Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930512.zip/5-12D.TXT

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From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail]  Wed May 12 17:01:41 1993
Date: Wed, 12 May 1993 17:01-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: President's Remarks on WFAN Radio  5.12.93

                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                               May 12, 1993

                       REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                 DURING TELEPHONE CALL WITH NEW YORK
                          RADIO STATION WFAN

                           The Oval Office

7:38 A.M. EDT

         Q      Good morning, Mr. President.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Good Morning.  How are you?

         Q      I'm fine.  How are you?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I'm all right.

         Q      Let me ask you something.  What the hell is going
on down there in that White House?  What do you mean, you've lost
your focus?  (Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  I haven't lost my focus, you've just
been seeing me through the foggy lens of television instead of the
direct -- of radio.  (Laughter.)  There's a big headline in The
Washington Post today, "Clinton Wins Third Major Victory In
Congress," I think we're doing fine.  You know, we lost one bill and
a lot of people think it's like the last days of Pompeii.  I mean, if
you're going to fight for change, you've got to be prepared to lose a
few as well as win some.  But I think we're well on track.

         Let me just point out that when the Congress adopted my
budget outline, it was the first time in 17 years that adopted it
within the legal time limit, faster than they've moved in 17 years.
Everybody complained about the appointments process.  When 100 days
went by, it turned out I'd made more appointments during the period
than my two predecessors did.  We just passed the Motor Voter bill
yesterday, a big issue for younger voters making it easier for them
to register to vote.  We've got the economic program on track.  I
feel good about the way things are.  But it's -- you know, change is
not easy and people -- if you want to keep score after 100 days, when
the -- where we had 4,500 days of trickle down economics -- you know,
I haven't done everything I meant to do in 100 days but I never
promised to do it in 100 days.  I think we're doing fine.

         Q      I think that looked good last night, breaking that
Republican filibuster, because it looks like Bob Dole -- it's like
the Friday the 13th movies, you know, where you think you've finished
him off and then next thing you know that hand comes popping up out
of the lake there and, of course, in this case there was a pin in it.
(Laughter.)  But this is an indication that it doesn't look like the
Republicans are going to be able to waylay everything you're trying
to do, does it?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I don't think so.  You know, the
filibuster on the jobs bill was an unusual thing, I think -- not that
they tried to do it, but that they never let the majority vote.  And
I think the American people have got that figured out.  And there are
always going to be Republicans -- or most, always -- that agree with
some aspect of what we're doing.  And when you reach out with them,
to them and you try to work out compromises, there are -- almost
always there are some who want to go for the national interest over
the partisanship, and that's what happened here.  We worked out some
problems with that Motor Voter bill and it rolled right through.  The
same thing with Family and Medical Leave.  So I think if we just keep
working at it, we'll have some success.

         We've had 12 cloture votes -- that's the attempt to get
60 percent of the Senate just so a majority can vote their will -- 12
already in the first three and a half months.  So I imagine they'll
make us do this a lot, but I think there are always going to be some
Republicans who want to be part of a bipartisan movement for change,
and I'm encouraged by it.

         Q      Or Republicans who want to be president.
(Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  There are always going to be people who
want to be President, and some days I like to give it to them.
(Laughter.)  But if I did that, at least I'd have a telephone
conversation with you before I give it up so you can call me
President Bubba.  See, I've been waiting for this all this time.

         Q      Well, Mr. President, I don't know what you've heard
about what's been going on in this program, but it's always been very
respectful.  And anything you've heard to the contrary would just be
further evidence of the collapse of the intelligence community and --
(laughter) -- I mean, these guys didn't even know that the Berlin
Wall went down until they saw it on CNN.  So you can't trust what you
hear from them.

         I was talking to my friend Jeff Greenfield over at ABC
and he had a good observation.  He said, is this economic program of
yours tougher to sell now, you think, because for whatever
circumstances you weren't able to run on it?

