[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 36 (Monday, September 9, 1996)]
[Pages 1652-1659]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks in Sunrise, Florida
August 5, 1996
Thank you very much. Thank you so much. I tell you, I just hope
you're having as good a time as I am this afternoon. Thank you. Thank
you for making me feel so welcome. Thank you, Congressman Deutsch, for
your remarks today and for being a steadfast ally for the people of
Florida and for our administration the last 2 years. Thank you, Governor
Lawton Chiles, for your lifetime of service to the people of Florida and
the people of the United States and for your brilliant service as
Governor.
I'm delighted to be here with your attorney general, Bob
Butterworth; your State insurance commissioner, Bill Nelson; State
Senator Ken Jenne; State Senator Peter Weinstein; Mayor Effman of
Sunrise; Mayor Graham of West Palm Beach; Gloria Jackson, the chair of
the Broward County Democratic Party; Sheriff Ron Cochran. And I'd like
to say a special word of thanks to my friend Gerry McEntee, back here,
the president of
[[Page 1653]]
the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and a
great supporter of Medicare. And I'd like to thank the Boyles who own
the theater here for welcoming us. But most of all I'd like to thank
Sallie and her mother, her daughter, and her granddaughter. Didn't she
do a good job? Let's give her another hand. I thought she was great.
[Applause] Thank you.
Today I want to talk to you about how all of us, regardless of our
ages, grandchildren, children, parents, grandparents, great-
grandparents, great-grandchildren--how we can move forward together to
build that bridge to the 21st century I talked about in Chicago last
Thursday night.
I especially want to talk a little more about health security
because I know that one of the keys to enabling our families to succeed
at home and at work is finding a way for hard-working people to have
that health security, to provide the best possible care for people. And
I'd like to talk a little bit about those who get their care from
specific health care plans that have certain requirements and standards
that may lower the costs but may also raise some questions.
You know, we have had a remarkable week and a half. I took that
train from West Virginia to the convention in Chicago, and I stopped
along the way in places that hadn't seen a passenger train in a long
time, and there were thousands and tens of thousands of people all along
the route. It was terribly moving.
And then, of course, we had a good convention. And then Hillary and
I and Al and Tipper Gore set out on our bus tour, and we made another
five States. And I figure we saw in our
talks about a quarter of a million people, and another 200,000 just along
the road and the rails. I never saw so many crowds, people coming out,
believing in America again, knowing that we're on the track, knowing that
we're on the right track and the right road to the 21st century. And it was
very moving.
Thanks to the support I have received from others in the Congress
and in the administration, we have worked very hard to move this country
forward. And compared to 4 years ago, we have 10 million more jobs,
almost 4\1/2\ million more homeowners, another 10 million homeowners who
refinanced their mortgages at lower mortgage rates. Wages are going up
for the first time in a decade. We've had record numbers of new
businesses in each of the last 4 years, and businesses are growing now,
coming into existence at the fastest rate since John Kennedy was
President. We have record--[applause] we're selling more of our products
around the world than ever before. The combined rates of unemployment,
inflation, and home mortgages are the lowest in 28 years. I am proud of
these things, and you should be too, as Americans.
For 4 years in a row, the crime rate has gone down. In Tampa, the
crime rate fell 20 percent in 1995, just for example. I just came from
there, so I asked for the numbers on Tampa, and I thought it was an
amazing drop. There are 1.8 million fewer people on welfare than there
were the day I took office. In Florida, there are over 135,000 fewer on
welfare in the State of Florida alone. Child support collections are up
40 percent in the Nation; in Florida--thank you, Governor Chiles--
they're up 48 percent in the last 4 years.
Just about 2 weeks ago, maybe 3 now--time has been flying the last
few days--I signed a minimum wage bill which raised the minimum wage for
10 million hard-working Americans. It also made the employees and the
owners of small businesses all across America--made it easier for them
to take out retirement plans and to keep those retirement plans when
they move from job to job.
