[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 9 (Monday, March 6, 2000)]
[Pages 398-400]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion With the National Governors' 
Association

February 28, 2000

    The President. Thank you. Good morning, Governor Leavitt, Governor 
Glendening. It's a great pleasure for me to be here with many members of 
my Cabinet and my Chief of Staff, John Podesta, and Mickey Ibarra, who 
does such a good job of working with all of you. Hillary and I 
especially enjoyed the time we spent at dinner last night, and I hope 
you did as well.
    Over the last 7 years, I've tried to build a genuine partnership 
with all of you, based on greater resources, greater flexibility, and a 
greater commitment to shared goals. I think we could all agree that the 
results have been good: welfare rolls cut in half; 2 million children 
enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program; 150,000 young 
people in AmeriCorps; our schools improving.
    This year we'll have a lot to do. Among other things, we have to 
work hard to make sure that we count every American in the census.
    We begin the new century on a high note. In the last 3 months of 
1999, economic growth was 6.9 percent, the fastest in more than a 
decade. This month, expansion has lengthened to the point that we are 
enjoying the longest economic period of growth we've ever had. Our 
social fabric, also, is on the mend: the lowest crime level in 25 years, 
the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 
years, the lowest female unemployment rates in 40 years, and the lowest 
African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded.
    I believe that in this new economy, Government's role is to give the 
American people the tools and the conditions they need to make their way 
and to advance our Nation's progress: fiscal discipline; investments in 
education and technology; new markets for American products and 
services.
    Today we're going to have a roundtable discussion of three issues 
vital to our continued success: health care; trade; and the impact of 
the digital technology on the new economy. We'll also talk about what 
we've already done and what more we can do to help American families 
cope with rising home heating oil prices, especially in the Northeast, 
and the prospect of other oil-related price increases.
    On Friday I sent a supplemental appropriations request to Congress 
to replenish the LIHEAP funds to help more hard-hit families through 
this crisis and to ensure that there's enough money in the fund for 
others who may need help later in the year, when the weather gets hot.
    Since January, we've allocated $295 million to help people in need. 
In addition to making up that shortfall and ensuring there are 
sufficient funds for the future, we're also requesting $19 million in 
additional funds for the Department of Energy's weatherization programs, 
to help increase energy efficiency of homes and reduce energy costs for 
families, and we're requesting resources to help

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make $86 million in SBA loans available to small home heating oil 
distributors, so that they will be able to extend the kind of flexible 
payment terms to customers hard hit by the recent price spike that so 
many utilities do today.
    I urge Governors who are receiving these LIHEAP funds to adjust 
eligibility standards also to cover as many low and moderate income 
families as possible and to keep in mind that States can use temporary 
assistance for needy family funds to provide emergency heating 
assistance to very low income families with children.
    We've also directed the Coast Guard to expedite deliveries of home 
heating oil. And as I think all of you know, Secretary 
Richardson is conducting a 60-day study of diversifying energy supplies 
and possibly converting factories and other major oil users to other 
fuels to free up oil supplies for home heating use. And, in anticipation 
of other potential price spikes in other parts of the oil market, we are 
asking refiners to keep producing at full throttle until the crisis has 
passed.
    Finally, I hope that we will begin a discussion about how to make 
our economy even more energy efficient, so we're not so dependent on the 
ups and downs of supplies or so affected by future oil prices.
    Whether in response to an earthquake, a flood, a hurricane, a farm 
crisis, our people always pull together at times like this; and for 
those of you like me, who come from different parts of the country, I 
can tell you that the families in the Northeast need our help now, and 
we're going to do what we can to provide it.
    Before we begin our roundtable discussion, let me just say a few 
words about the other issues that are important to every Governor in 
this room and every citizen in our Nation: education reform, the current 
debate over how best to provide a Medicare prescription drug option for 
our seniors, and environmental stewardship.
    Over the past 7 years, as we have turned the deficits into surplus 
and now are on our way to being debt-free in 13 years. We have also 
nearly doubled our investment in schools and demanded more in return, 
working hard, along with you, for higher standards, greater 
accountability, and extra help to the children who need it. Virtually 
every State has embraced that approach. Last year, with your help, we 
enacted landmark school accountability legislation to provide $134 
million to States and school districts to turn around failing schools. 
Last week I announced new guidelines to help States invest in what works 
to do just that.
    I want to thank you for your partnership in the accountability 
movement and ask you to continue to work with us to strengthen our focus 
on that.
    Another issue of increasing importance to States is the growing 
challenge presented by the lack of prescription drug coverage for 
seniors. Many people don't know that States, through their Medicaid 
programs, are the single largest purchasers of drugs in the world. 
Increasing drug costs are likely to be one of the fastest growing 
components of Medicaid programs in the years to come. We all recognize, 
I believe, that we need to modernize and reform the Medicare program, to 
extend its life, to make it more efficient and more competitive and 
better able to meet the challenges of the baby boom generation's aging.
    I hope, as part of this broader reform, we can work with you to 
develop a privately contracted, voluntary Medicare prescription drug 
benefit. It's a life and death issue for many seniors, and I don't think 
we should let another year pass without taking action. Tomorrow I will 
release a State-by-State analysis of the health, financing, and 
demographic challenges facing the Medicare program and the tens of 
millions of Americans it serves.
    Finally, let me also say that this is a good year to secure 
permanent funding for the protection of precious lands across our 
Nation. I had a good discussion with Governor King about this last 
night. Last year Congress approved a substantial increase in our lands 
legacy initiative. Two weeks ago, as part of this effort, I announced 
$60 million in grants to States to create parks, save open space, and 
protect forests. The new budget proposes another substantial increase, a 
record $1.4 billion to protect land and coastal resources, and this year 
we've proposed to make the higher level permanent funding. At

