[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 12 (Monday, March 29, 1999)]
[Pages 491-500]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks at the Legislative Convention of the American Federation of
State, County, and Municipal Employees
March 23, 1999
The President. I ought to be late more often. [Laughter] Well, let
me thank you for the wonderful welcome. And Gerry, Bill, Glenn, Charles,
Carol, ladies and gentlemen, it was--it's hard to believe; it's been 7
years ago when I first began talking to Gerry and Bill and other members
of your union. I spent about 5 minutes with Gerry McEntee, and I
thought, boy, this is going to be a hard sell. [Laughter] But I also
thought to myself, I believe this guy would be for me; he'd stick. And
boy does he stick. [Laughter] I tell you.
Even though I was a dues paying member of AFSCME when I was
Governor, I never--therefore, I knew who Gerry McEntee was, you know,
and I sort of felt like I was getting my money's worth. [Laughter] There
are a lot of things I didn't know. Like, I never knew why green was the
official color of AFSCME. [Laughter] Until I saw the smile on McEntee's
face on Saint Patrick's Day. [Laughter] And I realized that was not a
democratically arrived at decision. [Laughter] And being Irish, I liked
it that way.
In a way, public employees and the Irish are a lot alike. They're
integral to everything that's really important in our country, and both
have had to fight real hard to get the necessary respect in the United
States. And so I came here also to say thank you, thank you, thank you.
I should be thanking you, not the other way around. All I did was what I
told you I would do, but if you hadn't helped me, I wouldn't have been
here in the first place. And I thank you.
I would also like to remind you that we have almost 25 percent of
the life of this administration still left, and it ought to be the best
part for America if we do the right things.
Now, you all know why I'm late today. I've been in a meeting with a
very large number of Members of Congress in both Houses and both
parties, including the leadership, to talk about the problem in Kosovo.
And one of the Members who was there, a man from my part of the country,
he said, ``You know, Mr. President, I support your policy, but most of
my folks couldn't find Kosovo on a map. They don't know where it is, and
they never thought about it before it appeared on CNN. And you need to
tell people what you're doing there and why--why it's important to us.''
So I need to talk about that today. But I also need to talk about
the domestic issues that we're working on--about Social Security, about
Medicare, about education. And so I would like to begin by going back to
1992 and to try to ask you to do something that most of the time I can't
persuade the American people to do, which is to think about our foreign
policy and our domestic policy as two sides of the same coin in a world
that is growing smaller and smaller and more and more interconnected.
Most Americans think about politics in terms of putting bread on the
table, educating their children, owning a home, being able to have
health care, looking forward to a secure retirement, dealing maybe with
environmental issues that are immediate and real, like clean air and
clean water. And we're all that way about everything, even our own jobs.
The further something gets away from us, the harder it is for us to
imagine that it is directly important to us.
But when I ran for President in 1992, one of the things I said over
and over and over again was that in the 21st century the dividing line
between foreign and domestic policy would blur. Now, I'd like to just
take you back 7 years to what ideas I brought to this job, talk a little
bit about this matter in Kosovo, and then move into the domestic issues
that we're so concerned about that are being debated in the Congress
now.
I ran for President in 1991 and 1992 because I believed our country
lacked a unifying vision and strategy for 21st century America. And I
knew what I wanted America to look like and to be like. I wanted an
America where the American dream was alive and well for every citizen
responsible enough to work for it. With all of our increasing diversity
in America, I wanted an America that really reaffirmed the idea of
community, of belonging; the idea that none of us can pursue our
individual destinies as fully on our own as we can when we want our
neighbors
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to do well, too; and that there is some concrete benefit to the idea of
community that goes beyond just feeling good about living in a country
where you're not discriminated against because of some condition or
predisposition or anything else that has nothing to do with the law and
nothing to do with how your neighbors live their lives; and that what we
have in common is more important than what divides us.
