[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 43 (Monday, October 30, 2000)]
[Pages 2616-2620]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Departure for New York City and an Exchange With Reporters

October 25, 2000

Budget/Legislative Agenda

    The President. Good morning. I want to say just a few words about 
the budget and the work we still have ahead of us if we want all our 
children to have a first-class education.
    Way back in February, I sent to Congress a budget that keeps America 
on the path of fiscal discipline. It would strengthen Social Security 
and Medicare, pay down the debt by 2012, and make key investments in 
education, health care, the environment, and national security. It would 
also modernize Medicare with a voluntary prescription drug benefit 
available and affordable to all seniors who need it.
    That was in February. Now we've come to the end of October, nearly a 
month past the end of the fiscal year, and we still have not seen from 
Congress a completed budget. Four times they've asked me for an 
extension of time to finish the work. Today the latest extension runs 
out, and Congress is about to ask for another. But from this point 
forward, as I've said, I will agree only to a day-by-day extension, 
until Congress finishes the job.
    From this point forward, Congress should work every day and every 
night to put progress over partisanship, to make the investments in 
education our schools need and our children deserve. Congress should 
pass a budget that reduces class size in the early grades; that contains 
tax credits to repair old, crumbling schools and build new, modern ones; 
a budget that invests in after-school programs that mean more learning, 
lower crime, and fewer drugs. It should ensure the hiring of new, highly 
trained teachers, and help States turn around failing schools or shut 
them down and open them under new management. This Congress is not done, 
and this Congress will not be done until it accomplishes these 
objectives. We should also work together to pass tax cuts for middle-
class Americans.
    You know, in budget talks the two sides often wind up talking past 
each other. It takes a little extra effort to reach across the divide. 
So that's what I'm trying to do today. I'm sending an offer to Speaker 
Hastert and Senator Lott that says, let's work together in good faith to 
achieve common ground on tax relief.
    I've identified areas of agreement so Congress can pass a bill I can 
sign, tax cuts that preserve fiscal discipline, help our people save for 
retirement or pay for long-term care, help build and repair schools, and 
boost investments in our new markets, the places that have been left 
behind in our prosperity. These are tax cuts we should all be able to 
agree on, tax cuts to help America's working families provide for the 
things that matter most.
    There's also more to do in the last days of this session. Congress 
should be working overtime to pass a voluntary Medicare prescription 
drug benefit, to raise the minimum wage, pass a real Patients' Bill of 
Rights, expand health coverage for the American people, and invest our 
Medicare resources wisely, not just or overwhelmingly in the HMO's, 
including those that don't need it, but in teaching hospitals, home 
health agencies, rural and urban hospitals, and other health care 
providers.
    Congress should also pass a tough hate crimes bill. After all, 
there's a bipartisan majority for it in both Houses. It's pretty hard to 
explain why it hasn't come to my desk for signature. And Congress should 
insist on and provide for fairness for legal immigrants and equal pay 
for women.

[[Page 2617]]

    These are our most pressing priorities. We can make progress on all 
of them. There's a huge piece of new evidence. Just in the last 24 
hours, there has been a truly bipartisan and historic agreement on 
providing much-needed debt relief to the world's poorest countries. This 
initiative was supported by a broad--in fact, the broadest imaginable--
coalition of religious leaders. You all remember when many of them came 
to the White House just a few days ago.
    This enables America to do something that is good and just and 
manifestly in our interests. It will go a long way toward ensuring our 
leadership for progress and prosperity in the 21st century world. It is 
something that will be very important to leave to all of our successors 
after this next election, something America can build on for years to 
come.
    I am profoundly grateful to the leaders in both parties in Congress 
for reaching agreement on this. This is something every single American 
should be very, very proud of. And it is fresh evidence that when we 
work hard to put our differences aside and find common ground, we can in 
fact do it. I hope the leadership of the Republican Party will join me 
and the Democrats to continue to do this, to continue to put progress 
above partisanship. And we'll get an awful lot done for the American 
people in the next couple of days. Then they can go home and have a good 
election over the differences.
    Thank you very much.

Government Shutdown

    Q. Mr. President, are you prepared to risk a government shutdown if 
you don't get what you want?
    The President. I don't think it will come to that. I mean, I think 
this agreement yesterday--this is really big. This will be one of the 
signal achievements of this Congress. And it shows that, as has been the 
case since we've been in this unusual relationship with the Republican 
majority and a Democratic President, that at the end, we can still get a 
lot done. So I hope it won't come to that, and I don't think it will.
    Go ahead.

``Immigration and Latino Fairness Act''

    Q. Mr. President--excuse me--the ``Immigration and Latino Fairness 
Act'' is something you have been pushing for. It's supposed to come up 
in the State, Commerce, and Justice appropriations bill. How are the 
negotiations going on between the White House and the Republicans, and 
will you veto it, the appropriation, if it doesn't contain what you 
want?
    The President. Well, as I said, I hope we can reach agreement on it. 
We've made some real progress, and the Republicans have come some way 
toward our position on this. I don't think it's enough, and I hope we 
can do more.
    Look, this is a very large issue. There are a lot of people in this 
country who came here in good faith under adverse circumstances. They've 
lived here, worked here, paid taxes here, established families here. And 
I believe we ought to go as far as we possibly can get this Congress to 
go to legitimize their presence and to do the other things that are in 
our initiative. So I'm working, and I think that's all I should say now. 
We're in the process of negotiating this.