Most of our new jobs are being created in small businesses. More and
more businesses are coming into existence, going out of existence in
this new, dynamic economy. We have to make it possible for people to
save for their retirement even if they're in small businesses and even
if they change jobs a lot of times. And I'm proud of the fact that we've
got legislation now which will make that much, much easier and safer.
Another interesting provision that Governor Chiles and I were
talking about with his daughter up in Tampa that was in the minimum wage
bill is that we provided a $5,000 tax credit to people who will adopt
children. There are tens of thousands of chil-
[[Page 1654]]
dren out there who need a home, and I hope this will help more of them
find it.
In late 1994--there's one other thing I want to mention here that
was done that didn't achieve a lot of notice because it was a part of a
big trade bill. But we passed a provision to strengthen the protection
for pensions that protected the integrity of 40 million Americans'
pension, people already retired and people saving for their retirement,
to make sure that these funds are not raided.
And one of the things that I vetoed in that budget that Congressman
Deutsch talked about, in addition to the cuts in Medicare and Medicaid
and education and the environment, was a provision which would have
allowed $15 billion to be taken out of existing pension funds and put to
other purposes. And I thought that was wrong. I think we ought to keep
the integrity of our pensions systems in this country.
And let me say to a lot of you who may have grown up in an earlier
time when we thought more about balancing our books except when there
was an emergency, I'm very proud of the fact that our administration is
the first administration since the 1840's, before the Civil War, to have
the deficit go down in each of the 4 years of its term. It's been cut by
60 percent.
So compared to 4 years ago, we're in better shape. But as I said
last week and I say again, there are many things we need to do to build
a bridge to the 21st century that keeps the American dream alive for all
of us, that enables people to succeed in their family lives and at work,
that brings us together across all the lines that divide us, that keeps
us the strongest country in the world for peace, freedom, and
prosperity.
Earlier today when I was in Tampa, I had a chance to go to a
wonderful high school and speak to over 2,000 students there about our
goals for education in the next 4 years. I want to mobilize an army of
reading tutors so that instead of having 40 percent of our 8-year-olds
who cannot read on their own, in 4 years every single 8-year-old will be
able to read a book on his or her own.
I want to make sure that every young child in America in school,
without regard to their race, their income, where they have to live,
from the poorest urban school districts to the most remote mountain
school districts, will for the first time in the history of America have
access to the same information in the same time, the same quality, as
the children in the wealthiest districts do, by hooking all the
classrooms up to the Internet, to the information superhighway, with
adequate computers and trained teachers. We can do it for the first time
in history.
And I want to make sure that we put a college education within reach
of every family. In the last 4 years, we have worked hard to increase
scholarship funds for needy students. We have worked hard to reform the
student loan program so that now it works faster and costs less than
ever before.
I remember Governor Chiles and the legislative leaders invited me to
speak to the Florida Legislature up in Tallahassee. I had a very moving
experience with a young couple there who had both graduated from medical
school and who were doing their residency. And you know doctors don't
make any money when they're residents, and they owed well over $100,000
on their education. And because we had changed the law which said that
young people could pay back their loans as a percentage of their income
and never be required to pay back more than that in any given year,
these young people were able to avoid literally having half of their
income go to their college loan repayment, and they wouldn't have had
enough left to live on. We should never have anyone drop out of any
level of education because of that burden. And I want to do more.
A lot of you can empathize with this: It's no longer possible for
people to say they're through with education when they graduate from
college. And now we know when people graduate from high school, chances
are better than 50-50 they will not be able to find a job with a growing
income. So what I want to do in the next 4 years, within 4 years, is to
make 2 more years of education, the equivalent of at least a community
college degree, just as universal as a high school diploma is today by
giving a tax credit for the price of the tuition to the families of this
country, so we can
pay for it dollar for dollar through tax cuts, and everybody can at least
[[Page 1655]]
get a community college education. I think that's very important.
I'm well aware that the largest community college in the United
States is not very far from here. But nearly every American--nearly
every American--is within driving distance of a community college. And
more and more, the people you see at our community colleges are older
students, non-traditional students. The average age at a lot of our
community colleges is bumping 30 now. And they have people in their
fifties there and their sixties there, people who have lost their jobs
and have to go back and get new education and training.
