[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 44 (Monday, November 8, 1999)]
[Pages 2250-2254]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Neil Cavuto of Fox News in Newark

November 4, 1999

    Mr. Cavuto. Welcome, Mr. President. It's a real honor to have you.
    The President. Thank you.

New Markets Initiative

    Mr. Cavuto. This is an interesting initiative because, on the one 
hand, you're compelling companies to do something good, but you also 
have to get them to respond to that message. How do you do that?
    The President. Well, I find that a lot of them want to do it. I 
think there is a real awareness in America to that, that we're going 
through the best economy we've ever had, and yet, for whatever reason, 
there are people and places that are left behind.
    I argue, number one, that it's our obligation to try to help, those 
of us that have done better; and number two, that it actually makes good 
economic sense, because one of the big questions on every business 
person's, every economist's mind, everybody that plays the market is, 
``Well, how long can this economic expansion go on? How much more growth 
do we have? How many more jobs can we create before either it runs out 
of steam or inflation takes over, and it has to be broken?'' And my 
argument is that the best opportunity we have to continue this expansion 
without inflation is to invest in new markets. And the closest new 
markets are those here at home and the people and places that have been 
left behind.
    Mr. Cavuto. Can you guilt them into doing that, though?
    The President. No, I don't think that it's a matter of guilt. I have 
a positive approach that I think we do have an obligation to do it, but 
I think we'll feel better if we do. But I also believe it is in the 
economic self-interest of those who are doing well now.
    I think there are real opportunities here, and I think that's what 
people like Lew Katz and Ray Chambers think. These guys, they're doing 
this, dedicating a big percentage of their profits to reinvestment in 
downtown Newark partly because they feel a sense of obligation. They 
think it's the morally right thing to do. They think it's important for 
our country's long-term strength and coherence. But they also know there 
are real opportunities here. I mean, we can create a lot of jobs here, 
create a lot of businesses here. I just think it's a real opportunity.
    Now, I'm also attempting to work out a bipartisan agreement with the 
Congress to pass a series of tax credits and loan guarantees which 
would, in effect, give investors the same incentives to invest in the 
poor areas in America we give them to invest in the poor areas in South 
America or Africa or Asia. And I think that will help a lot, too.

Independent Candidate Pat Buchanan

    Mr. Cavuto. You know, when you mentioned that in your remarks 
earlier today, you almost sounded like Pat Buchanan, because that's his 
pitch.
    The President. But the difference between me and Pat Buchanan is I 
think we ought to invest abroad, too. That is, I'm not an ``America 
only,'' but I don't want to leave behind the people who are hurt in 
America.
    Mr. Cavuto. But isn't his point that we have left behind some of the 
unfortunate in America?
    The President. But he's right about that. He's right about that. But 
I don't think that the way to stop leaving them behind is to put up a 
lot of trade barriers because we've gotten 30 percent of our growth, 
until the Asian financial crisis, came from the expansion of American 
markets abroad. We only have 4 percent of the world's people; we have 22 
percent of the world's wealth. We obviously have got to sell something 
to the other 96 percent of the folks out there.
    So while I don't agree with him that we should put up barriers and, 
in effect, shrink the volume of world trade, I do agree that we have to 
do more to reinvest in our own country, in our own people, and create 
markets here. And if we can't do this now, when the economy is perhaps 
the strongest it has ever been, when will we ever get around to doing 
it?

[[Page 2251]]

Vice President Gore/Empowerment Zones

    Mr. Cavuto. [Inaudible]--could read into that, sir, that, you know, 
here your Vice President is in the fight of his life. There are many, 
for example, in the labor movement who, while ostensibly supporting him, 
fear that this administration, with support of international treaties, 
has somehow abandoned them, rightly or not. And I wonder whether your 
remarks today and these initiatives over the last few months are an 
effort to help Mr. Gore?
    The President. Well, I think they should help him because he's been 
a part of it, but that's not why I proposed them. Keep in mind--look at 
the record. In January of 1993, my first month in office, I proposed the 
empowerment zones to try to get extra incentives into the inner cities 
and the economically distressed areas, even when the whole country was 
in economic trouble. And we set out this empowerment zone enterprise 
community program under the leadership of Vice President Gore way back 
in '93.
    So this is something that we have done all along. And I have tried 
to--I've increased the number of empowerment zones. Now it's twice as 
many. We fought for funding for them in this budget cycle. Actually, 
what led to this proposal is that I was asking myself two questions. One 
is, how can I get beyond the empowerment zone? They help the areas where 
they are, but we can't put them everywhere; we don't have enough money 
to invest everywhere in the empowerment zones, everywhere there is a 
need.
    And then the second question I was asking myself is, how do we keep 
the economic growth going without inflation? You know, I'm not all that 
surprised that we've been as fortunate as we have been because I 
believed always that if we could get a good economic policy--that is, if 
we could get rid of the deficit, get interest rates down, keep expanding 
trade, and make the right kind of long-term investments--that technology 
and open markets would give us higher growth with less inflation than 
most economists had estimated. I made this argument in December of '92 
when we started all this.
    But I have been very frustrated that we have not been able to bring 
jobs and businesses and the general entrepreneurial spirit to some of 
the tougher neighborhoods and more isolated places in the country. So 
that's how we came around to this new markets idea. We were trying to 
figure out a way to keep the economy going and to get opportunity in the 
places where the empowerment zones wouldn't reach.

