[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 26 (Monday, July 5, 1999)]
[Pages 1250-1257]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Rick Dunham of BusinessWeek

June 29, 1999

National Economy

    Mr. Dunham. I was wondering if I can sort of start broadly and lead 
into it. I mean, the new economy, with the increase in productivity 
that's tied to technology and globalism has really led the United States 
to sustained economic expansion that's been amazing in the decade, and 
growth beyond just about anyone's predictions.
    I was just wondering if you're a believer in this ``new economy'' 
scenario. And then the second part was, why, if there is such a booming 
economy, do you think it hasn't trickled all the way down to some of 
these distressed inner cities and the rural areas?
    The President. First, I do believe in the new economy. I think that 
technology is rifling through every sector of economic activity, in ways 
that have given us dramatic increases in productivity and potential for 
growth without inflation, that I think most models have not accurately 
measured.
    And I think that, therefore, the most important thing for Government 
policy is to be fiscally responsible, to create the conditions in which 
people can prosper, and then to try to do things which will accelerate 
the trends that are already underway. I think that that's what we're 
trying to do with Internet II, for example, and what we're trying to do 
with having heavy investments in biomedical research.
    Now, why hasn't it trickled down to everybody? I think there are--
I'd like to make three points. First of all, there has been a remarkable 
amount of trickling down. We have the lowest minority unemployment rate, 
among African-Americans and Hispanics, recorded in the nearly three 
decades we've been doing racially separate unemployment statistics. And 
many cities--Detroit, for example, has an unemployment rate that's 
roughly half what it was in '93.
    On the other hand, I think there are two reasons why it hasn't. One 
is, there are enormous premiums in this new economy for education and 
skills, so that people who don't have an education are both more likely 
to remain unemployed, and even more significantly, more likely to remain 
underemployed or relatively undercompensated, which I think explains the 
lion's share of why you've had increasing inequality for over 20 years--
which began to abate about the last 2 or 3 years.
    Mr. Dunham. In the last couple of years.
    The President. You've begun to see comparable and, in some cases, 
relatively larger income gains in the lower 40 percent.
    I also think the wage inequality is also reinforced by the fact that 
people at lower income levels are less able to buy stocks, and an 
enormous amount of increased wealth has come from ownership, as opposed 
to just salaried employment. So you see a lot of the companies, for 
example, that offer their employees, even their lowest wage employees, 
stock options--something that Wal-Mart, for example, has done for a long 
time--those companies will have a better record of increasing equality 
because their workers can afford wealth. And I think that that's 
important.
    The other thing is, of course, what you're here to talk to me about. 
The third point is that I think there are still disincentives to invest 
in the neighborhoods and communities, or people, which still need to be 
brought in. They're either real disincentives or they're imagined ones--
there are, you know, we have these, I think there are accumulated 
preconceptions about where market opportunities exist and don't exist.
    And what I'm trying to do with--what I've been trying to do from the 
beginning of my administration, with the empowerment zones and 
enterprise communities, with a vigorous Community Reinvestment Act--over 
$18.5 billion was loaned under the CRA in 1997, for example, that's the 
last year I have numbers for. With community development financial 
institutions, with the microenterprise lending, with all these 
initiatives, we've tried to remove the institutional barriers and create 
mechanisms which would allow capital to flow to people and to 
neighborhoods where they miss. We had the tax credits for hiring people 
off welfare or for hiring people that were in the empowerment zones or 
the enterprise communities. Those are things that have already had an 
impact.

[[Page 1251]]

    But what we're trying to do--what I'm trying to do now is to deal 
with what I think are both of the problems that have kept some of our 
inner-city neighborhoods and poorest communities from fully 
participating. That is, we have this new markets initiative, which is 
basically designed to put together a package of loan guarantees and tax 
credits, to induce new investment in these areas at more attractive 
rates--and, also, the psychological barriers. We're going to take--we've 
got Sandy Weill and Hugh McColl and Dick Huber joining Republican and 
Democratic elected officials, and Jesse Jackson and Al From and, you 
know, all these people, to shine the light on the opportunity.
    You know, you've got a purchasing power gap over actual sales, 
retail sales, that averages 25 percent in urban areas throughout the 
country. It's 35 percent in Los Angeles and 40 percent in East St. 
Louis, two places we're going.
    Dick Huber actually made a kind of an interesting comment, only in 
jest, when we went to Atlanta to kind of kick off this program. He said, 
``You know''--he said, ``I may be the only guy that's kind of sorry 
you're doing this, because we figured out there's a huge opportunity out 
there and now all our competitors are going to know.'' [Laughter]

