[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 41 (Monday, October 16, 2000)]
[Pages 2420-2423]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Representative Robert E. Wise, Jr.

October 10, 2000

    Thank you. Well, let me say, I'm delighted to be here for a number 
of reasons. One is I'm kind of tied down, you know, working and trying 
to get the Congress out of town, and I don't have much time to travel. 
And I meant to go see Versailles this month, so ``Chez Rockefeller'' is 
almost as good.

[[Page 2421]]

[Laughter] And I always love coming back here.
    Secondly, Jay and Sharon have been great friends to Hillary and me 
for many, many years. We served as Governors together. We sat together. 
We cogitated together. We voted together. We did a lot of good things 
together. And our States were remarkably similar in the years when we 
served as Governors. And maybe the similarity in part explains the fact 
that the people of West Virginia had been so very good to me in 1992 and 
1996, something for which I am profoundly grateful. And so I wanted to 
be here for all those reasons.
    I also wanted to be here because Bob Wise has also been good to me 
in the Congress. He has been an excellent Congressman for West Virginia 
and for the United States. He's been a great ally of the good things 
that we have done. He has also been a ferocious advocate for West 
Virginia.
    And finally, I wanted to be here because I believe, as Jay said, 
that it really matters who's the Governor. I was Governor for a dozen 
years. I don't think I ever would have gotten tired of doing it. And if 
I had thought that the country was being aggressively moved in 1991, I 
think I'd probably still be doing it.
    But what I'd like to say tonight is to try to tie together the 
decision the people of West Virginia have to make in national politics 
with the decision you have to make in State politics and explain why 
they are so important.
    When I was a Governor in Arkansas, we didn't have an unemployment 
rate below the national average in the last 10 years I served as 
Governor, except one. The year I ran for President, we were first or 
second--I never saw the final figures--in job growth, and we finally got 
going. But it took 10 years to turn--to take our State through the kind 
of economic transition that a lot of the rural States with agricultural-
based economies and industries that were fading away needed to go 
through. And they've done very well in the last 8 years, and I'm 
grateful for that.
    But the first thing I want to say is it's hard for Governors to see 
if the Nation has a bad economic problem. Therefore, the country has a 
big decision to make about whether you want to continue to change in the 
direction that we're in, which means that people like Jay, as he said, 
have to take a tax cut that's much less than the one you'll get from the 
other side, but we'll have a tax cut that will deal with the things 
people need most in terms of education and child care and long-term care 
and retirement savings, and we'll have enough money left to invest in 
education and to keep paying this debt down.
    If you have their tax cut plus the Social Security privatization 
plus all their spending promises, we're back in deficits, which means 
higher interest rates, slower job growth, and you all know that States 
like West Virginia and Arkansas get hurt the worst when the economy 
turns down, job growth slows down, interest rates are higher. It costs 
more to borrow money to start new businesses and expand them. It means 
fewer jobs, less wage increases, and a lower stock market. So I think 
our deal works pretty well for everybody up and down the income scale, 
and I think we should continue it.
    Now, having said that, I can tell you that, if you have a good 
economic policy, how well a State does depends, in no small measure, on 
how aggressive and creative and consistent the Governor is. And Bob Wise 
is aggressive, creative, and consistent. I would put those adjectives in 
different order, depending on what day it is. But he is always there. 
This guy will work. He'll show up every morning; he'll be there at 
night; and he'll be thinking about something new he can do. And he'll 
push, and that's important.
    The second thing I would like to say is there's a great interest in 
this country today on education, and the voters have to decide. Both the 
candidates for President favor accountability. I personally think that 
the Vice President's accountability system is better than Governor 
Bush's, but I don't want to get into that, because it takes--that's an 
hour discussion. But we favor accountability-plus. That is we believe we 
should help have smaller classes, more well-trained teachers in the 
early grades, modernize schools. I did an event on all this at a West 
Virginia school--[inaudible]--Senator Byrd, you may remember--preschool, 
after-school, and summer school programs for all the kids who need

[[Page 2422]]

