[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 36 (Monday, September 11, 2000)]
[Pages 2001-2003]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Legislative Agenda

 September 5, 2000

     Thank you. First of all, I want to thank Senator Daschle and Leader 
Gephardt for the work they have done and the statements they have made. 
And I also want to thank Senator Reid and Representative Bonior for 
their role in the leadership of our party in the House and Senate, and 
Mr. Podesta and Mr. Lew and Secretary Summers and others were in the 
meeting that we've just completed.
     What we're trying to say is that we are committed to breaking the 
legislative logjam, but we have to move forward with fiscal 
responsibility, with responsible tax cuts, and with public investments 
that give all our people a chance and fuel our prosperity. For 7\1/2\ 
years now, we have followed that program, and it has worked very well 
for America. It has paid enormous dividends.
     Unfortunately, the strategy pursued by the Republican leaders in 
Congress, I believe, would squander that remarkable success. Month by 
month and bill by bill, they are attempting to spend our projected 
surplus for years to come, an estimated $2 trillion, on massive and 
reckless tax cuts for the privileged few. This isn't fiscally 
responsible. It isn't fair, and it doesn't even take into account that 
cost that would follow on their plans to partially privatize Social 
Security, or any spending promises they have made to the American people 
in this election season.
     I believe we owe it to our children to stay on course to pay off 
the national debt over the next 12 years. If we do it, interest rates 
will stay low; businesses can grow; generations will know that Social 
Security and Medicare will be there for them. And I might add, as the 
Council of Economic Advisers reported to me, it amounts to a tax cut, 
because paying off the debt, as opposed to spending it all, will keep 
interest rates, at a minimum--one percent lower a year, over the next 
decade--and that is worth $250 billion to the average American families 
in this country in lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car 
payments, and $15 billion in lower college loan payments. So that's a 
$300 billion tax cut real people get, just by doing

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the right thing, and I think it's important that we never forget that.
     As Dick said, the American people want us to address the pressing 
issues that affect their daily lives. Yesterday we celebrated Labor Day. 
Today it's time to honor the labor of the American people who sent us 
here. We should do it by raising the minimum wage by a dollar. Congress 
should stop holding up the process and make it the first order of 
business.
     We should also have sensible tax cuts in the areas of health care, 
college tuition, long-term care, the environment, and of course, the new 
markets tax cut, which is a tax cut that all of us support for upper 
income people to encourage them to invest in lower income people in 
lower income neighborhoods that have been left behind by our prosperity.
     Congress should pass a strong Patients' Bill of Rights, and Senator 
Daschle, I hope we'll hear that comment that you said over and over 
again, that the Republican National Committee--the Senate Committee has 
now identified our bill as the real Patients' Bill of Rights, and I want 
to thank them for that and ask them to vote accordingly, now that we're 
back in business.
     Americans and people with disabilities should not have to wait 
another year for an affordable voluntary Medicare prescription drug 
benefit. The money is there. We ought to do this, and we ought not to be 
wasting a lot of time seeing how much we could parse down what is 
something clearly a life-or-death matter for so many Americans. Our 
Nation's 44 million uninsured citizens shouldn't have to wait for a 
significant expansion of health care.
     We have a proposal on the table that would allow the States to 
enroll the parents of children who are eligible for our Children's 
Health Insurance Program. We have a proposal on the table that would 
allow people between the ages of 55 and 65 to enroll in Medicare if they 
lose their previous health insurance and give them a tax credit to make 
it affordable. Now, these proposals could take care of 25 percent, and I 
might say the most needy 25 percent of those 44 million Americans 
without health insurance. We have the money to do it.
     We need to keep working to put 50,000 more police on the street. 
The 100,000 police program has worked very well. We have the lowest 
violent crime rate in 27 years now, and we need to keep doing what has 
worked. We should also pass commonsense gun safety legislation and, I 
hope, the hate crimes bill. I applaud the Senate for passing the hate 
crimes legislation, including the Republicans who joined our unanimous 
Democratic caucus in voting for it--or virtually unanimous--and I hope 
that the House will follow suit.
     We need to strip out the anti-environmental riders and press for 
cleaner air and cleaner water. We need to pass the measures that will 
enable the American people to combat global warming, and we need to 
approve permanent conservation funding to protect our natural heritage. 
We also need to strengthen our laws for providing for equal pay for 
equal work, pass debt relief for the emerging democracies, normalize 
trade relations with China.
     Most important, we should not forget that the Congress comes back 
at the beginning of the school year, and there are pressing educational 
needs for America. The children of this country need more teachers and 
smaller classes in modern classrooms. We need to continue to support 
100,000 good new teachers to reduce class size, and we need Congress to 
determine finally we're going to do our part to help the school 
districts of this country replace broken-down buildings and trailers 
with modern classrooms. Again I will say, we believe in sensible tax 
cuts for middle class families that make education and long-term care 
more affordable, not cuts that threaten our prosperity.
     Last week I vetoed the Republican estate tax repeal, not because I 
don't favor reform of the estate tax laws but because absolute repeal is 
not fiscally responsible, and it's not fair. It was a budget buster that 
ignored 98 percent of America's families.
     Now, later this week, the Republicans say they are going to vote to 
try to override my veto of the estate tax repeal. Needless to say, the 
small number of people that are affected have an enormous amount of 
influence, especially if they can convince a lot of other people that 
they are affected by the law. But I think it's very important for the 
American