New Markets Initiative

    Mr. Dunham. Well, that's--that's one of the things that I was 
curious about. I mean, some of these corporations and executives--
Citicorp, Aetna, NationsBank--have realized this. But at the same time, 
it seems to be uneven in the corporate community----
    The President. Very.
    Mr. Dunham. ----where others are sitting on their corporate hands. I 
was wondering what you can do, as President, or what could be done 
through legislation to try to encourage more companies to go into these 
areas.
    The President. Well, I think there are two things we can do, and I 
hope to do both on this tour. The first is to actually make sure that 
all the people in positions to make investment decisions understand that 
there are very gifted, very hard-working, very creative people out there 
in these communities, and that there are enormous opportunities there--
just to shine the light on what's going on and what's out there, 
including the infrastructure we've worked hard to put in place in the 
last 6\1/2\ years.
    And secondly, I hope to build bipartisan support for passing the new 
markets initiative which will, in effect, make it more attractive for 
people to invest in these areas by giving them a tax credit of up to 25 
percent and making them eligible--making certain investments eligible--
for loan guarantees of up to two-thirds of the amount of the total 
investment. I mean, if you have Government-guaranteed loans on two-
thirds of an investment, you get 25 percent tax credit on what you put 
up, that cuts the risk, considerably, in ways that I think are 
important. So I hope to achieve that.
    And if I could back up, I asked the people to think about this in 
another way. I think there is a moral logic here, which is that we don't 
want to go into the 21st century, at an all-time high in prosperity, 
leaving so many people behind. That's not right. There's also a very 
compelling economic argument. You know, we've got all the debates now 
about what's the Fed going to do and do they need to raise interest 
rates and all that. I don't want to get into that. I think Mr. Greenspan 
and the Fed do a perfectly good job, and we've had a good partnership by 
recognizing each other's appropriate roles.
    But let me--no one believes, I don't think, that we have completely 
repealed the laws of economics, traditional laws of economics; that 
we've completely repealed any tendency for inflation in our economy; or 
that we've completely repealed the tendency to have some business cycle. 
But we've dramatically improved it through this technological revolution 
that's going on.
    So if you ask yourself--you put yourself in my position, and you ask 
yourself: Okay, you've got 4.2 percent unemployment; you've got the 
longest peacetime expansion in history--the country may be able to have 
the longest expansion in history, including wartime, in the next several 
months. Now, how can you keep this going? How can you keep growth going 
with low inflation? And that involves, is there a noninflationary way to 
add more workers? Is there a noninflationary way to raise wages? And the 
answer to that, it

[[Page 1252]]

seems to me, is--there are only basically three answers.
    One is, we can sell more of our goods and services around the world, 
which is why I strongly favor new trade initiatives and not seeing 
America go back to protectionism. And that's a subject for another day, 
but you know I'm hoping we can continue to push that forward.
    Then, secondly, you can look at discrete populations in America 
which are underemployed. There are basically only two now: people on 
welfare--we cut the welfare rolls in half, but we know that there are 
still people on welfare who could work, but they're harder to place; and 
the disabled. We're about to take a huge step in that direction, with 
almost unanimous votes from Congress, by allowing disabled people who 
get Medicaid health insurance to keep their Medicaid while they go into 
the work force. And that will bring a lot of extra people into the work 
force at competitive wage rates.
    The third big opportunity--and I'm convinced the biggest one, 
because it's a two-fer, you get more workers and more customers--is 
going to the neighborhoods and the communities that have basically not 
participated in this recovery.
    So it seems to me that, quite apart from our moral obligation to do 
this--if, in fact, there are business opportunities there, which are 
there right now, in the tens of billions of dollars--and if there are 
ways to make those opportunities even more attractive, by the passage of 
this legislation, that this is a major, major opportunity for our 
country to keep our economy going and to keep it going with low 
inflation. So, to me, it may be finally something whose time has come.
    I also think we've learned something in the last 6 years about what 
works. And of course, there were models out there before the last 6 
years. In the 1960's there was this great effort, through the Great 
Society programs, to build up the poor urban and rural areas. And we 
found that, actually, they did a lot of good, in terms of providing 
nutrition for people, in terms of providing health care, in terms of 
providing educational opportunities. But the Government alone could not 
build a sustaining economy. You couldn't build an economic 
infrastructure with Government alone.
    In the 1980's, we learned that the stock market could grow, and we 
could create record numbers of new millionaires and billionaires, but 
the private sector alone could not do this, and that more and more 
people would fall further and further behind.
    So what we've tried to do is to apply our Third Way philosophy--that 
we should have a partnership between Government and the private sector 
that would literally empower people to change the dynamics of their 
lives in these poor neighborhoods. That's what the whole empowerment 
zone, enterprise community initiative that the Vice President has so 
ably run, is designed to do; that's what these CDFI's are designed to 
do. That's what the--you know, that's why we've been so vigorous in 
pursuit of the Community Reinvestment Act. As I'm sure you know, over 90 
percent of all the loans made under the CRA, even though its' been on 
the books for over 20 years, have been made during the life of this 
administration.
    So this is the next logical step. The problem with all that is, it's 
sort of uneven, and it--the CRA applies nationwide, where there's 
available capital, but the CDFI's and the empowerment zones, the 
enterprise communities, they only apply where they are. And there are 
125 of them, but they don't cover every place. And even in the places 
where they exist, they don't cover all the areas of need within the 
cities where they exist.
    So if we can dramatically increase the awareness in the business 
community of the investment opportunities, through the use of the bully 
pulpit with the tour we're about to take with the business leaders and 
others, and if we can pass the new markets initiative, it is literally--
it's a nationwide initiative. It would apply everywhere where there's an 
economically distressed area.
    So I'm very, very excited about this.
    Mr. Dunham. I've been talking to Sandy Weill, and he's a big backer 
of new markets initiative. He was saying that if the U.S. Government can 
create programs that help American corporations, protect them from some 
of the risks around the world, that it makes sense that something 
similar would be

