Arkansas when I 
was Governor, and he and I were on the platform together and there was a 
crack in the platform. My chair fell through it. [Laughter] It really 
did a lot for my confidence right before I got up here to speak that he 
reminded me of that. [Laughter] As far as I know, we're all right.
    I'm delighted to be here. I want to begin by thanking all of you for 
the work that you do every day to keep in touch with people in rural 
America. I want to thank Secretary Glickman who I believe has done a 
magnifi- 

[[Page 1259]]

cent job as Secretary of Agriculture, and I thank him for that.
    It is true that both the Vice President and I come out of small 
towns and have some more than passing acquaintance with agriculture. And 
one of the most enjoyable days of my Presidency was the National Rural 
Conference we had in Ames, Iowa, not very long ago, that Secretary 
Glickman did such a fine job on.
    And it is also true that I always believed that we could not bring 
the American economy back unless we brought rural America back. One of 
the things that was most disturbing to me about the economic recovery of 
the 1980's was that it seemed to sweep the coast and leave the heartland 
behind. And we've worked very, very hard in this administration to 
fashion an economic policy that would not only make the overall economic 
numbers look hopeful but would actually benefit every region and every 
State in our country. And I think that is very, very important.
    Even if a small percentage of our people live in rural America, and 
I'm happy that more and more people are going back there, a lot of what 
makes America special is alive and well there and is embodied in our 
farming communities.
    I'm glad to see some population movement back, and I'm glad to see 
family farming once again becoming a career choice for young people. If 
we are going to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we all have to 
meet them together and there has to be a role, a vital role for people 
living in rural America.
    When I sought the Presidency, I did it because I was concerned that 
our country was drifting into the next century instead of charging 
toward it and that we were coming apart instead of growing together. It 
seemed to me that there were three straightforward things that we had to 
do, at least from my point of view, to have the vision of America in the 
21st century become real. One is to guarantee opportunity to every 
American without regard to his or her station in life who is willing to 
work for it. The second is to receive more responsibility from all of 
our citizens, taking more initiative for their own lives and their 
families and their communities. And the third was to see that we come 
together as a community.
    So that--and this is very important--this is the most diverse big 
country in the world, most racially and ethnically diverse, the most 
religiously diverse now. And yet we are bound together by a written 
Constitution that's 220 years old, going back to the Declaration of 
Independence. The Constitution was ratified a little more than 10 years 
after that. And those ideas are just as vital today and just as relevant 
today as they were over 200 years ago. They are the framework which 
enables us to come together and share this land with people who are very 
different than we are, as long as we all play by the same rules.
    I say that; it seems so simple maybe, but when you look at how the 
world's being torn apart because of the differences that we take for 
granted, that we can live with, it's very important to understand how 
much we have to be grateful for, with our whole history of 
constitutional government, a government of laws, a Bill of Rights which 
gives everybody some elbow room and yet requires all of us not to abuse 
one another.
    I mean, look at Bosnia, a tiny country where you'd think the people 
would want to be pulling together to try to make the most of their very, 
very ancient heritage. And it took an international effort of Herculean 
proportions to stop people who were biologically indistinguishable from 
one another but had different religions and had grown into different 
ethnic categories.
    Look at this heartbreaking development in Northern Ireland where 
people were getting along. They had the lowest unemployment rate, the 
highest growth rate they'd had in 15 years. When I went there last year, 
people lined the streets, the Catholic and the Protestant together, to 
say. ``We don't want any more war. We love our peace.'' A lot of the 
younger people could hardly remember what they were fighting about. But 
just the failure of leadership, by people in a position to abuse their 
positions, in a moment can drive people back into that kind of division.
    So when you think about the spirit of cooperation and hard work and 
family that pervades rural America, let me tell you that it's something 
we take for granted, but when you