I still believe that's going to be one of the major questions facing
this country in the 21st century, which is why I devoted so much time to
that initiative on race, and why I keep fighting for passage of the hate
crimes legislation, the employment nondiscrimination legislation--all
these things. Because I am telling you, you look all over the world--
that's what Kosovo's about--look all over the world. People are still
killing each other out of primitive urges because they think what is
different about them is more important than what they have in common.
So I wanted a country where opportunity was real for every
responsible citizen. I wanted a country where community was real and we
were growing closer together, not further apart. And I wanted America to
be a leading force in the world for peace and freedom and prosperity in
a world that was becoming more of a community, where we were sharing
more burdens and responsibilities.
And so I set to work. And at home, I had an economic policy that was
partly domestic and partly foreign. The economic policy was: fix the
budget, get the deficit down, get interest rates down, get investment
up, create jobs, grow the economy, invest in education and technology,
so everybody could be a part of it. And, since we were only 4 percent of
the world's population, with 22 percent of its income, we had to sell
more around the world if we wanted to keep growing our economy. And we
worked hard at that for 6 years now with, I think, nearly everybody
would admit, reasonably good results, although we have more to do. And
I'll say more about that in a minute.
In foreign policy, what I wanted to do is to say, look, okay, the
cold war is over, but we're more interconnected with all parts of the
world than ever before. How are we going to create a world that is more
peaceful, prosperous, and free?
Now, one of the things that we had to do was to look at Europe. Why?
Because the whole 20th century is, in large measure, the story of
slaughter that started in Europe. World War I started in the Balkans--in
Bosnia, next door to Kosovo. World War II engulfed the Balkans. The cold
war saw the Balkans, where Kosovo is, at the edge of the Communist
empire and the clash of Slavic civilization with European Muslims and
others. Now, if we have learned anything after the cold war, and our
memories of World War II, it is that if our country is going to be
prosperous and secure, we need a Europe that is safe, secure, free,
united, a good partner with us for trading--they're wealthy enough to
buy our products--and someone who will share the burdens of taking care
of the problems of the world.
We're working hard to have that kind of Europe. I supported the
union of the European countries, economically, the union of Germany. I
supported very strongly the expansion of NATO. Next month we're going to
have all these countries come here; we'll have the largest number of
world leaders ever assembled in Washington, DC, next month for the 50th
anniversary of the NATO summit. And we're bringing in Poland, Hungary,
and the Czech Republic.
And I supported the idea that the United States, Canada, and our
European allies had to take on the new security challenges of Europe of
the 21st century, including all these ethnic upheavals on their border.
Why? Because if this domestic policy is going to work, we have to be
free to pursue it. And if we're going to have a strong economic
relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe
has got to be a key. And if we want people to share our burdens of
leadership with all the problems that will inevitably crop up, Europe
needs to be our partner.
Now, that's what this Kosovo thing is all about. And so I want to
talk to you about Kosovo today, but just remember this: It's about our
values. What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up
to Adolph Hitler earlier? How many people's
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lives might have been saved? And how many American lives might have been
saved?
What if someone had been working on the powder keg that exploded
World War I, which claimed more lives than World War II for most
European countries, what would have happened? What if we had not been
there in the cold war, when it cost Americans a lot of money to go over
there and to say, okay, we're not going to let communism go any
further--what do you think would have happened? And wouldn't we have
been drawn into another war that would have been a shooting war? And
wouldn't more Americans have died? And wouldn't it have cost even more?
What I want you to think about--you may not know a great deal about
Kosovo, and I'll try to talk a little about that today--but I want you
to see this in terms of the big picture. I want our children to have a
Europe--I want this young girl here to grow up in a world that is safer
and more secure and more prosperous. To get that done, we need a Europe
that is undivided, democratic, and free. I want us to live in a world
where we get along with each other, with all of our differences, and
where we don't have to worry about seeing scenes every night for the
next 40 years of ethnic cleansing in some part of the world.
I have worked against ethnic and religious warfare in Africa, in
Asia, in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland. But today its most
virulent manifestation is right there in Europe. So that is what I am
trying to do here. I don't ask you to agree with every decision I make.