[[Page 1253]]

offered to--more incentives in the United States. I was wondering how 
much of this may be modeled on some of the--OPIC, or other programs, 
that have been successful around the world, and if you've had any of the 
same kinds of thoughts in trying to model this.
    The President. Yes. We actually--what we tried to do is to create at 
least the same, if not greater, incentives for American business to 
invest in America, that we give them to invest in developing economies 
overseas.
    I've been a vigorous supporter of OPIC and the Ex-Im Bank. I think 
that they're incredibly important to our interests and to the welfare of 
the people of developing countries around the world. And I would--and I 
have strongly opposed attempts to cut back on them in the last 6 years.
    But I think that it is--I woke up one day and basically realized--we 
started debating what we could do--that American businesses could get 
lower risk to invest in developing economies overseas than they could in 
the developing economy right here in America. And I think that's wrong.
    So there is a--the American private investment companies that we set 
up, which would be eligible for the loan guarantees--$2 in loan 
guarantee for every $1 of unguaranteed investment put up by the private 
sector--it directly came out of our attempts to parallel the incentives 
for investing overseas with incentives to invest here.

Minorities in Corporate America

    Mr. Dunham. You've mentioned both Al From and Jesse Jackson. I'm 
curious what you think of the efforts that Jesse Jackson has made, 
working with corporate America--Wall Street, now in Silicon Valley--to 
try to encourage corporate America to hire more minorities, to invest 
more in minority areas, and to help underwrite minority businesses. I 
was wondering both what your sense is of what he's done and how it may 
have helped shape what you're doing here.
    The President. Well, I strongly support it, and I think that--you 
know, I've spoken to his Wall Street conference in each of the last 2 
years. And I think he deserved a lot of credit. He's been out there 
trying to get this done for a long time.
    And it also influenced my thinking because Dick Grasso, who, you 
know, sponsors this with him every year, and the others who help have--
they really persuaded me that there was a lot more we could do, even 
within existing law. And I'm hoping that I can support his efforts, that 
there will be--that these things will be entirely complementary.
    You know, maybe this is just the moment at which years and years of 
accumulated effort by a lot of people will be bearing fruit. I've been 
interested in this whole issue, and Hillary has, for a long, long time, 
every since we first learned about the efforts of the South Shore 
Development Bank in Chicago, and we brought a development bank like that 
to Arkansas, with a microenterprise loan program. And I realized that--
AID was helping people like Mohammad Yunus, who's founded the Grameen 
Bank at Bangladesh, you know, to do this kind of thing around the world. 
And I thought we ought to be doing it at home.
    And we had some good success in Arkansas. And in the mid-eighties, I 
headed, along with the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, the Delta 
Development Commission--the Lower Mississippi Delta Development 
Commission. And we looked at how to do these kinds of things in the 
Mississippi Delta, which is the poorest part of America.
    And so, as I said, there are--lots of people have been out there 
working on this, trying to get this done for a long time. And it seems 
to me that we now have enough evidence that what we have done works but 
that we still have these two big barriers. One is, the business 
community is not fully aware of what opportunities they actually have to 
make money now. And the second is that there are, frankly, still some 
greater risks in these areas that we ought to try to overcome by putting 
in place a framework where there's much more incentive to invest, and at 
least as much as we give to invest overseas.