Administration's Relations With Corporate America

    Mr. Cavuto.  But you have to compel them to follow, right? I mean, 
you have to provide an inspirational lead for that. And I guess some of 
the companies that I noticed, Mr. President, who are involved with 
this--Aetna, for example--seem to get mixed reads from your 
administration: Yes, participate in these type of programs; at the same 
time, the Government is bashing HMO's.
    There seems to be a disconnect among many in corporate America, I 
guess, with you personally and with the administration generally. Yes, 
it talks the talk and wants help and incentives and that sort of thing, 
but there's almost like an anti-corporate environment, whether its 
investigating Microsoft or looking down at Intel or now going after 
seven utilities and whether they are violating environmental laws--that 
this is an anti-corporate White House.
    The President.  Well, first of all, you have to deal with these 
things one at a time. But as a matter of law and practice, the White 
House has nothing to do with the Justice Department----
    Mr. Cavuto.  Absolutely. Absolutely. But you can see the theme----
    The President. ----or the EPA decisions. Although, I would point out 
there are an awful lot of businesses, a huge number who agree with the 
Microsoft action.
    Mr. Cavuto.  Do you think, by the way, that Microsoft is a bully?
    The President.  I think that I should not comment on an antitrust 
action. But I will say this. I've had more businesspeople spontaneously 
say to me they agree with it, than I have say they disagree. So I don't 
think you can view that pro- or anti-business.
    Secondly, if you look at the work we have done from the beginning, 
from the first day I was here, I think this is the most pro-business 
Democratic administration we've had in

[[Page 2252]]

decades and decades. And I think the results show that. If I were anti-
business, I've done a poor job of demonstrating it, given the--we've had 
a record number of new small businesses start every year; we've done a 
lot to reduce the regulatory burdens and specific tax burdens on small 
businesses, to give businesses incentives to hire people that were 
difficult to place, and a whole range of things we've done that we've 
been asked to do.
    Now, on the HMO front, I would also like to say that there were 43 
HMO's that endorsed all the principal elements of the Patients' Bill of 
Rights and asked for Federal legislation because they said they could 
not afford to extend these rights to their patients if their competitors 
didn't have to. So even there, there is some difference of opinion.
    I just simply--I've never wanted to put them out of business. 
Remember in '93--when we had the health care debate in '94, I repeatedly 
said that I thought managed care on balance had been good for America, 
that before the managed care came along, health care costs were 
increasing at 3 times the rate of inflation. And that was unsustainable.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Bradley's Health Plan

    Mr. Cavuto. But the irony is now that it's Bill Bradley who's 
trumpeting that initial cause of yours and not your own Vice President.
    The President. Well, if you look at the difference--there's a 
difference in how much their plans cost, but I think the Vice 
President's plan, even thought it's a lot less costly, covers almost as 
many people. What Senator Bradley has proposed is quite different from 
what I've proposed, but it's designed to achieve the same goal. I think 
the American people can evaluate the two plans without my help, and I'm 
sure the candidates would be able to help. But the Vice President's 
plan, even though it's much less expensive, covers I think only 2 
million fewer people than the Bradley plan does.