I am responsible for it; if I turn out to be wrong, I bear the
responsibility for that. But you have to understand what the big picture
here is.
There are three big obstacles to an undivided, democratic, free
Europe that is totally secure. One is, we've got to build the right kind
of partnership with Russia, and we've got to help them come back
economically. They have kept their democracy alive. They are suffering
terribly economically. Some of it, of course, is like everybody else's
problems; some of it's their own doing; some of it beyond their control.
We've got a big stake in that. They've got 40,000 scientists that were
part of their cold war arsenal. We'd like them to be doing peaceful,
good things, not bartering their services to other countries to cause
trouble. So it's in our immediate interest, and they could be great
partners for us, economically and otherwise.
The second is the problem of Greece and Turkey. Why should that
matter to you, unless you're Greek or Turk? Because Turkey has been a
moderate Muslim state, a buffer between the West and radical,
revolutionary--and I think, perverted--theories of Islam that are
bubbling up in the Middle East, which is right next door. And we've got
a lot of difficulties working all that out. We've got to keep working
until we get it done.
And the third is all this turmoil in the Balkans, where all of it
comes together. And I'll try to explain it, so you can understand what
we're trying to do. But there is a humanitarian reason why I believe we
need to take a stand there. There is a practical reason. If we don't do
it now, we'll have to do it later, more people will die, and it will
cost more money. And there is a long-term, strategic reason for the
United States: Our children need a stable, free Europe.
Okay. So let me just go through the facts. The leader of Serbia,
after the cold war ended and Yugoslavia began to break up--keep in mind,
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, all these places were part of
Yugoslavia--Tito dies; the cold war ends; Yugoslavia begins to break up.
There are Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrans, and
Hungarians, all kinds of different ethnic groups in what was the former
Yugoslavia. They also--the Croats are basically Roman Catholic,
predominantly. The Serbs are basically Orthodox Christian; they're part
of the Greek and Russian and other Eastern Orthodox Churches. The
Bosnians have all three ethnic groups, but there are a lot of Muslims in
Bosnia; and the Kosovar Albanians are predominantly Muslim. And so there
was a religious and ethnic difference there.
Now, the source of the problem has been that the leader of Serbia
has tried to dominate the former Yugoslavia by starting wars in Croatia
and Bosnia in the last decade, and stripping from Kosovo, which is
legally a part of Serbia, but constitutionally autonomous--it means
they're entitled to self-government and to preserve their culture, their
religion,
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their institutions. He sought to reassert his authority by starting wars
in Croatia, wars with Bosnia, and repressing the autonomy of the
Kosovars.
Now, you know we had a lot of problems there over the last year and
there were all these refugees building up in Kosovo, just like you saw
in Bosnia a few years ago--ethnic cleansing, people being driven out of
their villages and their homes. You've been seeing it on television, if
you've been watching, the houses being burned and all that.
We negotiated a cease-fire last year--late last year--that saved
thousands of people from starvation and freezing because they'd left
their homes and they'd gone up into the mountains and the winter was
coming. And we did it because we were not just the United States; it was
we and our NATO allies, and Russia supported us. And we said, ``Look,
here's the deal.'' And NATO said, ``We'll use force if you don't do
this.'' So they withdrew some of their security forces, and the thing
calmed down, and we got some folks back in their homes. And we thought
we were on the way to getting this solved.
Then the tensions flared again recently--another 30,000 refugees,
people being driven from their homes and villages. So we had this peace
conference in Rambouillet, in France, just a few days ago, in March,
that had the potential to end the fighting for good. But we had to get
both sides to sign it. And like any fight, you know, nobody is totally
pure and everybody has got their own axe to grind. But the Kosovar
Albanians signed the agreement last week. They signed the agreement last
week. Even though it doesn't give them everything they want--they wanted
a referendum on their own independence, as opposed to autonomy, I think
largely because even though they are afraid they may be too small and
economically weak to be an independent country, they're afraid that the
Serbs will never honor their autonomy.