President's Upcoming Travel To Promote New Markets Initiative

    Mr. Dunham. You've mentioned your upcoming trip that leaves July 5th 
and will go everywhere from Appalachia to Los Angeles. I was wondering 
if there are any kind of specific proposals that you see there, that 
will

[[Page 1254]]

bring improvement to the communities you're going to visit. If you're--I 
know that the idea is to leave rays of hope in each of the places, but I 
didn't know if there were any specifics that you're looking to leave.
    The President. We're going to do--we will try to do three things. 
One, we will try to highlight initiatives that are working now, things 
that we--like, we'll have places that have benefited from the Community 
Development Financial Institutions, for example.
    Two, we will try to highlight how the impact of the new markets 
initiative, if the Congress were to pass it, would take these benefits 
and immeasurably increase them, and do it on a national basis, wherever 
there's need. And the third thing we will do is to have a whole series 
of announcements by business leaders about things they are going to do 
on their own, because they would be profitable--and, by the way, they'll 
create businesses; they'll create jobs; they'll create opportunities in 
these areas.
    So we will have a heavy emphasis on that third area, because I don't 
think that, as I said, for a minute that this is primarily a Government 
initiative. This is a partnership initiative. But there are lots of 
opportunities right now, here, that people are genuinely unaware of. And 
I think most Americans understand how much prosperity we have, and that 
no one could have imagined that the stock market would more than triple, 
and that we would have now almost 19 million new jobs in the last 6\1/2\ 
years, and that all these things would happen, and yet there would still 
be these pockets left behind. So I think there's a longing to see all of 
our fellow citizens caught up in this prosperity--everyone who's willing 
to work.
    And I think that, you know, when people actually know the facts, 
that there's a lot of money to be made out there. Just on the retail--if 
you think about the retail issue alone, the fact that there's a 
purchasing power gap of 25 percent in these urban inner cities, that's a 
stunning statistic. And it's a bigger market than virtually all of our 
foreign markets. And that's just on retail--never mind the factories you 
could put in; never mind the other kinds of nonretail, small business 
services you could have. It's amazing.

Status of New Markets Legislation

    Mr. Dunham. What is the status of the legislation? Republicans on 
the Hill say that they're still waiting for precise wording. It's pretty 
well known in general what will be in it. I was wondering if you have 
both timetable and game plan for going ahead and trying to get something 
done.
    The President. Well, what I want to do, I wanted to do this tour 
first, and get--I know there will be a lot of Republican legislators, I 
believe, will participate in this because this really is something that 
Republicans should like. It's a completely--it's free enterprise. It's 
using the tax system to prove that the enterprise system can work in 
every community in America, which is what they believe.
    And so what I'm hoping will happen, and what I intend to do is, 
during the tour and then immediately after, I want to consult with the 
leaders of Congress in both parties, see if there is the kind of 
bipartisan support for this concept that I think there should be, and 
then we will quickly move to get the legislation up there--because we've 
got it all budgeted, and it's well within the budget.
    And it also would be well within the budget potential of many 
Republican initiatives. I mean, the interesting thing is, if you do loan 
guarantees and tax credits, they don't cost that much money for the 
enormous benefit that they bring.
    Mr. Durham. I guess most of the Republican, the Republican approach 
where it differs is--zero capital gains, they're talking about, or some 
further regulatory relief. That is sort of separate from these kinds of 
incentives, and I don't know if there's any room for that in the final 
package or----
    The President. But that wouldn't do anything--you know, we had a 
capital gains reduction in the Balanced Budget Act. But that wouldn't do 
anything to specifically increase the likelihood of money going here. 
Because what we propose to do is to increase the relative attractiveness 
of these investments, recognizing that the relative risk is still 
slightly greater for a lot of the things that we'd like to see done.
    So I think that those conversations ought to occur in the context of 
our larger budget negotiations. But on this, I think that we still

[[Page 1255]]

should do this. Whatever we come up with, in the end, with a tax bill, 
this should be done on its own merits. We need to increase the relative 
attractiveness during this period, just like we're increasing the 
relative ability to hire people who are disabled, because they can carry 
their Medicaid health insurance with them into the work force.