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look at our largest county, Los Angeles County, and you realize we have 
150 different racial and ethnic groups in one county, and yet they're 
still basically getting along reasonably well. Yes, we have problems 
from time to time there. But if you look at the schools that have people 
from 70 different linguistic backgrounds in some of our public schools, 
it's astonishing to see that we've done as well as we have. And it's a 
great tribute to the endurance of our fundamental values.
    And if we're going to keep this whole world together and get these 
countries to working together to fight our common problems, like 
terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and 
diseases that cross national lines, we're going to have to remember 
these basic values.
    And so I wanted to say that at the very outset of my remarks because 
I think in some ways it's more important than anything else. I'd be 
perfectly content as somebody from Arkansas to talk about the fact that 
soybeans are over $8 and I wasn't sure I'd see that again in my 
lifetime. But I think it's important to note that sometime in our 
lifetime they will probably be less than $7 again or $6 or--I hope not 
lower than that. It's liable--but these things endure. And we need to 
hang on to them.
    And as we look ahead and we try to imagine what the world's going to 
look like 20, 30, 40 years from now for our children and our 
grandchildren, it's very important to know that America has something 
that has kept us together and strong for over 200 years, that will take 
us into this new world.
    The other thing I'd like to say is that it's very important that we 
meet our challenges at home and abroad and that we see them together. I 
think farmers, in a funny way, because we've exported farm products for 
so long, may have a little more of a global perspective than a lot of 
other citizens do. But when people say, well, what's your vision for 
America in the 21st century, I say I want the American dream alive for 
everybody; I want us coming together, not drifting apart; and I want us 
still to be the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and 
prosperity, which means we have to be involved in the world as well as 
here at home.
    I think you understand that instinctively. But I think it's very 
important that all of our citizens understand that. It requires me from 
time to time to do things that I know are wildly unpopular. I realize 
that what I did in Haiti wasn't popular, but I think it's the right 
thing to do. And we've got a democracy restored there, and we don't have 
to worry about large numbers of illegal immigrants risking their lives 
to come from Haiti to the United States.
    I think trying to help a new and responsible government in Mexico 
avoid bankruptcy was the responsible thing to do. It reduced illegal 
immigration and kept Mexico as a responsible trade partner instead of 
having it collapse on us. I think we did what we had to do in Bosnia. 
But the most important thing is I think we also put that into a context 
of 200 more trade agreements, including a lot of things that 
specifically affected agriculture.
    So, if I could ask you to do something when you go home, I hope that 
you will take every opportunity to talk to people that you live and work 
with who don't know anything about farming about how it's very hard in 
the world we're living in--it will be impossible in the world we're 
moving to--to have a clear dividing line between our domestic economic 
affairs and our international economic affairs, that to be an American 
in the 21st century will mean to be a citizen of the world. Even if you 
live in a completely landlocked State like Arkansas or Iowa or Missouri, 
if you're a farmer, you know that instinctively. And all of our people 
have to embrace that.
    Four years ago, I embarked upon an economic strategy that I thought 
would work. I wanted to cut the deficit, expand trade, and continue to 
invest in people, in technology, and in research and in infrastructure, 
the things that would cause our economy to grow. Now, 3\1/2\ years 
later, the results are beginning to come in. I said in 1993 that if 
Congress adopted our economic plan, I thought we would cut the deficit 
in half in 4 years and that 8 million jobs would be produced for the 
American people. Well, in 3\1/2\ years, the American people have 
produced over 10 million jobs, 3.7 million new homeowners, 3 years in a 
row of record new small