So I say to you we ought to have that tax credit for the cost of a
typical tuition at a community college. And I believe we should have a
tax deduction worth up to $10,000 a year for any tuition cost at any
post-high school education in the country to help people educate
themselves. It will make our country stronger.
So I hope you'll help me build that bridge to the future for the
younger part of the families that are here. But we also have to keep
this economy going strong. You know, whenever we argue about, well, how
are we going to pay for Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security or
whatever part of it, always assume certain things about the strength of
the American economy: what will the unemployment rate be, what will the
incomes be, what will the growth be. We have to keep this economy going
strong, and we can grow it even faster. But if we're going to do that,
we have to keep investing in the things that make us strong, like
education, research, environmental technology, and we have to keep
bringing this deficit down.
Every time I leave Washington for the last 4 months, some expert has
said, ``Now, Mr. President, don't go down there and talk about the
deficit. People really cared about the deficit when the economy was bad,
but nobody really understands it very well, and so they don't care about
it once the economy gets better. It's boring to them. Don't talk to them
about that.''
Well, I don't believe that. I think you do care about whether your
country is spending itself into debt. Let me just briefly say why
everyone should care about it. Because as our Republican friends said
last year--they put out a paper on this, not me, but I agree with them--
they said if we were not on a plan to a balanced budget, if we went back
to permanent high deficit spending the way we did in the 12 years before
I came here, interest rates would go up 2 percent. Why? Because the
Government would be borrowing money and you would be borrowing money,
and we would both be trying to borrow the same money so the price would
go up.
Now, what that means is, 2 percent on a home mortgage, on a car
payment, on a credit card payment every month, it means 2 percent more
for business borrowing, which undermines the ability of businesses to
borrow money and invest, to be more productive, to give their workers
raises and hire more people. It's harder to borrow money to start a new
business.
This is a big deal, folks. We have got to keep this economy growing
and going strong, and every tax cut I talked about is paid for, dime by
dime, line by line. We don't want to go back to the old days where
someone says, ``Hey, I'm running for office, and I'll give you a big tax
cut. No, I can't pay for it and yes, it will increase the deficit, and,
oh, by the way, I'll have to cut Medicare and Medicaid and education and
the environment even more than last time.'' That's what their proposal
is; this across-the-board thing.
Don't go for that. We went down that road before. We would have a
surplus in the budget today and could have a bigger tax cut or extend
the life of Medicare with no sweat for another several years, a surplus
today if it weren't for the interest we're paying on the debt run up in
just the 12 years before I became the President. We don't want to make
that mistake again. We dare not make that mistake again, and I don't
think you want to make that mistake again.
Every time I come to Florida, someone talks to me about personal
security. I'm proud of the fact that the crime rate has come down for 4
years in a row. I want it to keep coming down. And that means we have to
finish the work of putting 100,000 police on the street. It means we
ought to pass a law that expands the Brady bill, which now covers
anybody who has been convicted of a felon or is a fugitive or a stalker,
can't
[[Page 1656]]
get a handgun. I think that should extend to anyone who has beaten up a
child or a spouse at home. I don't believe people who are involved in
domestic violence should do that.
And I believe that we should ban those terrible cop-killer bullets.
They have no purpose other than to shoot police officers. If the police
officers are willing to protect us, we ought to be willing to protect
them. It's a simple thing, and it has nothing to do with hunting or
sporting.
I believe that we have to build a bridge to the 21st century that
works on building even stronger families. That's why I've said that the
family leave law that I signed, the first bill I signed, has made it
possible for 12 million American families, intergenerationally, just
like these fine women up here--12 million families, where someone in the
family could take some time off without losing their jobs for the birth
of a baby or the illness of a parent. It's been a great thing for
America, and it has not hurt the economy. And I would like to see it
extended in a narrow way to say you can also take a little time off to
take your child to the parent-teacher conference at school or your
parent to a regular doctor's appointment as well, in case there are
serious problems that can't be dealt with.