National Economy

    Mr. Dunham. Do you--you were talking about growth and perhaps the 
new economy, and the changes of the recent decade would change the 
models of growth. Do you see, down the road, were you could have growth 
more than 2 percent, where it could be 3.5 percent, or more, per year?
    The President. Without inflation?
    Mr. Dunham.  Without inflation.
    The President. Oh sure, well, that's what we've had for the last 6 
years.
    Mr. Dunham. Yes, exactly.
    The President. I do. But I think if we're going to do it, you have 
to find ways to find new customers and add to the work force in areas 
where there is an opportunity for growth without inflation. For example, 
I think--suppose we did all this, and we got down to a 3.5 percent 
unemployment rate. It's not inconceivable to me that we could do that, 
if we target these population groups and these neighborhoods and these 
places, without a substantial increase in inflation.
    If then, the next big step is, I still believe, is that we and the 
other wealthy countries of the world are going to have to really work in 
a disciplined fashion with well-run nations, developing nations, and 
maximize the use of technology--I think a lot of these poor countries, 
if they're well-run, could skip a whole generation of economic 
development because of technology. With the advent of the Internet, I 
think you could--first of all, you could revolutionize all their 
schools. When I was in Africa, in these little villages in Uganda, which 
is the country in Africa that's done the most to cut its AIDS rate--so 
it has, it's a country with capacity and a sophisticated government. And 
I went into the little villages that had outdated maps that still had 
the Soviet Union there, and all that.
    And I thought to myself, if we wired all these schools--if we hooked 
them up to the Internet--they could also have printers. And they 
wouldn't have to buy new maps; they could print out new maps. And the 
government could cover the operating costs of the computers in the 
schools. They could just be printing--you know, you just hook them up 
with a printer. They could print their educational materials. They could 
print their maps.
    There are things we could do--and I believe, let me just say one 
other thing. I also think these countries can skip a generation of 
development in the sense that they do not have to, even in their initial 
stages, worsen their environment the way people did through the 
Industrial Revolution, if they do it in a clever way.
    So I think the opportunities for new jobs, new growth, without 
inflation, because of technology and because of what we know in these 
areas, are stunning. But in order to do it over the long run, over a 
sustained basis--for 10 years, let's say--we're going to have to have 
much more sophisticated trading links, which means that we are going to 
have to deal with the things I talked about in Geneva--both times, in my 
two trade talks there--and the things I talked about at the University 
of Chicago. We've got to somehow build a consensus on trade that makes 
the American working people feel that we are preserving the social 
contract, if you will, here at home, and that we're doing it in a way 
that advances the lives of ordinary people around the world.
    I think, if we can do that, if we can sort of adapt the world 
trading system--on the theory of leaving no one behind and making 
maximum use of new technologies and what we know about economic 
potential--I think that this thing can go on for an indefinite period.
    But if we don't, if we don't do that--if we don't deal with the 
populations and the neighborhoods here at home, if we don't do these 
things, then at some point, you'll reach a floor in unemployment, and 
wage demands will occur and there will be some shortage or another 
around the world in some thing or another people need, and inflation 
will resume.
    Mr. Dunham. Right.

[[Page 1256]]

    The President. But I do think that the world is in a different place 
now. I think we we--whatever happens about things we don't know about--
you know, no economist has an accurate model of how this has all changed 
the business cycle, or what productivity has really done to growth.
    But what we know is, that if we are fiscally responsible and we 
continue to pursue this course that you and I discussed here today, that 
we will perform far better than we otherwise would, that we'll be better 
citizens, in terms of our relationships with one another in America, and 
we'll be better citizens of the world. We know that, regardless, we'll 
get better performance and we'll be a better society. So I hope that we 
can keep pushing all of this.