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least half of this funding would go to support State and local 
conservation efforts. I hope we can make this, too, our gift to the 
future.
    Now, I'd like to call on Governor Leavitt to make some opening 
remarks, and I want to thank you again, sir, for what you said last 
night. It was terrific. Welcome.

[At this point, the roundtable discussion began.]

    The President. I would just like to make one comment--and then I 
know Governor Leavitt has got an agenda--about the role of government in 
the new economy. All of you will be thinking about this. I think we need 
to think about how we can reasonably make more new markets or help to 
facilitate them; how we can remove barriers without undermining public 
interest to the private sector's development; and how we can make 
government more user-friendly. And I'll just give you a couple of 
examples.
    One of the biggest fights we had here when we overhauled the 
telecommunications law, for the first time in 60 years, was the 
insistence, that we in the administration had, that we let as many 
entrepreneurs into this unfolding new business as possible. And now, 
everywhere I go, I see people who are doing terrifically well; have 
hired huge numbers of people, who didn't even have businesses 5 years 
ago, because we got Federal legislation that had an entrepreneurial 
focus. And I think all of us should be sensitive to that, because I know 
Tom Friedman talked to you the other day; he's one of many people who 
points out that, even though more of our growth than ever before is in 
private sector jobs, the role of government, while different, is still 
profoundly important. And if you make the wrong call on some of these 
things, you wind up paying for it for a long time to come.
    We just had a financial--totally bipartisan financial modernization 
act pass the Congress last year that, I believe, is an example of 
removing impediments without undermining the public interest. We enacted 
the Community Reinvestment Act, but I think that we took a set of 
barriers out of the way of our financial institutions in maximizing the 
digital economy.
    And then we've also tried to make Government more user-friendly. We 
have more and more people filing their taxes electronically and relating 
to us in a lot of other ways. And I saw an article in my weekly reports 
just last night that at least one of you has already cleared the way for 
people to vote electronically, which will be an interesting challenge. 
If somebody wants to explain to me how we can do that and meet all the 
security needs, I'd be interested in it. Because I think, clearly, we're 
all going this way. I know many of you have advance voting. And 
interestingly enough, it's just to make government more user-friendly, 
and it's changing politics.
    There's one State here where a congressional race was decided in the 
last election because of advance voting, and there was a totally 
different result on election day than in the advance voting period. But 
we all are going to have to be very creative.
    The other thing I think we have to do is not shut ourselves out of 
any part of the world, and I want to talk to you more later about the 
importance of bringing China into the WTO, which I feel very strongly 
about, and I hope we'll have a chance to talk about that.
    Thank you very much. We'll let the press leave, and we'll go on with 
the program.

Note: The President spoke at 9:40 a.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah, 
chairman, and Gov. Parris N. Glendening of Maryland, vice chairman, 
National Governors' Association; Gov. Angus S. King, Jr., of Maine; and 
Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist, New York Times. The 
President also referred to LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance 
Program.