I want to see us stand up for the environment and prove we can grow
the economy and protect the environment more in the 21st century. You
know, I talked about this the other night, but I want to say it again.
It's appalling to me--it's appalling to me that we still have 10 million
American children living within 4 miles of toxic waste sites. Now, we've
cleaned up more of those in 3 years than the previous administrations
did in 12. But we're not doing enough; we have to do more. And so I
propose just in the next 4 years to clean up 500 more, the two-thirds
worst of those sites, so that we can say that our children are going to
grow up next to parks, not poison. And I hope you'll help me with that.
And here in Florida, I can say I'm very proud of the fact that in
the first 4 years we saved national parks from the ill-advised scheme to
sell some of them off. We negotiated an end to a proposed gold mine at
Yellowstone National Park, the crown jewel of America's whole natural
history. We created the largest national park south of Alaska in the
Mojave Desert in California. And I hope in the next 4 years we will
complete the work of saving the Florida Everglades. And I hope you will
help us do that. [Applause] Thank you.
Now, let's talk about health care. There are few issues that tie
people together as closely as health care--all across the ages. The
other night when the First Lady spoke at the Democratic Convention and
said that we strongly supported a bill that
says that you cannot kick a mother and her newborn child out of a hospital
sooner than 48 hours. I believe that the grandmothers and the great-
grandmothers and the great-grandfathers and the grandfathers were among
those cheering the loudest in America. Of course these hospitals have to
save money. Of course we want to cut unnecessary costs. Of course some
people are healthy and fine, and there's no problem. But it ought to be a
decision that the doctor can make based on what is best for the mother and
the baby, and people should not be put on the street if they're not ready.
When we launched a remarkable effort to dramatically increase the
rate of immunizations of children up to the age of 2 so that more of
them would live and live healthy lives, I think the grandparents were
among those who cared the most about it. And when I was saying, look, we
don't want to balance the budget in a way that not only cuts too much
out of Medicare and Medicaid, but fundamentally changes the system, that
was as big a problem--that creates a two-tier system of Medicare where
if you happen to be older or poorer or sicker at the time the changes
are made, the chances of your falling into second-class health care are
overwhelming; or that changes the whole system under Medicaid so that
there is no longer a guarantee for people who have middle class
lifestyles to get some help for their parents in nursing homes; or
people who have middle class lifestyles who have children with
disabilities to get some help with those children so they can keep them
at home and still keep their jobs and not go broke. I don't believe
[[Page 1657]]
that's an age-specific area. I think that we all care about that.
On the other hand, I don't agree that you can't do anything to try
to save money in these programs to save them. Everybody wants us to save
Medicare. Everybody knows that we're all living longer and staying
healthier. And that's good, isn't it? I mean, I think that's pretty
good.
So when somebody tells me, Mr. President, we got this terrible
problem with Medicare, since the inflation per person is not going up,
it's just that people are living longer and the longer you live the more
health care you use--to me, that's a high-class problem. I mean, I don't
understand all this hand-wringing. That's a high-class problem if we got
people living longer and being healthier and hanging around and doing
things. I think that's a pretty high-class problem. I don't understand
why everybody is going around like Chicken Little, ``Oh, the sky is
falling. We have problems in Medicare because everybody is living.''
[Laughter]
I thought that was the object. [Laughter] I thought that was the
point of the deal. Do you know, if you live in the United States--this
is very interesting--in 1985, because of Social Security and SSI, for
the first time in the history of our country, people over 65 had a lower
poverty rate than people under 65. And because of Medicare and Medicaid,
because of the things you can buy into with them, now if you live to be
65 in the United States, we have the highest life expectancy of any
country in the world among people who live to be 65 going forward.
Our overall life expectancy is slightly lower, unfortunately,
because we have higher rates of violence that take out too many of our
children, because our maternal care programs are not as good as they
should be, and because we have a disproportionate number of people
compared to a lot of other countries with very serious illnesses. But if
you live to be 65, you are in the country with the highest life
expectancy for seniors in the entire world. Now, we know what did that.
I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's a good thing. This is a
high-class problem, this Medicare problem.