But they didn't get that. Even though their people are still being
savaged, in violation of the agreement that Mr. Milosevic made, they
still said a just peace is better than a long and unwinnable war.
Milosevic, on the other hand, President Milosevic refused even to
discuss key elements of the agreement. The Kosovars said yes to peace;
Serbia put 40,000 troops and 300 tanks in and around Kosovo.
Now, if you've been watching on the television, you know they've now
started rolling from village to village, predominantly in north central
Kosovo, shelling civilians, torching their homes so they can't come
back. In a number of villages, Serbian police have dragged the male
members of Kosovar families from their homes, lined up fathers with
sons, and shot them in cold blood.
This is not a traditional war. It is a conflict between artillery
and heavy weapons on the one hand, against, essentially, a guerrilla war
for independence. And when the guerrillas disappear, the Kosovar
guerrillas, what the Serbian police and military do is come in and just
take it out on defenseless people, whose representatives have already
agreed to a peace. And let me say this: If we don't do something--they
have 40,000 troops there, and a bigger offensive could start any moment.
This is not the first time--let me remind you--this is not the first
time we've faced this kind of choice. When President Milosevic started
the war in Bosnia 7 years ago, the world did not act quickly enough to
stop him. Let's don't forget what happened. Innocent people were herded
into concentration camps. Children were gunned down by snipers on their
way to school. Soccer fields and parks were turned into cemeteries. A
quarter of a million people--in a country with only 6 million
population--were killed. And a couple of million refugees were created--
not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were, and
because of the thirst of Mr. Milosevic and his allies to dominate,
indeed, to crush people who were of different ethnic and religious
affiliations.
Now, this was a genocide in the heart of Europe. It did not happen
in 1945; it was going on in 1995.
Now, at the time, a lot of people said, ``Well, there's nothing you
can do about it, Mr. President. That's the way those people are. They've
been fighting for hundreds of years.'' So I heard all that, and I
actually started reading up on the history of that area. And I found out
that in fact they had been fighting on and off for hundreds of years,
but
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there was more off than on. And it was an insult to them to say that
somehow they were intrinsically made to murder one another. That was the
excuse used by countries and leaders for too long-- ``Well, they're just
that way.''
Gerry and I, that's what they said about us, about the Irish in
Northern Ireland. They said, ``Oh, they've been arguing over things for
600 years.'' And they have, but they're not arguing all the time.
You just think about that. Every one of you who ever raised a child
that misbehaved, think about if you just said, well, that's--they're
just that way. Right? [Laughter] They're just that way. Well, if every
parent said that, the jails would be 5 times as big as they are.
Audience member. They already are. [Laughter]
The President. They're too big because some people think they're
just that way. That's not true. I just don't believe that.
So you've got to decide what you believe. I don't believe that. And
I know what happened in Bosnia. The United States and our allies, along
with courageous people in Bosnia and in Croatia who refused to be
subdued and fought back, found the unity and the will to stand up
against the aggression, and we helped to end the war. And later, to make
sure the peace would last, we agreed to send troops in, with our
allies--including the Russians, Ukrainians, others. We've got people
from all over Europe and the United States and Canada in Bosnia.
And everybody said, oh, it was going to be just like Vietnam. It was
going to be a bloody quagmire, even though there was a peace agreement.
And now we've withdrawn 70 percent of our troops. And there are still
difficulties, but we've preserved the peace, and the slaughter hasn't
come back. And I think it was a good investment. And I hope the American
people are proud of what they did to end the war in Bosnia. They should
be.
So what do we learn from Bosnia? We learned that if you don't stand
up to brutality and the killing of innocent people, you invite the
people who do it to do more of it. We learned that firmness can save
lives and stop armies.
Now, we have a chance to take the lessons we learned in Bosnia and
put them to work in Kosovo before it's too late. But make no mistake
about it, this is a country that already has a quarter of a million
refugees. This is a country that's had 30,000 refugees since they
stopped the peace talks, just a few weeks ago. One in eight of the
people who lives in this little country have already been run out of
their homes.