Situation in the Middle East

    Q. In the Middle East, can Yasser Arafat be considered a reliable 
partner for peace while he is releasing Palestinian militants from jail 
and actually giving them decisionmaking roles? Can he be reliable?
    The President. Well, as you know, part of what the parties agreed to 
at Sharm al-Sheikh was a certain specific set of security measures which 
were, by agreement of the parties, kept confidential. But I think it's 
quite important that, as I think it was reported in the morning press, 
that I had a conversation with Chairman Arafat. I talked with him and 
Prime Minister Barak yesterday. I talk to them several times a week now. 
And one of the things we need to do is to have people who are interested 
in violence off the streets and the people who are interested in ending 
the violence out there doing what they're capable of doing.
    A big part of what the parties recognized at Sharm al-Sheikh was 
that it's impossible to maintain this uneasy status quo, where we've 
come so far in the peace process, but

[[Page 2618]]

the big and most difficult issues remain. We can't expect there to be a 
reliable peace process unless we can reduce the violence. That's the 
real answer to your question. We would like to see, and I think that the 
Israelis would like to see, a resumption of the peace process, but both 
parties have got to do what they said they'd do at Sharm and get the 
violence down, so we can open up the possibility of peace again.
    Yes.

Social Security

    Q. Mr. President, the Democrats are about to launch a concerted 
campaign effort to discredit Governor Bush's Social Security proposals. 
I'm wondering if you plan to participate in that effort.
    The President. Well, I haven't been asked to do that. To me, the 
major issue right now--I had hoped we could get agreement on Social 
Security reform, and I thought that Chairman Archer and I could actually 
make an agreement. But neither of us had enough support in our caucuses 
to do that. And this is one of those big issues that I think will have 
to be resolved in the next 4 years.
    So I decided to do the next best thing, which is to make sure we 
could keep paying the debt down and to offer the option to put about 10 
years of savings on interest that we get because we're not spending the 
Social Security taxes now, which we did from 1983 until a couple of 
years ago. We're not spending the Social Security taxes now, so they're 
contributing to debt reduction. That means our interest burdens are 
lower. And what I think should be done at a minimum is that the interest 
savings should be applied to Social Security. That way you could take it 
out to 2054 and get it out beyond the life of the baby boom generation, 
when, after that, the pressures on Social Security will begin to ease 
because there will be fewer people retired in relation to the number of 
people working.
    Now, if they want to make other changes, as I learned and as Mr. 
Archer learned when we tried to argue this through, there will have to 
be a bipartisan coalition in Congress. And I hope there will be fresh 
energy when you've got a new President, a new Congress, a new amount of 
time to work on that.
    The central problem here is, there are problems there. And I think 
that the Vice President and Senator Lieberman and the Democrats in 
Congress and the experts are perfectly capable of pointing them out. 
What I'm most concerned about is that we don't get anyone locked into 
something that would take us back to deficits. And you have to add up 
the cost of a tax cut and a privatization of Social Security and all the 
spending programs. And if you do that, and the sum of it is more than $2 
trillion, you're in trouble. You're back in deficits. You've got high 
interest rates.
    That's the thing that I've tried to get the American people to focus 
on. We've got to keep paying down the debt to keep the interest rates 
down, to keep the prosperity going. But I think on the details of the 
plan, that's something that should properly be left to the candidates in 
this election. And I think that Governor Bush can state his position, 
the Vice President can state his, and the Members of Congress on both 
sides can argue it out without too much help from me.

Situation in the Middle East

    Q. Mr. President, do you think that Chairman Arafat can still retain 
sufficient influence over his people to stop the violence in the West 
Bank and Gaza?
    The President. I think the violence can be dramatically reduced. I 
think that there are probably some people within the Palestinian 
territories, and probably some people within Israel, that are not within 
total control of Chairman Arafat or even the Israeli Government. But I 
do think Chairman Arafat can dramatically reduce the level of violence.
    The problem, as I have been saying for years and years to the people 
in the region, is that once you actually start a peace process and 
people's expectations get built up and you have a commitment to peaceful 
resolution of these issues, violence is no longer a very good tool to 
achieve political objectives. It always, in the end, will be 
counterproductive. Why? Because if you look at the pattern, what you 
have to do is, you stir the people up--you get the people all stirred up 
so that they believe that violent reactions are legitimate--and then you 
can't just turn mass

