[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 7 (Monday, February 17, 1997)]
[Pages 176-178]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Prior to a Meeting With Congressional Cosponsors of Campaign 
Finance Reform Legislation and an Exchange With Reporters

February 11, 1997

    The President. In the State of the Union Address I asked the 
Congress to pass bipartisan campaign finance reform by July the Fourth, 
and I pointed out that delay would mean the death of reform, as it has 
in the last several years. I am very pleased to welcome to the White 
House today this bipartisan group of House Members who are now all 
cosponsors of the Shays-Meehan legislation. They are coming together in 
a bipartisan way to limit the influence of money in our campaigns for 
Congress and in financing the political parties and to level the playing 
field.
    And I feel very, very strongly that they have done a good thing for 
our country. I am supporting their efforts very strongly, and I want to 
do whatever I can to work with them to help this legislation pass.
    As soon as I leave here I'm going up to the Hill to a meeting of the 
bipartisan leadership of Congress, to which the Speaker and Senator Lott 
invited me after the State of the Union. And this is one of the issues I 
intend to raise there. I'm very encouraged by what I've heard here 
today, and we're determined to go forward.
    Mr. Vice President.

[At this point, the Vice President, Representative Chris Shays, and 
Representative Marty Meehan made brief remarks.]

    The President. Thank you all.
    Q. Isn't this blocking the barn after the horse has gone?
    The President. No. How can you say that? There will be a whole set 
of new elections up. There are elections in '98; there are elections in 
2000; there are elections in 2002. I hope there will be elections 200 
years from now.
    Q. Is this all a product of lessons learned from the last campaign?
    The President. No. Most of these people have wanted to do this for 
many years. Keep in mind, we had--in each of the last 4 years

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we had a serious campaign finance reform effort that died because of the 
parliamentary procedures in the Senate which permit 40 plus 1 to block a 
vote and because we didn't have more of this. I think this is the most 
important thing. The House is staking out a position--these Members 
are--that they're going to try to reach not only across party lines but 
across philosophical lines. I mean, just look around this table here, 
and you'll see people who differ on a lot of substantive issues but want 
to change the rules by which they work in the public interest. That's 
really, to me, the most encouraging thing.
    If you look around this table you see not only party difference, you 
see people from every region in our country, you see people who are in 
various different positions on the substance of most of the major issues 
facing us. But they are united in wanting to change the rules. And I 
think that there can be an engine of bipartisan and grassroots reform 
here that we have not seen before. People have wanted to do this for a 
long time, but I think they've got a chance to break through the last 
dam and get the job done. And I'm going to support them every way I can.

O.J. Simpson Civil Trial

    Q. Mr. President, how disturbing is it to you that black and white 
jurors and black and white Americans in general viewed the same evidence 
in the O.J. Simpson trial but came generally to drastically different 
conclusions?
    The President. Well, first of all, as to the jury verdict, I have 
nothing to add to what I said after the last jury verdict. We have a 
system here in this country which I think we should all respect. The 
only people who heard all the evidence were the people who were sitting 
in the jury box, in both cases. And civil trials and criminal trials are 
very different in different ways. So I have nothing to add to that. I 
respect the jury verdict.
    And in terms of the way Americans see the world differently, 
generally based on their race, that troubles me, and I spoke about it at 
some length at the University of Texas last year when we had the million 
man march here in Washington, and I was down there. I think the only 
answer to that is for us to spend more time listening to each other and 
try to put ourselves in each other's shoes and understand why we see the 
world in different ways and keep trying to overcome that.
    I would say that even though it's disturbing, we have succeeded so 
far in managing the world's most multiethnic, diverse democracy better 
than a lot of countries that are smaller than we are with fewer 
differences within them. And we just--this is a work that's never done--
that our different attitudes, our different viewpoints in some ways are 
the great strength of America, but if they're too--if we're too 
estranged, if the divide is too great, then we can't hold the country 
together. And we just have to keep working on it. And I intend to--I've 
worked on it hard for 4 years; we're talking about what else we might 
do.
    But in terms of the jury verdict, that's the system we have in 
America. It's over as far as I'm concerned. We need to get on with other 
things. But we always need to be working to try to bridge these divides 
between us.

Budget Negotiations

    Q. Mr. President, what are you hoping to achieve in the budget talks 
today? What are you hoping to achieve in budget talks this morning?
    The President. The next step of what we talked about--what I talked 
about at the State of the Union. I think we have got an enormous 
opportunity here to do great things together, because I think there is a 
consensus all across the country and among both parties that we have a 
lot of great challenges, some significant, indeed, unparalleled 
opportunities. And the whole system is kind of tending toward movement 
instead of paralysis again. And that's a good thing for America. And I'm 
going to do what I can to keep it going this morning.

Note: The President spoke at 10 a.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White 
House prior to a meeting with bipartisan supporters of the ``Campaign 
Reform Act of 1997.''

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