Now, I think if the American people don't know anything else about
me, they know that I don't like to use military force, and I do
everything I can to avoid it. But if we have to do it, then that's part
of the job, and I will do it.
We have done everything we could do to solve this issue peacefully.
Sunday, Secretary Albright dispatched Ambassador Dick Holbrooke to
Belgrade to talk to President Milosevic one last time. I believe Mr.
Holbrooke is on his way back, because I can tell you as of last night,
as of this morning, as of an hour ago, we got nowhere. He is still
denying his responsibility for the crisis, defying the international
community, and destroying the lives of more people. Not just the United
States, but all our NATO allies have warned him that he will have to
honor the commitments he has made one more time. All this stuff he's
doing is in violation of commitments he made to withdraw his forces.
And we said if he didn't do it, we would have to take action. NATO
is now united and prepared to carry out its warning. If President
Milosevic is not willing to make peace, we are willing to limit his
ability to make war on the Kosovars.
What we are trying to do is to limit his ability to win a military
victory and engage in ethnic cleansing and slaughter innocent people and
to do everything we can to induce him to take this peace agreement,
which is the only way in the wide world over the long run he's going to
be able to keep Kosovo as an independent part of this country, or an
autonomous part of this country.
Now, I want to level with you. You've been very good. You've
listened to me very closely. You've let me make my argument to you about
why this is a humanitarian issue and
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why it is an issue that is in the personal interest of the United
States.
Now, let me tell you that this is like any other military action.
There are risks in it, if we have to take this action. There are risks
every time our young people get up and fly jet airplanes at very high
speeds. Most of us could not begin to do that. Most of us don't even
have the reflexes or the eyesight or the hearing, never mind the skills
to do it. We lose a substantial number of our men and women in uniform
every single year in training operations. It is inherently dangerous
work. Plus, the Serbs have an air defense system and it has a
considerable capacity. There are risks to our pilots and there are risks
to people on the ground who, themselves, are innocent bystanders.
But the dangers of acting must be weighed against the dangers of
inaction. If we don't do anything after all the to-and-fro that's been
said here, it will be interpreted by Mr. Milosevic as a license to
continue to kill. There will be more massacres, more refugees, more
victims, more people crying out for revenge. And they'll be spreading
out to these nearby countries, where they have their own ethnic
tensions. So instead of just this problem in Kosovo, you'll have the
same sort of instability and tensions and the financial burden of
refugees in the places around it.
The firmness of our allies and ourselves now, I believe, is the only
hope the people of Kosovo have to be able to live in their own country
without having fear for their own lives. We asked them to accept peace
on terms that were less than perfect, and they said yes. We said if they
would do it, we would stick by them--not ``we,'' the United States,
``we'' 19 countries in NATO. We cannot run away from that commitment
now.
And we ought to consider what would happen if we and our allies were
to stand aside and let innocent people be massacred at NATO's doorstep.
That would discredit NATO because we didn't keep our word. But that's
not important, except insofar as what it means to you. You've got to
decide, my fellow Americans, if you agree with me that in the 21st
century, that America, as the world's superpower, ought to be standing
up against ethnic cleansing if we have the means to do it and we have
allies who will help us do it in their neighborhood. And you have to
decide whether you agree with me that we have a clear interest, after
what we saw in World War I, World War II, in the cold war and all the
people who died, in a Europe that is united, not divided; democratic,
not dictatorial; and secure and at peace, not racked by ethnic
cleansing--and if you believe that's good for us economically and
politically, over and above the humanitarian issue.
I do. I believe the case is clear. Especially when you remember--let
me say one more time--if you go home and look at a map tonight, you
ought to get down and look at it. This is a conflict with no natural
boundaries. If it continues, it could spread to neighboring Albania,
just to the south. Most of the Kosovars are Albanians. What if they
flood Albania with refugees? Albania has a Greek minority. What are they
going to do? Are we going to recreate this all over again?