it, and tax deductions to send your kids to college. That's what we 
believe.
    The Federal Government only provides 7 percent of the total 
education budget of the Nation. It was 9 percent under President 
Johnson. It slipped with--it was heading to 5 when I took office, and 
we've reversed it. But I think it's a mistake to do this voucher 
proposal, in part because we only have 7 percent of the money, and it 
costs a lot of money to do a little good. Even if you assume it's a good 
thing, it costs a lot of money to do a little good.
    And we now know something that we did not have the research on when 
Jay Rockefeller and I served as Governor. We now know, from research, 
how to turn around failing schools. We have the research. There is no 
excuse, therefore, for us not to be doing it. But I can tell you, if you 
make the right decision in the Presidential race and we get a good 
result in the congressional races, it still won't amount to a hill of 
beans if the Governor has no consuming, passionate, consistent interest 
in education.
    Now, I'll just give you one other example. In 1992--in '91 and '92, 
when I ran for President, I used to talk to Jay Rockefeller all the time 
about health care, because I knew how much he cared about it. I knew he 
knew more about it than I did, and he had a big influence on me on this 
issue. When Governor Bush tells you that we had 8 years and didn't do 
anything, that's just not true.
    When we took office, Medicare was supposed to go broke last year. 
It's now alive until 2026. We put 27 years on the life of Medicare. 
That's the longest life it's had since it was created in 1965. And you 
can now keep your health insurance if you change jobs or in a period of 
sickness. We have a lot more preventive care for--under Medicare--for 
breast cancer screenings, for prostate screenings; we've dramatically 
improved diabetes care; we've insured 2\1/2\ million kids under the 
Children's Health Insurance Program; and the number of uninsured people 
in American went down last year for the first time since 1987.
    So we've done a lot, but there's still a lot to do. And we're in a 
big debate. Jay and I were just talking about the debate we're having 
with the Republicans now. We actually cut too much money out of the 
Medicare program in the Balanced Budget Act. We have to put some back 
in. We believe that we ought to help the hospitals, the nursing homes, 
and the community and home providers, and make sure that we can maintain 
the fabric of health care. Fifty-five percent of the money in the 
Republicans' budget goes to the HMO's. This is a huge issue that will 
affect the ability of the next Governor of West Virginia to protect the 
health care of the country.
    So there's big partisan issues here: whether you're for the 
Patients' Bill of Rights; whether you believe everybody, all the old 
people in the country, the retired people--I hope to be one of them one 
of these days--should have access to affordable medicine. Sixty-five is 
not old anymore. If you live to be 65 in America today, your life 
expectancy is 82. And the human genome project will mean young women 
within a decade--I'll predict it; you wait and see if I'm right. I 
believe within a decade young women will come home from the hospital 
with babies that will have a life expectancy of 90 years. That's what I 
believe will happen because of the human genome project.
    But I think this is all-important, and this is a matter of national 
policy. Now, having said that, let me tell you that when we made the 
agreement with the Republicans in 1997, on the balanced budget, we 
agreed to give the money to all the States to design a Children's Health 
Insurance Program. And you've got States that are just doing fabulously 
with it.
    In States, you can never predict. Alaska, with a lot of desperately 
poor people living all strewed out from here to yonder, has an 
enormously high enrollment. Why? Because the Governor wanted the kids 
enrolled. Arizona has a very low enrollment. Why? Because the 
legislature asked to be passed a bill prohibiting the children from 
being enrolled in the schools where they are, because the legislative 
majority there--I need to say, of the other party--saw this as some 
great scheme to socialize medicine. All they're doing is paying for 
medicine, for medical coverage for kids in low-income working families. 
And everybody else is somewhere in between.

[[Page 2423]]

    But you get the point. If you want children in West Virginia to have 
good health care, it doesn't matter what we do in Washington, even if we 
have good policy, unless the Governor cares enough to make sure that 
maximum efforts are made in an intelligent way to take care of the 
families. And West Virginia is just like Arkansas. You've got a whole 
lot of people who work like crazy, work 40 or 50 hours a week for low 
incomes, who cannot afford health insurance. This is a big deal to you.
    So what I want to say is, obviously, I'm interested in the races for 
Congress, especially one Senate race, and I'm passionately committed to 
the campaign of the Vice President and Senator Lieberman. But I'm 
telling you, I spent a dozen years as a Governor, and I worked with some 
of the ablest people I ever met in that period, and I think I know 
something about West Virginia. It really matters. You need somebody that 
is creative, aggressive, and consistent, somebody that understands the 
economy, education, and health care. He does. He should win, and I hope 
you won't quit helping him tonight.
    I know this is a close race. Listen, it's hard to beat any incumbent 
Governor when the economy is doing well. I used to tell everybody, ``If 
the economy was better, I could have a lobotomy and get reelected''--
[laughter]--when I was running. It's hard. But he is doing very well, 
and he's doing very well because people sense these things about him. So 
we still--we've got more than a month left in this campaign, folks. And 
if you can give him any more money, you ought to. And if you can't give 
him any more money, you ought to go home and start talking to people 
about why this matters.
    But I'm just--we have got a chance here to see States that have been 
left out and left behind for a long time if we could just keep this 
economy going, really balloon, and do well. But it will matter 
profoundly who the Governor is. And I think, again, you need somebody 
that understands how Washington works and how it affects West Virginia, 
somebody that's committed to jobs, schools, and health care, and 
somebody that's intelligent, creative, aggressive, and consistent. He 
is.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 7:05 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to reception hosts Senator John D. Rockefeller IV 
and his wife, Sharon; Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. 
Bush; Gov. Tony Knowles of Alaska; and Gov. Cecil H. Underwood of West 
Virginia. Representative Wise is a gubernatorial candidate in West 
Virginia.