So I proposed, and I told everybody--all the advocates for the
senior groups came in; we worked with them--we proposed larger savings,
substantive savings over a 6-year period in Medicare and Medicaid than
any President ever had. The only problem was, I was trying to save the
programs. I was trying to be fair. I wasn't trying to balance the budget
on your back or make you pay for somebody else's tax cut or do something
that would give us an excuse to walk away from our commitments under
Medicare and Medicaid.
So I say to you, the first thing we ought to do in going forward is
to remember what the Hippocratic oath says: First, do no harm. Let's not
do something we don't have to do. Let's do as much as we have to do to
save the programs. But let's not do something we don't have to do that
would make it unfair to those who depend upon them.
We can--I'll say again, just like Congressman Deutsch said--we can
clearly balance the budget and dramatically extend the life of the
Medicare Trust Fund without the level of cuts in Medicare, Medicaid,
education, and the environment in the budget that I vetoed last year.
My door is still open to the Congress, even as they meet now in
September to try to reach an agreement on that. But I will not do
anything that will cause us to harm people who have justifiably depended
on this when this program is working and the problem we have is the very
problem we've been trying to create for 30 years, ever since we created
it, which is we hoped people would live longer and be healthier and be
stronger. We can fix it, but we don't want to destroy it.
The second thing I want to say is, as we provide people more options
in Medicare and more options in Medicaid, and take steps that will
further slow the rate of inflation and give people attractive options to
be in managed care programs of various kinds, we ought to do it, again,
in a way that really creates a win-win situation. And we can do that.
I'm prepared to give Governor Chiles and all the other Governors in the
country greater flexibility in how they administer the Medicaid program,
but I don't think we should walk away from the populations, pregnant
women and their poor young children, families with disabilities, and the
seniors. I don't think we
[[Page 1658]]
should do that. I think we should stay in there and serve those
populations.
In our balanced budget program, we actually also proposed to do some
things that we think will be very good for the economy. A lot of
parents--a lot of families, for example, are caring for parents with
Alzheimer's. It's a painful, difficult thing. It's also a great labor of
love. If a family is doing that and saving the system money by doing it,
I think we ought to provide some way for them to get some respite care
for those who are caring for Alzheimer's people in their own home. And
that's an example of something that I think would be a good thing to do
that will actually save money to the larger health care system and
enable families again to make it at work and to make it at home, and to
keep that close-knit bond that we all value so much.
I think we are going to have to crack down even harder on those who
rip the Medicare system off. We have--I will say this--I hear more about
it in Florida than anyplace else, I guess, because more of you know
about it, but you should know that we've saved more than $15 billion in
3 years. We have strengthened the requirements and our tools for dealing
with it, and Governor Chiles has done a better job of dealing with it
than any other Governor in the country, in my opinion. So we're doing
our best.
Two weeks ago, I had the great privilege, as has already been said
in my introduction, of signing the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which is the
most significant health care reform in a generation. The bill guarantees
that working people can keep their health insurance if they change jobs,
it gives self-employed business people a better tax break to buy
insurance just like those who work for big firms. It means you don't
lose your health insurance if you or somebody in your family gets sick.
What it means is that up to 25 million Americans might be able to get or
keep health insurance now when they couldn't do it before. It is a very
good bill.
But we have to do more. You don't want to say to some people we have
created a right for you, and it's like saying we've all got a right to
go buy a Jaguar. So my next proposal is--and this, again, is paid for in
my balanced budget--that we help workers and their families who are in
between jobs to keep their health insurance for up to 6 months so they
don't lose it while they're changing jobs.
This could help to bring peace of mind to 3 million Americans a
year, including 700,000 children. It is paid for in my balanced budget,
and it's long overdue. I also think we have to do more to give our
people the assurance that they'll get the quality they are paying for
and that they deserve. That's why I'm supporting the legislation I
mentioned, dealing with not forcing new mothers and their newborns out
of the hospital.