[[Page 2619]]

emotions on and off, like you can a water tap. It's just not that 
simple.
    So I think that it's very important--I think what we did at Sharm 
was to put at least a speed bump on the road to the dramatic 
deterioration of the situation. But I don't think that we should ask 
ourselves whether he has 100 percent control, because the truth is, none 
of us know the answer to that, and nobody has 100 percent control of any 
situation. The real and fundamental question is, can the level of 
violence be substantially reduced by a sustained effort? If the parties 
do what they agreed to do at Sharm, the answer to that is a resounding 
yes.
    Yes, ma'am.
    Q. Mr. President, to follow up on that question and one other 
question, you said that you do believe he is capable of reducing the 
violence. So are you saying that he hasn't tried to do that? And 
secondly, there was a poll out today in Israel that showed that if there 
was an election today, Netanyahu would beat Barak 2-1. And are you 
concerned at all that in your attempts to be an honest broker and the 
way the violence has continued that you've somehow sold out Barak, that 
he will no longer be a leader in Israel in a few weeks, in a few months 
from now, and that the peace process will inevitably be over once that 
happens?
    The President. Well, the short answer to your question is no, 
because he made the decisions that he made--he made very courageous 
decisions, and he's in a difficult position now because he's getting the 
worst of both worlds. I mean, he reached out to the Palestinians, and he 
showed enormous courage in doing so. And we did not get an agreement at 
Camp David, although it was, on balance, quite a positive thing.
    I will say again, you can't maintain this status quo. We either have 
to shut the violence down and get back to the peace process, or there is 
going to be at least a level of anxiety, mistrust, and a worsening of 
relations, which I don't think would be good for anybody.
    But I think that--I will say what I said the day the Camp David 
talks ended. Prime Minister Barak knew what he was doing. He took a big 
chance. He did it because after years in the Israeli military, he 
reached the same conclusion that Yitzak Rabin reached, that in the end, 
the best guarantee of Israel's security is a sustainable peace with all 
of her neighbors. He knew there would be bumps along the road and that 
there would be points at which the process would be ragged. He made a 
decision that he was trying to go for the long-term security of Israel. 
And events in the next several days will determine whether or not we can 
get back on that path.
    That's my reaction. I think it can be done, and I think the parties 
can do it, and I'm going to do my best to see what I can do to be 
helpful. But we've got to get the level of violence down. This peace 
with the Israelis and the aspirations of the Palestinians can, in the 
end, only be fulfilled by agreement.
    We called at Sharm for a commission to look into what happened, to 
try to make sure it shouldn't happen again. We can do that, but the 
critical pillars for a good situation in the Middle East are the absence 
of violence and the presence of negotiations and continued progress. And 
those are the things that all the people should be focusing on. Those 
are the things that I've been working on every day for the last couple 
of weeks now.

Medicare Legislation

    Q. On the tax package, the Republicans yesterday said they are 
considering including an increase in the minimum wage, which you want, 
and a scaled-back school bond proposal, which you also support.
    The President. A scaled-back what?
    Q. A scaled-back school bond proposal. But they are also considering 
including the Medicare giveback, which you've threatened to veto. Would 
that veto still hold if the tax package includes these provisions which 
you support?
    The President. Well, it depends what the Medicare thing looks like. 
The only thing that bothered me about the Medicare issue is that we were 
working along in a bipartisan way. We had some differences. They want to 
give what I think is too much money to the HMO's. They say they need to 
do it because the HMO's are dropping people, dropping Medicare folks 
from coverage in their HMO's. But if you look at the provision, the

[[Page 2620]]

money goes to the HMO's without any guarantee of continued coverage for 
Medicare patients who may have serious problems.
    So the thing that bothers me about it is, you have a lot of other--
look, we all have acknowledged that in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, 
to achieve the savings we targeted we had certain specific changes in 
the Medicare program which, number one, produced greater savings than we 
estimated, or than the Congressional Budget Office estimated, and did so 
at a cost to the health care providers which was unacceptable; and that 
there were substantial difficulties for urban hospitals, for rural 
hospitals, for the teaching hospitals, for nursing homes, home health 
providers, hospice services, the whole range of things.
    And I have no objection to the HMO's being given consideration in 
this bill. The only point I tried to make is that if you give them as 
much money as the Republicans do, you severely short the urban and rural 
hospitals, the teaching hospitals, and these other providers that I just 
mentioned.
    So the question is, can we achieve some balance here? I hope we can. 
This is a very important thing. I sympathize with the Republican 
leadership in not wanting to let the cost of this bill balloon out of 
control. And I offered to work with them on that. That is something--a 
goal that we both share. But this should be a question that's decided 
strictly on the merits. This is not a political issue with me. You have 
all these folks; they have people they have to care for. We made a 
decision in '98 to sign a balanced budget bill, and they made a decision 
to pass it, which had specific changes in the Medicare program designed 
to produce an amount of savings. The savings were greater, and 
accordingly, the loss to the providers was greater, and the quality of 
health care is, therefore, strained.
    So what we need to do is just take this on the merits. So I don't 
want to turn this into a big political fight. I just think this is one 
where the facts should get out, and we should do what the facts indicate 
is the best balanced thing to do with the money we have available for 
all the providers. And I simply don't think that their proposal does 
that or even comes close. So I hope we can reach agreement on it.
    Thank you. I've got to run.

Note: The President spoke at 10:55 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Chairman Yasser Arafat of the 
Palestinian Authority; Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime 
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel; and Republican Presidential 
candidate Gov. George W. Bush.