Then it could put massive numbers of refugees in Macedonia, where
you have both a Slavic majority and a Muslim minority; a country now
with a President and a Prime Minister that have worked with us and taken
our NATO troops in and worked with us, putting enormous pressure on
them. Believe me, it could draw in even Greece and Turkey.
So, apart from the humanitarian issue and apart from our interest in
Kosovo, this thing has no natural boundaries. The whole Balkans area
have all these people of different ethnic and religious groups, and if
we just say, ``Well, that's just the way they are,'' then that's they
way they'll be. And there's a good chance when this young woman is an
adult, voting citizen of this country, that she will have to be worried
still about whether the politicians are going to deal with innocent
people getting killed in that part of the world. I would like to lift
that burden from their generation because I think it is morally right
and in the vital interest of the United States. And I hope you will
support me.
Now, I will say again, this is not a slam dunk. This is a difficult
issue. This is a difficult decision. I believe that the position I have
taken is the best of a lot of bad alternatives. But you didn't just hire
me to make the easy decisions. And so I just would say
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to you--I ask you to talk to your friends and neighbors about this. I
ask you literally to go get down an atlas and look at the map, pay a
little closer attention to the news reports, think about the arguments
that I've made. Think about whether you really agree with me, and say a
prayer for the young men and women in uniform who are going to be there
to do what I, as their Commander in Chief, order them to do.
Now, let me go back to the point I started with, and I'll get to the
domestic issues. We're living in a global society where there is no easy
dividing line between what is foreign and what is domestic. I'll give
you another issue: Social Security. You think, what in the world could
be more of a domestic issue than Social Security? But the truth is,
every wealthy country in the world is suffering the challenge of an
aging crisis. Japan is facing it even more than we are, because their
life expectancy is higher, and their birthrate is lower, and their
immigration rate is much lower. A lot of the European countries are
facing it because their life expectancy is more or less the same, and
their birthrate is lower.
So we're not the only country in the world facing this Social
Security issue. And I would argue to you, my fellow Americans, that this
is a high-class problem. I hear people wringing their hands about Social
Security; I say, hallelujah, give me more of those problems! Why do we
have this problem? Because we're living longer. The older I get, the
better that looks. [Laughter]
This is a high-class problem. But by 2030, we'll only have two
people working for every one person drawing Social Security. And so,
we've either got to put more money in the system, cut benefits, increase
the rate of return on the investment we're making in Social Security, or
do a combination of all three if we want to maintain a system that,
today, keeps one-half of the people in this country over 65 out of
poverty.
And I would argue that we ought to start, since we have reduced the
deficit, and we now have a surplus, and we are projected to have
surpluses for the indefinite future--of course, it will go up or down
with the condition of the economy, but the structural deficit has been
eliminated. What I have said to the American people is that we ought to
set aside the majority of this surplus, 62 percent of it, for the next
15 years to stabilize Social Security. We can extend the life of the
Trust Fund to about 2050 if you do that.
If we invested just a small percentage of it in the stock market or
other private sector options--just a small percent--through a completely
independent body, insulated from politics, you could put another 5 years
on it. And I'll guarantee you, every State, county, and local worker
represented by AFSCME that has a retirement plan, that that pension fund
is doing some investing in the private sector. They don't have it all in
government securities, and they've probably invested a whole lot more
than I suggest in the private sector. And that's probably why your
retirement funds are all in good shape, because the stock market has
been doing well.
Now, the stock market doesn't always do well historically throughout
the country, but over any 30-year period, it always outperforms just 100
percent guaranteed government investments. So what I've tried to do is
get a little bit of the best of both worlds.
Now, what we've tried to do with Social Security, historically, is
to have 75 years of life on the Trust Fund, which is what I would like
to do. I would also like to lift the earnings limitation because as
people live longer, more and more people will want to work. If they pay
in, they ought to be able to draw out, I think. And eventually that will
bring money into Social Security. And I think we have got to provide
greater benefits to elderly, single women who still have a poverty rate
of over 18 percent--almost twice the overall poverty rate of the senior
population. That's very, very important.