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business starts, the lowest combined rates of unemployment and inflation 
in 27 years.
    And we learned today that the deficit, which was $290 billion when I 
took office, will fall this year to $117 billion. As a percentage of our 
income, it's the smallest its been since 1974.
    And the only debt we have in America today comes from the interest 
payments we pay on--the only deficit we have comes from the interest 
payments we have on the 12 years before I became President. In those 12 
years we quadrupled the debt. We've now cut the deficit from $290 to 
$117. We would be running a substantial surplus this year in the 
Government budget but for the interest payments on that debt.
    So this whole thing is turned around. And that's kept interest rates 
down, and that's permitted this economy to grow. I think it is very 
important that we keep on until we balance the budget in a responsible 
way. But it's important that you know that that's a huge drop. There is 
no other country in the world with an advanced economy where the 
Government deficit is so small a percentage of its income every year.
    So we're moving in the right direction. And it's some evidence, too, 
I might add, that if we work together, we can continue to make progress.
    Let me mention just one other word on the trade issue. I was 
convinced when I came here that we could not afford to take a 
protectionist approach but that we had to be more aggressive and open 
markets to American products and services around the world. We have 
concluded now over 200 specific trade agreements as well as the big, 
sweeping agreements like NAFTA and GATT. We've opened foreign markets to 
American beef and rice and apples and agricultural products. We've got a 
long way to go, but it's important to point out that our exports, 
including our agricultural exports, are at all-time highs. Our exports 
this year will be about $60 billion, and our surplus in agriculture will 
be $30 billion this year, we believe. And that will, obviously, make it 
number one among American export industries.
    So when you--people talk to you about the trade deficit, remind them 
that it's--there is no trade deficit in agriculture, there's a huge 
surplus. And we're going to keep working to open more markets and keep 
pushing in the right direction there. We've got farm income up and farm 
asset values up. And the value of assets are growing faster than the 
debt, which means that the equity positions of farmers are improving.
    We've got prices on average that are 20 percent higher than a year 
ago. I wish I could promise you that we'd have $5 corn and $5.50 wheat 
and $8 soybeans forever, but I can't do that. But it is encouraging that 
a lot of farmers are able to finally earn some money, do some 
improvements that are needed on the farm, save some money for the years 
that may not be so good, and improve the overall economic position of 
family farmers throughout this country. I am very encouraged by it. And 
what we can do in this administration is to continue to work to open 
those export markets, and we will.
    We've also tried to help deal with some serious problems. The most 
serious one recently, obviously aggravated by the drought, has been the 
low cattle prices with the high feed prices. We opened a conservation 
reserve for emergency grazing. We accelerated the purchase of beef by 
the School Lunch Program. We worked to remove some more export barriers. 
And the prices are up modestly, about 10 percent. They're still in 
trouble, but at least there's been some movement in the last few weeks 
for which I am very grateful.
    I also want to thank the Secretary of Agriculture for the work that 
he and all of us did on the farm bill. To be perfectly candid--and I've 
said this in public, so there's no point in not saying it again--but I 
had and still have some reservations about whether this new farm bill is 
going to work structurally over the long-term as we go through the ups 
and downs. It looks great right now because we've got high prices. And I 
hope that the theory of it will work over a period of years.
    But I did work in good faith with the leadership of the new Congress 
to try to pass a farm bill. And I was pleased that we passed some--
excuse me--we kept some provisions in this farm bill, especially 
relating to rural development and to the conservation programs that I 
thought were quite important. And I was pleased the we were able to pre- 


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serve them, and I hope we can continue to preserve them in the future.
    I'd just like to mention a couple of other issues, if I might. I 
have been very pleased on balance by the response in the country to the 
administration's efforts to update meat and poultry inspection. I know 
this was somewhat controversial. We worked through a lot of difficult 
issues, but we had to stop using 70 and 80-year-old methods of testing 
meat when we knew that we had kids out there getting sick, when there 
were no bad people involved. Nobody was out there trying to be 
negligent. We just were simply not using the best available technology. 
And I know it will cause some economic difficulties for some people, but 
we simply had to do it.
    And I never will forget as long as I live dealing with those 
families of those kids that ate the contaminated meat with the E. coli 
from the Pacific Northwest or the agony that the people felt who sold 
them the hamburgers. Their pain was also very real, and they felt 
desperate about it. They never meant to do any such thing. And that was 
just a case where we'd simply walked away from available technology. So 
we had to do it. And I hope that you all support the steps we're taking. 
We've tried to listen as well as we could to everybody. We tried to make 
the fairest decisions we could. But I think that decision had to be 
made.
    There's one other thing that we're doing that I want to mention that 
you may know about already, but this week Secretary Glickman is 
announcing that we're devoting $70 million to several communities in a 
total of 35 States to help them get safe running water for their people 
by the year 2000. Interestingly enough, the number one health problem in 
the developing world is still the absence of clean, safe water. If we 
could just get clean water to everybody in these poor countries, we 
could save more children's lives in less time than any other single 
thing we could do. And yet there are still places in the United States 
of America in rural areas where people do not have access to safe 
drinking water. And we are determined to correct that problem. So we 
will keep working on that as well.
    And now there's a lot more to do. And I guess I could keep you here 
all day, but I'd like to mention one or two things that I think would 
affect farm families especially. Number one, this Kassebaum-Kennedy 
health care reform bill would make several million people a year 
eligible to either get or keep health insurance who can't now by simply 
saying that people don't automatically lose their health insurance when 
they change jobs, and their health insurance can't be taken away from 
them because somebody in their family gets sick. That's why you have 
insurance in the first place. Now, this is very important for people who 
are not insured in large units. If you're insured in a large unit, the 
size of the unit which insures you often protects you from these sorts 
of problems. But it is terribly important to pass this legislation.
    Secondly, in the minimum wage legislation, in the same bill, there 
are provisions which could be very important to farmers, including an 
increase in the expensing provision. It was $10,000 when I became 
President; in '93 we kicked it up to $17,000 or $17,500; this takes it 
up to $25,000, which is quite important. And secondly, the package of 
retirement reforms that came out of the White House Conference on Small 
Business, which would help a lot of farmers is in it. They're making it 
easier for people to access 401K plans, making it easier for people to 
move the plans, making it easier for people to maintain them if they hit 
a rough spot and they can't continue the contributions. There are 
several other things which strengthen the ability of people who do not 
work for large employment units to get and keep retirement plans over a 
lifetime and through the ups and downs that could happen to them.
    So these are two things that--there's been almost no--I don't know 
why exactly, but there's been almost no publicity about the other things 
that are in that minimum wage bill. But those are two things that are in 
there.
    Now, there are two other provisions that are of interest to you that 
are not in there but that were part of our discussions when we were 
talking about how we get a final balanced budget agreement. One was a 
modification of the estate loss, which has not been changed in a long 
time, which affects