And that's why I believe we should extend consumer protections to
the 140 million Americans who are now enrolled in managed care health
plans. These plans--let me talk a little bit about--these plans, on
balance, have given most people who are in them high quality care with
more choices at lower costs, because they are, in various ways, managed
care plans, the HMO's, the PPO's, and the others. But we have to make
sure that the changes that are being made do not lead to a decline in
the quality of health care.
Now, I can tell you, I've spent years studying this now as a
Governor and as President, and I am convinced that the right kind of
managed care can really be the best of all worlds, can give more choices
to consumers, can give people more chances to make decisions that are
right for them, can keep the costs of health care down and still
maintain very high quality.
I am also convinced that if they're not the right kind of plans,
some bad things can happen, especially by not giving managed care
customers all of the information they need. Too often, too many health
care plans are literally gagging their doctors, their nurses, and other
professionals by stopping them from telling patients about all their
treatment options, because some of those options that may be best for
the patients may be more expensive for the plan since the patient has
already paid the flat rate.
So I want to say to you that I think this has to stop, and this is
my announcement for the day. But there is a bipartisan bill, a
bipartisan bill that's been introduced in the Congress, sponsored by
Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat, and Representative Greg Ganske, a
Republican, that will help
[[Page 1659]]
to protect doctors, nurses, and patients. It's called the ``Patient
Right To Know Act,'' and it says that the professionals cannot be gagged
from giving you the information you're entitled to and cannot be
punished if they give it to you, so that we'll have the best of all
worlds, managed care plus consumer protection. And I want--will you help
me pass that bill? [Applause] Thank you.
Again, I want to be clear: There are an awful lot of HMO's, PPO's,
and other health care plans that give patients very good care at good
value, even better value with more choices and less inflation in the
health care premiums. But we have to
make sure that we don't give up the quality of care. Doctors just must not
face discrimination when they uphold their oath to give patients the best
care. Patients should feel safe in the knowledge that they have been given
the full story of what all their treatment options are and what are best
for them. They should be told about the best treatment, whether it's the
cheapest or not.
There is also more to do. There are millions of Americans who are
affected by the changes in our health system which ought to feel
comfortable about the health care they receive. I have asked our
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, and our Labor
Secretary, Bob Reich, to form an advisory commission about the quality
of care for health care consumers with health care providers, health
plans, consumers, business people--all on a bipartisan basis, everybody
having their story heard, but to evaluate the ways that health plans can
best serve their customers over the long run so that we can have a
health care system we can afford and one we can be proud of because it
keeps life expectancy going up and it keeps the health of our people
improving.
The Vice President I have asked to review this report because he has
done such great work in other areas where we have tried to reinvent our
Government and improve things. And what we're trying to do is to
understand how these changes in the health care system are going to
affect America's families, all generations of families, yours, mine,
everyone else's; what are the financial implications; what are the
health care implications; what else should we do.
But I am confident that being for a consumer's right to know is the
right thing to do here. And I am confident--I will say again--I am
confident that we can find a way to preserve the Medicare program in a
way that gives you more options, keeps it affordable, and doesn't divide
it into a two-tier system where the elderly in our country who happen to
be the oldest or the poorest or the sickest wind up getting the short
end of the health care stick. I don't think any one of you want that,
and I`m going to do my best to avoid that. We can do what we need to do.
All of this is a way of building a bridge to the future. I believe
that we have to make it possible--let me say again--for families across
the generations to succeed at home and at work, to honor the obligations
to parents and children and still be successful in the workplace and as
citizens. I believe we can do that. I believe we can do it if we build
the right kind of bridge to the future, including the health care
reforms I have discussed today. And I hope that every one of you will
help me and yourselves and your children to build that bridge.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Note: The President spoke at 3:20 p.m. at the Sunrise Musical Theater.
In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Steve Effman of Sunrise; Mayor
Nancy Graham of West Palm Beach; Sheriff Ron Cochran of Broward County;
Jack and Janet Boyle, owners, Sunrise Musical Theater; and Sallie A.
Richardville, secretary-treasurer, Broward AFL-CIO, who introduced the
President, her mother, Edith B. Tuten, her daughter, Mary K. Leake, and
her granddaughter, Nicole ``Nikki'' Washburn.