So we need to get together in a decent, open, honest bipartisan
fashion and figure out what other steps we need to take to close that
gap. But believe me, you can't get there unless you first set aside 62
percent of the surplus to save Social Security.
The second thing I want to do is set aside 15 percent of the surplus
for the next 15 years for Medicare. And again, there are a lot of those
who don't want to do that. But keep in mind, you may not agree with
everything I do, but at least I ought to have some
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credibility on this. We did have a $290 billion deficit when I took
office, and we do have a $70 billion surplus now. You've got a big stake
in this. A lot of the people that are members of your union deal with
people who depend upon Medicare to survive. A lot of you have parents
who depend upon Medicare to survive.
Now, again, Medicare is falling victim to the aging of America,
because the older you get the more you need some kind of health care,
right? I mean, I have to stretch for 20 minutes or more just to get up
and get around anymore. [Laughter] I mean, it's a big deal. The older
you get--you do. We know that. And also modern medicine and technology--
we're living longer. And if we really do finish this genome project by
2000, 2001, unlock all the secrets of the human gene, you're going to
see life expectancy go up exponentially.
But anybody in this room today that's over 60 years old, is still in
good health, and if you know that--if you don't know of any health
problem you have, you have a life expectancy right now of over 80 years.
The life expectancy in America today is over 76 years, and that includes
everybody that gets killed by accidents, violence, early childhood
disease, everything else. So again, this is a high-class problem, folks.
This is not the end of the world. It's good news. We're living longer,
and there are medical advances.
But we cannot sustain Medicare; it's going to run out of money in
2010 or a couple years after that, 2 or 3 years after that. We've done
our best to manage it. We've added years to it. But we need to take it
out for another decade or so. And we need also to make some provision
for seniors on Medicare to get some help to buy prescription drugs.
Now, again, that will be a costly program, although, you know, we
have to ask people who can afford to pay to pay what they can afford to
pay. But think about it over the long run. Over the long run, you can
buy a lot of drugs in a year for what a week in a hospital costs you.
So if we get the right kind of system in place and we don't
encourage over-utilization, and we ask people to pay what they can
afford to pay, but we help them, you'll get out of these horror stories
where you've got seniors in America still making a choice between the
food they eat and the drugs they need, without bankrupting the system.
Now, there have been a lot of proposed reforms to Medicare. There
was that Commission, you know, and they had different approaches and
they didn't--issued a report--Senator Breaux's Commission. They had some
pretty good ideas about making the system more competitive and all that.
But my issue there is, I want a defined set of benefits, first of all. I
want to make as much provision as we can for prescription drugs.
And secondly, I don't want to do something that will, in effect,
break down the system, because there is no set of reforms that will meet
the financial needs of Medicare without putting some more money in it.
I've not seen any; I have not seen any independent expert who says that.
And since I don't think we should raise taxes when we have a surplus, we
ought to dedicate 15 percent of the surplus to Medicare and make some
reforms which would enable us to lengthen the life of Medicare and begin
to deal with this prescription drug issue. And so I ask you to work with
me on that.
Now, there are some people who believe that these programs ought to
be more privatized, who won't support the money for that reason. But
there are some people--most of them in our party--who believe that since
we've got this money, we don't have to make any changes in the program.
Both sides are wrong. So we're going to have to work together--and you
all need to listen to me--we're going to have to work closely together.
For example, I'm against raising the retirement age for Medicare to
67 because--let me tell you why--because the fastest-growing group of
people without health insurance are people between 55 and 65. And so I
can't imagine why we would want to have more elderly people without
health insurance.
Now, I've offered Congress a proposal to help plug that gap a little
bit, and I hope they'll take it this year. But that does not mean we can
be against all reform. We have to be prepared to eat a few lemons, too.