[[Page 1263]]

farmers in particular with high asset values and low cash income and not 
a lot of money in the bank to pay estate taxes--which we had reached 
agreement on in our budget negotiations about how to change.
    And the other was an increase in the deduction of health care 
premiums for self-employed people, including farmers, which has been 
kicked up to about 50 percent. We were going to take it higher, and we 
reached agreement on that.
    So, in the event--I still think there is some chance we will get an 
agreement in the Congress on a budget bill this year. No one else 
believes this, but I'm always--but I would remind you, for all of the 
fights we've had, we have this year passed a very tough antiterrorism 
bill. We've passed a telecommunications bill that I believe will create 
hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs in America within the very near 
future by getting both the benefits of more competition and the 
requirement to adequately serve schools and hospitals and places in 
rural America as well as urban America. All that's in that telecom bill 
that we passed. We passed lobby reform legislation that I've tried for 3 
years to pass; we finally passed that.
    So we have done some quite important things in this year in the 
Congress. And if we pass this minimum wage small business bill that I 
just mentioned--and we might pass a welfare reform bill because we're 
getting closer on that--then who knows, we might get lucky and pass the 
Kassebaum-Kennedy bill, which we're getting close to. Then we might be 
able to pass this balanced budget bill. It will be a great thing for 
America if we do it. But if we do it, those other provisions, when we 
stopped our budget negotiations when the Presidential primary season 
started, did contain those two things that I know are of great interest 
in rural America. So anyway, that's kind of where we are with the issues 
in Washington.
    Let me just mention one other thing before I close. It doesn't apply 
just to rural America; it applies to all Americans. If you look at 
what's happened in the last 4 years, I think you can make a compelling 
case that America has gotten its economic house in order, that we've 
walked away from these permanent big deficits forever. We've reduced the 
size of the Federal Government; it's about 240,000 people smaller than 
it was the day I took office. We've abolished a couple hundred 
Government programs outright. We have taken 16,000 pages of regulation 
out of the Federal rule books. We tried to improve the quality of 
Government services and keep interest rates down and let the economy 
grow.
    But there's still a big challenge out there, which is that not 
everybody is benefiting from this new economy. It's not like it was in 
the eighties where whole States were left behind. My State didn't have 
an unemployment rate below the national average until 1992. A lot of 
rural areas were that way. This is different. In every State, what you 
see is a division of opportunity based more than anything else on the 
level of education. And it is a function of the fact that this modern 
economy is being driven by information and technology and rewards people 
who not only know a lot but can absorb a lot of new things and learn new 
things and are very flexible.
    So we have got to take a hard look at what it's going to take to get 
America growing together again. We can change the job mix, as we are, 
but that takes some time. For example, two-thirds of the new jobs that 
have been created in America since January of `93 have been in higher 
wage occupations. And more trade has a lot to do with that because it 
tends to create higher wage jobs. And that's good, but that's only a 
small percentage of the total jobs Americans hold.
    And if you look at it, what we still have in America is, we have 
some people who are downsized and have a hard time getting themselves 
repositioned. We have some people who never feel the recovery because 
they're in isolated rural areas or isolated inner-city areas. And the 
largest group of people that are still having a tough time are people 
that just can't ever get a raise because they have to work harder for 
less in a competitive economy with low skill levels.
    So the best thing we can do--there are lots of things we can do, but 
the best thing we can do is to raise the level of education and training 
of every American, including making more educational opportunities 
available to adult Americans right now. And I have three proposals there 
that I just want