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people to remember something else about the estate tax repeal: It is not 
a bill standing on its own.
     Many of these bills they've passed--it's very much--what they've 
done this year is better politically for them than what they did last 
year. Last year they sent me a bill down here that was obviously very 
big and unwieldy and uneffective.
     This year, as Mr. Gephardt said, they're sending them down here in 
discrete bills. And every one of them appeals to some constituency or 
another. But when you add them all up, it's still part of a $2 trillion 
plan that would wipe out the entire projected budget surplus. And I will 
say again, that is before we agreed to take Medicare spending off 
budget, the Medicare taxes, before they had to pay for a privatization 
plan for Social Security, and before they had to pay for any of their 
spending plans. They take away all the money that the country would have 
in a balanced budget to invest in education and health care and the 
environment for a decade. It is wrong.
     Now, they've got a right to try to override any veto that I make. 
That's the way that the Constitution works. But I wish they would try 
just as hard to muster up the two-thirds to raise the minimum wage for 
people that are working 40 hours a week, the students that are still 
sitting in crowded classrooms and trailers, the patients fighting for 
the health care they need, the seniors struggling to pay for 
prescription drugs.
     You know, if my health holds up, I'll probably be one of those 
people that will be fortunate enough to have some estate tax to pay one 
day, or my heirs will. But I'd kind of like to see us spend a little 
time--we seem to spend all of our time fighting in Congress over what 
they want to do to help people who, like me, that America has been very 
good to. I think we ought to spend a little more time working on the 
minimum wage, the schoolchildren, the people who need the Patients' Bill 
of Rights, the seniors who need the prescription drugs.
     This is a great and good country. We should be fair to everybody. 
I'm for changes in the estate tax. All of us are. They all voted for it, 
but the Republicans wanted an issue. They want it to be an all-or-
nothing thing, and I just don't think that the most fortunate people in 
this country should be the only ones that are considered here.
     I think the folks that don't have anybody up here lobbying for them 
and the folks that don't have the ability to contribute to any of our 
campaigns, but to keep this country going day-in and day-out, their kids 
deserve a good education too; their parents deserve medicine too; and 
they deserve to have the protections that the Patients' Bill of Rights 
gives that the rest of us can buy. That's what I believe, and we've got 
5 weeks to give it to them, and we ought to just saddle up and do it.
     Thank you very much.

  Note:  The President spoke at 12:07 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to the Republican Senatorial 
Campaign Committee.