Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930510.zip/5-10A.TXT

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From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail]  Mon May 10 17:11:36 1993
Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 12:46-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail],
Subject: President's Remarks to the Citizens of Cleveland, Ohio

                         THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
                        (Cleveland, Ohio)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                           May 10, 1993


                     REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                     TO CITIZENS OF CLEVELAND

                           The Galleria
                         Cleveland, Ohio

11:10 A.M. EDT

         THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)
Thank you.  Thank you, Congressman Stokes, Senator Metzenbaum.  I
want to thank Lou Stokes and Howard Metzenbaum for the support
that they have given to this administration to making a new
beginning for America, to putting the American people back to
work and to giving Washington back to you.

         I also want to say a special word of thanks to my
friend, Eric Fingerhut, for coming here -- the leader of the
freshmen in Congress and a great representative.  (Applause.)
Someone who believes in the cause of reform.  I want to thank
your fine Mayor Mike White, who labored mightily to try to get
some more money for jobs here in Cleveland.  (Applause.)

         I wish people all over America who think that our
cities aren't working would come to Cleveland and see houses
being built, the stadium going up, new malls being built, and
things happening.  I think it is very, very impressive what is
happening here under the leadership of Mike White.  And I
appreciate him very much.  (Applause.)

         I also want to thank Congressman Hoke for coming
here.  I'm glad to see a bipartisan representative.  I'm trying
to govern in a bipartisan way and some of those fellows in the
Senate don't want me to.  But if we get together on America's
problems as America, we'd do a lot better than pointing partisan
fingers.  (Applause.)

         Finally, I want to thank Attorney General Lee Fisher
and your State Treasurer Mary Ellen Withrow.  And I want to say a
special word of thanks to Lee for his leadership in our campaign
last year.

         I haven't been to Cleveland since the day before the
election -- that's right, that's what Lou said.  I have been to
Ohio once since I've been President.  I look forward to coming
back.

         I want to talk to you a little today about why I
came to the middle of the country in the middle of the day -- to
reiterate what is at stake in Washington.  I just walked through
the Galleria here.  I want to thank the people who opened it up
to me and Mr. Cleary and Mr. Masters.  I want to thank all the
store owners who came out to see me.  And some of them gave me
some things and some of them sold me some things, which is, after
all, the most important thing.  (Laughter.)  They did a good job.

         I wanted to come back here to remind you that the
reason I did all that work last year and came here and asked the
people of Ohio and Cleveland to vote for me was not so I could
live in the White House, but so I could give the government back
to you.  (Applause.)

         The struggles in which we are engaged now are very
important ones.  It may seem strange to you, but there are really
people in Washington who believe the most important thing we can
do is to avoid change at all costs.  It may seem strange to you
after years of living with a government where the debt of this
country went from $1 trillion to $4 trillion between 1980 and
1992, where unemployment went up and wages went down and we began
to lose our competitive position, where we cut defense but had no
plan to put our defense workers to work building the domestic
economy -- with all the troubles we've got, where we've got 37
million Americans with no health insurance and others in small
businesses terrified they're going to lose it, and people who
can't change jobs because they've had somebody in their family
sick and they know they can't get health insurance in a new place
-- it may seem strange to you, but there really are people in the
Nation's Capital who say no more change.

         Well, I think most of you want us to do something,
and I think you want us to be bold, and I think you want us to
try to turn this country around, and I think you would rather see
us -- (applause) -- I believe you'd rather see us err on the side
of effort than on the side of just preserving the status quo.
(Applause.)

         You look at these children here -- these
schoolchildren, or those fine schoolchildren back there, or these
young naval cadets. This whole deal is about whether they are
going to have the American Dream, about whether people who work
hard and play by the rules are going to wind up better off or
worse off.  We've got a lot of complicated problems.  And I know
-- I knew when I got there it wasn't going to happen overnight.
I tried to make it happen overnight.  I've been criticized for
doing more than one thing at once.  I've always felt -- can you
do one thing at once?  Can you do -- wouldn't it be nice if all
you had to do was go to work and not take care of your family?
Would it be nice if you could pay your bills and not earn any
money to pay them?  (Laughter.)  I don't understand this whole --
you can't do one thing at once.  But anyway, that's what they
say.

         We are trying to do a lot of things, but they all
relate to restoring the economic vitality of this country and
restoring the middle class and the values of the middle class to
a central part in American life.  That is what this whole
economic program is about and what I came to talk to you about
again today.

         No one said it would be easy, but it has been
immensely rewarding.  In about 110 days, after two vetoes, I can
look back and say we signed the Family and Medical Leave Act to
guarantee you don't lose your job if you've got somebody sick in
your family.  (Applause.)

         We have put forward comprehensive plans to use
technology to generate new jobs, comprehensive plans to help move
people from defense jobs into domestic jobs and to make sure that
our young people who come out of the service after serving this
country are not just left out in the cold because of the
cutbacks.  And we got a record approval of the outline of a
budget that cuts the deficit of this country over $500 billion in
the next five years with over 200 specific budget cuts and, yes,
with some tax increases.  Seventy percent of them fall on the
upper five percent of the American people whose taxes went down
and whose incomes went up in the 1980s.  I think it's a good plan
and it will restore hope for the American economy.  (Applause.)

