[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 42 (Monday, October 19, 1998)]
[Pages 2062-2065]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Budget Agreement

October 16, 1998

    Good morning. Please be seated. I am delighted to be here with the 
Vice President and Senator Daschle, Congressman Gephardt, Mr. Bowles, 
who's got a great closing act here--[laughter]--the terrific 
representation from Congress and the administration, especially our 
economic team, and all of you.

Northern Ireland Recipients of Nobel Peace Prize

    Before I make some remarks on the budget, I'd like to first say how 
very pleased I was, personally and as President, that the Nobel Prize 
Committee has awarded the courage and the people of Northern Ireland by 
giving the Nobel Peace Prize to John Hume and to David Trimble today. I 
am very grateful for that.
    For 30 years, John Hume has been committed to achieving peace 
through negotiations, not confrontation and violence. He has been an 
inspiration to the nationalist community, to all the people of Northern 
Ireland and, indeed, all around the world. David Trimble, as Unionist 
leader, took up the challenge of peace with rare courage, negotiating 
and beginning to implement the Good Friday accord. Both have earned this 
award.
    But I believe there are others, too, who deserve credit for their 
indispensable roles, beginning with Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, 
without whom there would have been no peace. Prime Minister Ahern, Prime 
Minister Blair, Mo Mowlam, their predecessors, without whom there would 
have been no peace. Other Irish leaders, like Seamus Mallon, and I would 
like to say a special word of thanks to Senator George Mitchell for his 
role in the peace talks. The American people appreciate the recognition 
the Nobel committee gave our Nation in the citation, and we thank all 
these people for their continuing work for peace.

Budget Agreement

    Yesterday our administration and the Democrats in Congress reached 
agreement with the Republican leadership on a fiscally responsible 
balanced budget that seizes this moment of prosperity and wisely invests 
it in the future. By standing together, we were able to achieve historic 
victories for the American people.
    We fought for and won vital new investments, especially for our 
children. By hiring 100,000 new teachers, we will reduce class size in 
the early grades to an average of 18. We will enhance individual 
attention, increase student learning and, as we learned yesterday at the 
school violence conference, find more kids who are in trouble and need 
help early, and prevent more bad things from happening while more good 
things happen.
    We're also making very important investments in child literacy, 
college mentoring, after-school programs, and summer jobs, all of them 
at risk until the people behind me stood firm and united. We fought for 
and won emergency relief for our hard-pressed farmers and ranchers who 
are suffering not only from the collapse of world markets but from crop 
diseases and drought and floods. And we fought for and won an impressive 
package to deal with this emergency only because the people behind me 
were willing to sustain my veto of the first bill, and I thank them for 
that very much.
    We fought for and won a substantial increase in funding for our 
clean water initiative to help restore the 40 percent of our lakes and 
rivers still too polluted for fishing and swimming. We won substantial 
increases in funding to head off the threat of global climate change 
which disrupted weather patterns in America--have warned us about in the 
last couple of years. We fought for and won the ability to protect 
precious lands in America, and we struck down the worst of the anti-
environmental provisions the Republicans had put into the budget bill 
because of the people who are standing behind me.
    And we worked and worked and worked for 8 long months until, 
finally, we were able to persuade the Republican majority to join with 
us in funding America's responsibility to the International Monetary 
Fund so that we can protect the American economy and fulfill our 
responsibility to stabilize the global economy. It is a critically 
important thing to our future; it could not have happened if the people 
behind us hadn't stood strong and united for months and months.

[[Page 2063]]

    Let me say, I am especially proud of the way we fought and won the 
right to reserve every penny of the surplus until we save Social 
Security first. Despite the efforts of the majority, particularly in the 
House of Representatives, to squander the surplus on election-year tax 
plans, we are still now well positioned to save Social Security. 
Although we can take justifiable pride in these accomplishments, let's 
not make any mistakes here. Eight days of progress cannot totally erase 
8 months of partisanship.
    We all know that in those 8 months of partisanship, too many dreams 
of too many families were deferred. The Republican majority is now 
leaving town to campaign, but they're also leaving a lot of America's 
business unfinished. Partisanship killed the Patients' Bill of Rights. 
Rest assured, as my first legislative priority, I will ask the next 
Congress to guarantee your right to see a specialist, to receive the 
nearest emergency care, to keep your doctor throughout your course of 
treatment, to keep your medical records private, to have medical 
decisions made by doctors, not insurance company accountants. That's 
unfinished business because of partisanship.
    Partisanship killed our efforts to help students stuck in crumbled 
and overcrowded schoolrooms. We fought and fought and fought and won the 
right for the 100,000 teachers. Now we've got to fight to give the 
teachers someplace to teach and to give those smaller classes someplace 
to meet. This is a battle our children cannot afford to lose.
    You know, I must say, of all the things that we disagreed with the 
Republicans on this year, this one mystified me the most. I would have 
thought they would like this program, not a Government spending program 
but a targeted tax cut, fully paid for in the balanced budget, that 
wouldn't take a dime from the surplus, wouldn't add an inch of redtape 
to the Government's rules, but would build or repair 5,000 schools. We 
were right to fight for it, and we ought to take it to the American 
people and ask them to put progress over partisanship.
    Republican partisanship killed an increase in the minimum wage. You 
can't really raise a family on $5.15 an hour anymore. If we value work 
and family, we ought to raise the minimum wage. You know, all those 
arguments against the minimum wage were wrong the last time we did it. 
We kept on growing, and unemployment now and inflation now are lower 
than they were the last time we raised it. Only partisanship killed it. 
I hope we can take that to the American people and come back here in 
January and raise the minimum wage.
    And partisanship killed our best chance at bipartisan campaign 
finance reform. We had a handful of Republicans who did agree with us on 
this, but the majority was able to defeat us. Senator Daschle produced a 
unanimous vote from the Senate Democratic caucus--absolutely unanimous--
but partisanship defeated us. It said yes to soft money, yes to the 
status quo, no to reform. The next Congress must strengthen our 
democracy and finally reform these outdated campaign finance laws, and 
people will do it who are here with me.
    And finally, let me say that partisanship killed the comprehensive 
anti-tobacco legislation which would have saved millions of young 
Americans from painful and premature death. I still can't believe--I 
think about it every day--I still can't believe that the tobacco 
interests were able to persuade the Congress, with the majority in 
Congress, to walk away from this. It didn't have anything to do with the 
tobacco farmers; Senator Ford back there took care of that. [Laughter] 
This was about whether we were going to take appropriate action to save 
our children, and pure, old-fashioned partisanship killed it. The people 
behind me will save more of our children's lives when the voters give 
them a chance to do so next January. We're going to do that.
    So let me say again, by way of thanks to all of them and to all of 
you who worked on this, we can be justifiably proud of the hard work and 
hard-won gains that this budget represents, of the 100,000 teachers, of 
the after-school programs, the saving the surplus for Social Security, 
of protecting the environment and advancing the cause of clean water, 
and a safer global environment, of keeping our economy going strong. But 
8 days of progress cannot replace or make up for 8 months of 
partisanship, to protect our patients, to modernize our schools, to 
raise the