Budget Negotiations

    Mr. Cavuto. Could I talk to you a little bit about the budget 
negotiations, sir? Last night I had an opportunity to speak with Senate 
budget chief Pete Domenici, and he knew I was speaking to you today, and 
he had a message that was not so polite. But essentially he was saying, 
``When you talk to the President, tell him to stop grandstanding. There 
aren't big differences between us. The money issues are rather 
incremental.'' What do you say to that?
    The President. Well, there aren't big spending differences although 
there would be if there are across-the-board spending cutbacks. The main 
difference is--you know, Senator Domenici, to be fair to him, has not 
been guilty of grandstanding, but his party has. Let's look at the main 
difference. The main difference is I sent them a budget that was paid 
for. They didn't want to pay for it. They had us spending the Social 
Security surplus. So instead of owning up to it, they ran ads accusing 
the Democrats of spending the Social Security surplus which is just 
false.
    Mr. Cavuto. They say they're not.
    The President. Well, they say they're not, and they may not be if 
they have a big enough across-the-board cut. But until their across-the-
board cut they were, number one. Number two, if I could deal with 
Senator Domenici and with the House appropriators, there would be no 
problem.
    Mr. Cavuto. Where's the problem?
    The President. The problem is every time the Republicans make a 
deal, they go off, and they go back to their caucuses, and their 
rightwing says, ``No, you can't do this.'' So they have to come back--
and they have to come back and say, ``Oh, I'm sorry. We can't do this.'' 
So we've had a lot of trouble here. So they say, ``Well, they want me to 
put all our cards on the table.''
    I've made--keep in mind, since this Republican majority has been in 
there, we had one bad year, in '95, when they shut the Government down; 
'96, '97, '98, we reached agreement on budgets where we had their 
priorities and ours, where we compromised, where there were victories on 
all sides, where everybody would walk away and say, ``We've done 
something good for America.'' That's not happening this time because 
this process is being driven for political reasons by their illogical 
extremists.
    Mr. Cavuto. Do you put Senator Trent Lott in that camp, sir?

[[Page 2253]]

    The President. That's something you do to try to force me into a 
fight. I had a good fight with Senator Lott and Mr. Hastert--had a good 
talk with them yesterday or the day before, and I hope we can work it 
out. I have a good relationship, personal relationship with Senator Lott 
and with Speaker Hastert. But they, in effect, are the prisoners of how 
their caucuses go.
    But I think that is a strategy that Mr. DeLay and others have 
embraced and announced, that in the last couple days it appeared that 
Senator McConnell had embraced, for reasons that I don't quite 
understand, except I think it probably has something to do with 
campaigning and how they attract support.
    Look, we made agreements. Look, I've got a record of this. I've made 
principled agreements with the Republicans on welfare reform and on 
budgets in '97--'96, '97, and '98. And the only reason we're having 
trouble now is that the right wing in the Republican Party is taking 
over the process. And if they'll give it back to the appropriations 
chairman and leaders, the responsible people, we'll make our principled 
compromises, and we'll get out of there.

Post-Presidential Plans

    Mr. Cavuto. Finally, sir, I'd be remiss--you have 14 months left in 
office, and you've obviously indicated you want an aggressive last 14 
months. You certainly don't want the ``lame duck'' label, and you've 
fought very hard to avoid that. But I am tempted to ask you, since I 
talk to a lot of CEO's and what they do when they step down, what are 
you going to do when you step down?
    The President. Well, I haven't made a final decision just yet. And 
there are some decisions I can't make, particularly ones that related to 
financial matters I simply can't make until I leave. But what I want to 
do is to build my library and my public policy center and----
    Mr. Cavuto. Would that require you being still an Arkansas resident? 
There is talk that you don't want to be a New York resident until that's 
resolved.
    The President. Well, there's no requirement one way or the other. 
I'll be there a lot, regardless. It will require me to be there often.
    Mr. Cavuto. So do you become a New York resident first, Mr. 
President?
    The President. Well, I don't even know, I haven't thought that 
through. All I'm saying is I'm going to be--I'm going to build my 
library, and I'm going to do a lot of work. I'm going to have it be, 
instead of some mausoleum to the past, the natural sort of continuation 
of the work I did as President. That is, I want to be a useful citizen 
of our country, and I want to have some constructive role around the 
world and help people that would like me to help them in however way I 
can.
    Mr. Cavuto. Sort of like the Carter Center?
    The President. Yes. I'll do different things but sort of like that. 
But it's very important to me not to get in the way of the next 
President, whoever the next President turns out to be. And so I don't 
want to do anything inappropriate. But I would like to have a very 
vigorous public-service-oriented career when I leave here and do 
something useful.
    Mr. Cavuto. What about corporate boards?
    The President. I've given no thought to that.
    Mr. Cavuto. Really?
    The President. No. You know,----
    Mr. Cavuto. Two million dollar speeches?
    The President. I've got to make some money for my family and take 
care of them, and I want to do what I can as quickly as I can to do 
that. But I haven't given a lot of thought to how to do it, because I've 
got to wait until I'm out of office to make a lot of those agreements.
    The main thing I want to do is to have some constructive role in 
public life that is not in any way inconsistent with the fact that 
someone else will be President of the United States and has to do that 
job. But I think there are a lot of useful things I can do, and I'm 
looking forward to it.
    Mr. Cavuto. Mr. President, thank you very much.
    The President. Thanks.

Note: The interview began at 1:27 p.m. at Malcolm X Shabazz High School. 
In his remarks, the President referred to Lewis Katz and Ray Chambers, 
co-owners, NBA New Jersey Nets.

[[Page 2254]]

A tape was not available for verification of the content of these 
remarks.