         You know, we're trying to do something no generation
of Americans has ever had to do.  I came into office with a
record debt.  And then after the election I was told the deficit
was really about $50 billion higher in three of the next four
years than we'd been told before.  And, yet, we looked around and
we saw we'd reduced our investment in education and training,
reduced our investment in new technologies, had no plan to deal
with people who lose their jobs because of defense cutbacks.  And
so we had to do something nobody had ever done.  We had to try to
find out how to bring the debt down and invest in our people,
their job, and their future.  I think we have got to do that.  If
we don't do both, we're going to be in big trouble.  (Applause.)

         Now, look at the result.  Since the election --since
it became absolutely clear that this administration was dead
serious about bringing this deficit down, interest rates in many
areas have hit an all-time low, home mortgages at a 20-year low.
I know there are people in this audience who have refinanced a
home mortgage in the last five months.  I know there are people
here who have lower credit card rates, lower business loan rates,
lower other rates because of interest rates going down.  That's
going to put $100 billion back into this economy to spur
investment and growth and jobs and income if we bring the deficit
down.

         Now, we're going to go into a fight where
everybody's going to say cut more spending and raise fewer taxes.
And you know, what that really says is cut somebody else's
spending and raise somebody else's taxes.  I wish it were
possible for us all to hide behind a tree and point at somebody
else.  But let's face it, in the last 12 years we got into this
mess overnight -- we got into this mess not overnight, and we're
not going to get out of it overnight.  We also, whether we like
it or not, got into it together.  We're all in it together and
we'd better get out of it together.  We're going to have to climb
out of it together, march out of it together and walk out of it
together.  (Applause.)

         But this plan is fair.  This plan has a big increase
in the earned income tax credit -- to try to relieve families
with income of under $30,000 of the burden of the energy tax I
propose, which will raise money and help to clean up the
environment.  This plan has an increase in this earned income tax
credit so much that if you work 40 hours a week and you've got a
child in the home, if you will apply for the tax credit you will
be lifted out of poverty.  That is an elemental principle and a
fundamental departure in America.

         We're going to reward work and not welfare for a
change.  If you work and you've got kids, we're going to lift you
out of poverty.  (Applause.)

         This will work.  It will bring the deficit down.  It
will be fairer to working families.  It will help us to keep
interest rates down.  It will help us to grow the economy.  And
over the next five years, we'll have some money to invest in
education and training and new technologies and jobs, and trying
to help all those people in those high-tech jobs that are losing
them because of defense cutbacks -- they can make us strong here
at home if we do it right.  But we've got to do it as a package.

         If everybody goes around saying what's in it for me,
instead of what's in it for us, the thing will come apart.
That's what paralyzes America -- every time we've got to make a
tough decision, somebody says, let somebody else do it.  There's
nobody else to do it but us.  We're going to have to lift our
country up and we're going to have to do it together.
(Applause.)

         One of the things that I do want to do is to repeal
the tax breaks that lobbyists get.  (Applause.)  There are 80,000
lobbyists in Washington making sure that I can't take care of
your interests.

         One of the things that we also have to do I think is
to reform the political system.  I told you if you would elect me
President, I'd do my best to reduce the influence of lobbyists
and special interest groups, to increase your influence; to make
it possible for all of the members of Congress, without regard to
party, at least to feel freer, to follow their conscience and
their constituents, and to listen to them with an open ear and an
open heart.

         Well, there are two bills moving through the
Congress now that will do just that.  When I took office the
first thing I did was to sign an executive order saying that
people who had top jobs for me couldn't go back into lobbying for
five years and could never lobby for a foreign government.
(Applause.)  Then a bill was introduced into the Congress that
just passed the United states Senate which, for the first time,
requires all the lobbyists to register and requires them to
report all the gifts they give to members of Congress over a
small amount.  So you'll know -- (applause.)

         And at the end of last week, we announced a new
campaign finance reform bill, which will do this:  it will reduce
the influence of big money, it will reduce the influence of
political action committees, it will reduce the influence of
lobbyists, it will give political campaigns back to you.  It does
it by limiting the amount of money that members of Congress can
take from political action committees by reducing the maximum
contribution in many areas.  It does it by saying that lobbyists
cannot give money or raise money for members of Congress that
they personally lobby.  And by repealing the tax exemption that
lobbyists get, we're going to take that money and give it to
members of Congress as communication vouchers so we can open the
airwaves to honest debate, and nobody is denied the opportunity
to be on the television or the radio just because they're not an
incumbent or just because they're not wired to the lobbyists.  It
is a good plan.  It will give the government back to you, the
middle class of this country, and we ought to pass it.
(Applause.)

         There are some other things that I think you need to
know about that we're trying to do.  We've introduced our plans
for national service and to make college available to all
Americans, and here's how it works.  (Applause.)  But I need your
help to pass it, because there are interest groups that are
against it.  There are interest groups against everything.