[[Page 2064]]

minimum wage, to look out for the 21st century and reform Social 
Security and Medicare in the right way. We need a Congress that will put 
people before politics, progress ahead of partisanship.
    I will always remember these last 8 days. I will always remember 
what our caucus, united, was able to achieve. And I will always be 
grateful to them for what they did for the American people. Thank you 
very much.
    Now, I want to introduce the Vice President and the other leaders. 
Thank you very much.

[At this point, Vice President Al Gore, Senator Thomas A. Daschle, and 
Representative Richard A. Gephardt made brief remarks.]

    The President. Let me say, as we close, how very grateful I am to 
all those who have spoken and those who have not spoken, those who are 
here and those who stood with us who are not here, for giving us a 
chance to, in the last 8 days, have some very important victories for 
the American people and, today, for giving us a chance to make it 
absolutely clear what is at stake in the next 2 years.
    When we leave here, I am going to take a brief trip to Chicago to 
stand with Senator Carol Moseley-Braun. And I think it is worth pointing 
out today that she is the very first member of our caucus who stood up 
for the idea that the National Government had an opportunity and an 
obligation to do something to promote the building and the repair of 
school facilities for our children's future. I say that to make this 
point: Every one of us here, standing here, except Mr. Bowles, and he 
may be about to take the plunge--[laughter]--every one of us here is 
here because of the judgment of the American people. The jobs we hold 
are not our jobs in any fundamental sense; they belong to the American 
people.
    And in 18 days, after a blizzard of advertisements--probably 2 or 3 
times as much from the Republican side as from ours, maybe even more 
when you count the third party committees and all that--they will make a 
decision. The first decision they'll have to make is whether to go and 
vote in a midterm election, which always, always seems to have lower 
turnout than the presidential elections.
    If we have accomplished nothing else here today, even when our 
voices reach those who disagree with us, who think we're making a 
mistake to put 100,000 teachers in the classroom, who think we're making 
a mistake to fight for a Patients' Bill of Rights or a rise in the 
minimum wage or better school facilities, if we have done nothing else, 
I hope we have reminded the American people that, in the end, every one 
of us gets to raise our voice, to cast our vote, to wield our sign-or-
veto pen because of their judgments. And in 18 days, they will be given 
a chance to render another judgment.
    Between now and then, they will have to sort their way through all 
the conflicting claims and the blizzard of advertisement. But I think 
that, in the end, many will agree that it is worth going to vote to 
ratify those who fought for 100,000 teachers and a clean environment and 
a strong American economy and an America playing a responsible role in 
the world economy. And perhaps most important of all, people who voted 
to save the surplus until we save Social Security and honor the compact 
with generations and keep our country strong when the baby boomers 
retire.
    In 18 days they'll have a chance not only to support those people 
but to say, ``With my vote, I choose to go back and build world-class 
school facilities. I choose to say, `yes, we're going to have managed 
care, but even people in managed care deserve the right to have medical 
decisions made by medical doctors, not accountants,' to choose to give 
people the minimum wage, to choose to save Social Security in the right 
way, to choose these things.''
    That's the message. I hope the American people know that the people 
standing behind me earned their pay the last 8 or 9 days. They were 
worth every penny of tax dollars they got. And they did it the last 8 
months because they fought and waited and stood in storm after storm 
until the time came when they could stand up and do something right for 
America. And in 18 days I hope the voters of this country, the citizens, 
will exercise their power to say, ``This is the path I choose.'' Staying 
home is not a very good option when so much is riding on a trip to the 
ballot box.

[[Page 2065]]

    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:36 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to John Hume, leader, Social 
Democratic and Labor Party, and David Trimble, First Minister, Northern 
Ireland Assembly, Nobel Peace Prize Laureates; Sinn Fein leader and 
Northern Ireland Assembly member Gerry Adams; Prime Minister Bertie 
Ahern of Ireland; Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State for 
Northern Ireland Marjorie Mowlam of the United Kingdom; Deputy First 
Minister Seamus Mallon of the Northern Ireland Assembly; and former 
Senator George J. Mitchell, who chaired the multiparty peace talks in 
Northern Ireland.