But we ought to do it with our goals in mind: preserving the integrity
of Medicare, the guaranteed set of benefits; doing something
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on the prescription drugs that will really make a difference; and making
sure that we have held together a program that has been a lifesaver for
this country for 30 years.
So that's what we've got to do. Now, let me just say one third thing
about this. Again--and there's another--this is why I tell you all this
foreign business and the domestic business are all related. If we put
aside 62 percent for Social Security and 15 percent for Medicare, we can
do it in a way that enables us to pay down the national debt for 15
years.
If we pay down the national debt, here's what will happen: Interest
rates will be lower; more investment will come; there will be more jobs
created; incomes will stay up; it will protect us from bad things that
happen overseas and it will make it more likely that good things will
happen overseas--because if we don't have to borrow this money for our
own debt, then other people around the world will be able to get money
at lower rates. They will grow more; they'll buy more of our products.
And you'll be better off because in all your States and cities, people
will be earning more money, paying more taxes, more money for AFSCME
employees who work for the public--all this stuff is connected.
All this is connected. You have to see the connection between what
we do and what it impacts on us and how it impacts around the world. So
I ask you to support that.
Finally, I believe we should have a tax cut, but I think it ought to
be targeted to middle-income families and lower-income working families.
In my balanced budget, we've got tax cuts for child care--very
important; substantial--for long-term care, to help people pay for long-
term care expenses for their families, very important; for training
costs and any number of other things. And then, in this balanced budget,
I propose to set aside about 11 percent of the surplus to help people
set up their own savings accounts so they can save for their retirement,
and have the Government take this money and give it back to people, so
over and above their Social Security and their retirement plans and
their pensions, they can save more money for their future. Now, I think
this is a good idea.
Now, let me say we have some agreement and a lot of disagreement
with the Republican majority on this. They have agreed we should invest
more money in education, which I think is good, but we differ about how
to spend it. They have agreed that they should set aside some money for
Social Security, but they haven't agreed to do it in a way that will pay
down the debt yet. They have not agreed to devote any of this surplus to
Medicare, which I think is a terrible mistake.
Now, they say I'm going to use the surplus so we don't have to make
any of the hard choices on Medicare. I will say again, that is not true.
You heard me tell you, we're going to have to get together and make some
changes in the Medicare program. But we could make every change they
propose and the thing would still not last very long unless we put some
more investment in it. And every expert knows that.
So, the third thing I want to say is, as usual, for the last, now
more than 16 years, the bulwark of their plan is a large tax plan that
disproportionately benefits people like me who don't need it, and that
will explode, in the out-years--the very years that I want us to be
paying that debt down, keeping interest rates down.
You talk to any person who's made a lot of money in America in the
last 6 years, and they'll tell you that they'd a lot rather have a
growing stock market and low interest rates than a tax cut, because we
already--not because everybody wouldn't like to have a tax cut. The
people we ought to be focusing on cutting taxes for are the people that
cannot pay their kid's way to college and take care of their parents who
are sick and make ends meet. That's what we ought to be doing.
So I say again, I'm somewhat encouraged by where we are with the
Congress now, because there is a general feeling we're going to do
something about Social Security. But we ought to do it in a way that
brings the debt down. We've got to do something about Medicare. We ought
to have the right kind of tax cut, and it shouldn't be so big it keeps
us from making the economy strong.
I want to work with you on this. You've been good to me. You helped
me get elected.
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We've done a lot of things together. And believe me--the 25 percent of
our time we've got left together--if we save Social Security and
Medicare for the 21st century, if we agree to pay down the national
debt, if we make a historic commitment to the education of our children,
if we do something about long-term care, if we do something about child
care--the best is yet to come.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. in the Presidential Suite of the
Omni Shoreham Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gerald W. McEntee,
international president, William Lucy, international secretary-
treasurer, Glenard S. Middleton, Sr., international vice president,
Charles M. Loveless, legislative department director, and Caryl Yontz,
legislative affairs specialist, American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees; President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); and U.S. Special Envoy
Richard Holbrooke.