         This plan would say to every American family, you
can borrow the money to go to college without fear of going
bankrupt because you will not have to pay it back until you go to
work.  And when you go to work, you can pay it back as a
percentage of your income; so that no matter how much you borrow,
you can't be required to pay more than a certain percentage of
your income; you can't be bankrupted to secure your future.
(Applause.)

         The bill also will give tens of thousands of young
Americans the opportunity to pay their college loan, or a portion
of it, off through service to our country -- as teachers, as
police officers, working with kids in trouble.  They can earn it
before they go to college, while they're in college, or after
they get out.  But I think people ought to be able to work to
make Cleveland and Ohio a better place and pay their college
loans off.  (Applause.)

         And, believe it or not, if we just have the courage
to change the way we're financing the college loan program, we
can pay for most of this, particularly in the early years.  Why?
Because the way the college loan programs works now, we are
losing billions of dollars a year in huge transaction fees to
banks and in loan defaults, because the government guarantees 90
percent of every one of these loans.  So, what happens?  If
somebody wants to default on the loan, what incentive does the
bank have to go collect it?  It would cost you 10 percent to pay
the lawyer.  So the taxpayers pay.

         I say let's make the loans direct.  Let's cut out
all the fat fees.  Let's make people pay them back at tax time so
they can't beat the bill.  More responsibility and more
opportunity for everybody.  (Applause.)

         Let me just make two other points.  First of all,
while I have proposed over 200 specific budget cuts to take the
lead in reducing this deficit by over $500 billion, I want you to
know that nothing we can do will reduce this deficit over the
long run to zero, which is what we want, until we finally face
the fact that the biggest culprit in government spending today is
the exploding cost of health care.

         If we don't have the courage to try to provide a
basic system of health coverage to all Americans, to try to give
security to small businesses and working families who have health
insurance but are terrified that they're going to lose it -- if
we don't do that, then you will never get this deficit down to
zero because the cost of government health care is going up by 12
percent a year.  And 100,000 Americans a month are losing their
health insurance.

         Now, there is no easy answer to this.  If it were
easy, somebody else would have done it already.  It's hard.  Why?
Because we're spending too much money on health care, but it's in
all the wrong places.  And the question is, how are you going to
move the money from where it shouldn't be -- in administrative
costs and extra procedures and duplicated technologies and a lot
of other things -- to where it should be, covering people who
don't have health insurance, without bankrupting small business,
without imposing undue financial burdens, without imposing new
taxes on people that are already paying too much.

         Can it be done?  You bet it can, but it won't be
easy and it will require people who have been making a killing
out of the present system to accept some change.  But I'm telling
you, the worse thing we can do is to do nothing.  And everybody
-- (applause) -- when we come out with this plan everybody will
say, well, whatever we say to provide -- to get the money to
people who don't have health insurance now or to provide health
security to those who can't change jobs now, they'll call that a
tax.  But when we lower by millions and millions and millions of
dollars a year the health insurance premiums of people who are
paying too much, or the paperwork burdens of the doctors and
hospitals who are spending too much money filling out paper, they
don't want to count that -- the defenders of the status quo -- as
an offset.  We are going to have to change, folks, but most of
what we have to do is to move the money from where it shouldn't
be to where it should.  We're already spending plenty of money,
but we've got to move it around.  (Applause.)

         And you ought to be able to see that not only will
it cost some people some more money to have health insurance, but
a lot of people who are paying too much will save.  And that is
what we have to do.  If we don't have the courage to change, we
will not get the government budget under control.  But most
important, working class families in this country and small
business people will never have the health security without which
it is virtually impossible to have a good life over the long run.
We have got to do this.  And I am determined to see that we do.
(Applause.)

         Let me just close by saying this:  This is a
difficult time.  I told somebody the other day that I was
absolutely convinced after 100 days as President that all the
easy decisions had already been made by somebody else.
(Laughter.)  Every day I meet with my staff and I say, send me
just one easy one.  (Laughter.)  Let's declare a moratorium.  We
won't talk about anything hard today.  Send me an easy one.  I'm
still waiting.  (Laughter.)

         But I want you to know that we can turn this country
around, we can secure our future.  It is in our power.  We can
bring the deficit down.  We can increase our investment in
education and jobs.  We can meet the competitive challenges ahead
of us.  We can face the health care challenge.  But we have got
to have the courage to change.  And we will win if we do that.  I
wish to goodness I could just say to every one of you, you don't
have to do any of this.  I'll just go to some other state and
make them do it.  (Laughter.)  But I can't.

         Everybody will always be able to find some fault
with every comprehensive proposal like this.  There's no such
thing as a perfect proposal.  I don't like everything about
everything that we have presented in the hope of passing and
securing change.  But the test for this generation, the test for
this whole generation is whether we are going to have the courage
to make these changes, to rebuild the middle class, and to lift
up the economy of this country, and to lift up all these children
in this audience today.  I believe you have that courage, and
together we're going to do it.

         Thank you, and God bless you all.  (Applause.)

                               END11:30 A.M. EDT