[[Page 1264]]

to mention in closing that I think are very important.
    First of all, I proposed a ``GI bill'' for American workers. There 
are 70 different Government programs for training people who are 
unemployed or underemployed, and I would give $5 to everybody in this 
audience that could name more than 5 of them. How about 4? [Laughter] 
There are 70 of them.
    So what I propose to do is to take the 70 programs and get rid of 
all of them, put the money in the bank and give a skill grant to every 
adult in America who is unemployed or underemployed to take to the local 
community college or some other institution of your choice. But nearly 
every American is within driving distance of a community college, and 
nearly every community college has almost 100 percent placement for 
people who get educated there into jobs in their community.
    We do not need yesterday's splitup training system. We ought to just 
give people a skill grant and say, you've got enough sense to figure out 
where to get the training; go get it. So, that's the first proposal.
    The second proposal is to make college education more affordable by 
letting people deduct up to $10,000 of the cost of tuition for the cost 
of all post-high school education.
    The third proposal, building on that, is to make at least 2 years of 
college after high school just as universal as high school is today. If 
you look at the last census, you will see how people's incomes start to 
split apart based on whether they stopped at high school or whether they 
got at least 2 years more. People that have at least a community college 
diploma tend to have jobs which are stable, which pay decent incomes, 
and where they can get a raise over time. People that don't, depending 
on where they live and what they do--obviously they're exceptions to 
this, but the odds are that you're likely to have a job where you can't 
get a raise, and therefore, you lose ground over time.
    So my objective will be to make 2 more years of education just as 
universal as a high school education is today. So what I propose to do 
there is to give families who choose this instead of the tax deduction a 
credit, a credit of $1,500 for the first year of a community college and 
a credit of $1,500 for the second year for everybody that keeps a B 
average in the first year. That would literally open community college 
to virtually everyone in America. That $1,500 or less is the tuition 
cost for community colleges in almost every State. There's a few where 
they're a little bit higher, but still, the $1,500 credit would have a 
bit impact.
    And if we can do those things, then we can work with the private 
sector to try to raise the skill levels of the adults that are already 
out there and get the young people that are coming out of high school 
into college and at least to 2 more years of education so their 
prospects will be better. That will enable the American economy to grow 
but also to grow together. And that's what keeps the American dream 
alive, the idea that if you're working hard and you're doing your part, 
you've got your chance at the brass ring. And that's what I believe we 
need to really focus on now.
    And I might say in closing that every advanced country is dealing 
with this challenge. The United States has done a much better job than 
most of our competitors in creating new jobs. But no country has solved 
the increasing inequality problem. And it is clearly related to the 
breathtaking degree to which change has overtaken the world and rewarded 
education, knowledge, and skills.
    So anything you can do to make this a nonpolitical, nonpartisan 
issue, the idea that we're going to lift up opportunities for all of our 
people, I think would very much advance the United States as well as, 
obviously, life in rural America.
    Well, I've talked a little more than I meant to, but I had a lot of 
things I wanted to talk about. Besides that, I don't see you very often, 
and I might fall through a crack on the way off the stand. [Laughter]
    Thank you very much. It's good to be with you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:32 p.m. at the J.W. Marriott Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Steve Drake, president, Agricultural 
Relations Council.

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