Federal Budget Surplus

    Mr. Dunham. I wouldn't be a good BusinessWeek reporter if I didn't 
ask about the trillion-dollar windfall, as it were, and if you see this 
as on opening to a possible agreement that would cover everything from 
Medicare, with the prescription drug benefit that you talked about 
today, to, on the Republican side, perhaps tax cuts that would be larger 
than what you had spelled out in the State of the Union.
    The President. I think it--obviously, when you have more money than 
you thought you were going to, it should make it easier to have an 
omnibus agreement. And I hope it will.
    From my point of view, I want to caution, however, that--all of 
this, what we have this year, we will actually have--everything else, 
we're projecting--that what will make the projections turn out to be 
facts is very disciplined, responsible management of the economy, and 
the clear signal to the markets that we're managing our long-term 
problems.
    So this should make it easier to make an agreement on Social 
Security and Medicare, and paying down the debt, and still have more 
funds for education, medical research, tax cuts, you name it. But we 
have to have our priorities in order. We still don't want to go off and 
have a big tax cut and ignore the Medicare liabilities, the Social 
Security liabilities, or what I consider to be the enormous opportunity 
we have to pay off the debt of the country over the next 15 years.
    When I became President, we had a $290 billion deficit, and it was 
projected to increase forever. And now we project that next year we'll 
have a $142 billion surplus, and we could actually be out of debt in 15 
years.
    Now, I think it's important to note why that is in--again, in a 
global economy with global financial markets, I think that's quite a 
desirable thing, because it means lower interest rates for everything 
from business investment to car payments to home mortgages to college 
loans to credit cards. It means, therefore, more money for jobs, for 
growth, for wages. And it means we are relatively less dependent on 
global markets in times of turmoil, like we had in Asia.
    It also means that our trading partners--again, we want them to 
grow; they need to do well, these developing countries--it means they 
will be able to access capital that they will have to get from beyond 
their borders, at lower interest rates than would otherwise be the case, 
because we won't be--the Government, at least--won't be in these 
markets.
    So I think the idea of the United States--and, hopefully, other 
wealthy countries in the world--being free of public debt--at least 
long-term, structural public debt. You know, maybe if a country wants to 
undertake to rebuild all its airports and float bonds to do it, that's 
one thing. But you know what I mean. I mean long-term, structural public 
debt. I think is a very appealing prospect for the world over the next 
15 to 20 years, because then we could take a lot of this investment 
capital that would normally go to governments in the United States and 
put it into these developing economies, where it is desperately needed, 
in a way that would benefit them and benefit us.
    So I hope that--again, this should have appeal to the Republicans as 
well as the Democrats, the idea of making America debt-free.
    Mr. Dunham. Right.
    The President. And we can have a tax cut, but we ought to do Social 
Security and Medicare. And I still believe a big portion of these taxes 
ought to be--tax cuts ought to be directed toward helping more people 
save for their retirement. That's another thing.

[[Page 1257]]

    You know, most people will not have enough in their private 
pensions, and Social Security, and in their present 401(k) accounts, to 
sustain their lifestyles when they retire. So I do think that my 
proposal there deserves some consideration from the Republican majority, 
just because I think it's good social policy, and it's a good way to 
give a tax cut to increase savings.
    We've got--our savings rate in America has gone up in the last 6 
years solely because of the decline in Government deficits, and now the 
surplus. There has been no increase in savings by individuals. Now, that 
is somewhat misleading, because it doesn't count record-high 
homeownership. But still, I think--I hope we can get all this done. The 
new economic news should increase the chances of an omnibus agreement. 
But we still have to keep first things first here.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman

    Mr. Dunham. My Sam Donaldson question is, what about Alan Greenspan?
    The President. Well, you know, he's established a pretty good 
record, and he's been right a lot more often than he's been wrong over 
the last several years. And as I said, the relationship we've had has 
been one of mutual respect and independence. And I respect his--he knows 
what we're doing. He knows that we're determined to be fiscally 
responsible. And he knows--actually, we haven't talked about some of the 
things that are in this article, but I'm sure he'll read it and he'll 
get a feel for what my theory is for how we can achieve long-term growth 
without inflation.
    But he also knows there are these underlying things that he monitors 
every week for the Fed, and he'll make the best judgment he can. And 
whatever he does is his decision to make.
    Mr. Dunham. Do you think he might for 5 more years?
    The President. Oh, I don't even know if he wants to do it. I haven't 
talked to him. I don't even know if he's interested.
    Mr. Dunham. Well, thank you very much.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview began at 4:25 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House on June 29 but was embargoed for release until 10 p.m. on
July 1. In his remarks, the President referred to Sanford I. Weill, 
chairman and chief executive officer, The Travelers Group, Inc.; Hugh L. 
McColl, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer, Bank of America; 
Richard L. Huber, chairman and chief executive officer, Aetna, Inc.; 
civil rights leader Jesse Jackson; Al From, president, Democratic 
Leadership Council; Richard Grasso, chairman and chief executive 
officer, New York Stock Exchange; former Gov. Charles (Buddy) Roemer of 
Louisiana; and former Gov. Ray Mabus of Mississippi. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of this interview.