         THE PRESIDENT:  No, I don't think so.  It's -- the
difference in the program that we're advocating and the one I ran on
over a five-year period is not very great, but what happened was
after the election -- I want to emphasize this -- after the election
the government came out -- the previous administration -- and said
that the deficit was going to be $50 billion a year bigger than they
had said before in three of the four years of the term that I now
occupy.  So I had to do more to cut the deficit and we had to put
that up front.  And it's worked pretty well so far.

         You know, ever since we announced serious intentions to
cut the deficit and were specific about it, interest rates began
dropping very steeply, mortgage rates were at a 20-year low.  You're
going to have a $100 billion -- that's a lot of money -- in
refinancing of home mortgages and business debt and other things
which I think will really help the economy.

         But that meant we had to put off some of the plans or
scale them back in the early going and put them back into the later
years of my term to invest money in things that I think are also
important.  But we've got to get control of this deficit, it's been
spinning out of control now, getting worse and worse for a dozen
years and we don't have the funds we need to invest in jobs to grow
the economy and I think it's very important.

         Q      I think William Greider pointed it out in Rolling
Stone -- and you either agree with it obviously or don't -- that
during the campaign that the focus was one and the debate was on jobs
and it seemed that because of Bush cooking the books and not
realizing that the deficit was going to be -- (laughter) -- a little
bit bigger than it was that then the agenda switched to this five-
year plan to reduce the deficit.  Let me ask you --

         THE PRESIDENT:  But wait, let me make one point.  I
think there are two sides of the same thing.  That is, if I didn't
think that reducing the deficit over the long-run would help us to
create more jobs, and if I didn't think we could also get some
increased investment in new technologies and education and training
and to rebuild our cities and to do these things that have to be
done, I wouldn't be doing this.

         I think there are two sides of the same coin, I don't
think until we -- I think until we show we can get control over the
government's budget and we can make some spending cuts, as well as
restore some of the tax loses that we had in the early years of the
trickle-down revolution, I don't think we can get a job program going
in the country.  So I think this getting the deficit down is part of
a long-term job growth strategy.  Jobs are the issue; reducing the
deficit is a means to get control of our economic future.  The whole
purpose of it is to put people to work.

         Q      To talk about just a second, this economic plan and
some of these numbers that we see now suggest that the public is --
about half, 50 percent of them don't think it's going to work.  And
let me tell you what filters down to people like me, you know, aside
from the esoteric proposals and figures and stuff that many of us
don't understand, but what we hear is that the numbers we hear is
that, for every three dollars and so in new taxes, we're looking at
about a dollar or so in spending cuts and there are some people that
think the ratio's even higher than that.  Is that accurate?

         THE PRESIDENT:  No, no.  But I'll tell you, if you look
at this thing over a five-year period we have more spending cuts than
we do tax increases.  And that's true even though we have some
targeted increases in investment, in education and training and new
technologies.  Now, the people who argue this the other way, they
play clever games.  For example, if you're going to cut a program
that's in place you may have to phase-in the cuts over a five-year
period; if you raise a tax, you can raise a tax immediately; if --
you've got to look at this whole budget.

         In this budget we have more spending cuts than tax
increases.  We do have some spending increases, but if you don't
believe that there are differences and different kind of spending, I
don't know what we can do.  We have some spending increases to give a
nationwide apprenticeship program to help retrain the work force.  We
have some spending increases to get into new technologies to make up
for defense cuts because we're losing a lot of high-tech, high-wage
jobs.

         You know, up in Connecticut we've had a lot of
employment dislocation because of defense cutbacks, but you've got a
whole high-wage work force that needs to have something else to do.
And every other government in the world is investing in new
technologies to try to create those jobs for their people, if we
don't do it we're going to be left behind.  So we have to target some
investments.  But this budget has over 200 very specific budget cuts
over the last budget adopted in the previous administration.  And if
you look -- it's  five-year budget, that's what the law requires us
to do, to adopt five-year budgets -- we've got more spending cuts
than tax increases, and we should.

         Q      Is it important what the ratio is and if it is,
what should it be do you think?  I mean, because that's the -- you
know, that's kind of the way we relate to it.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, the issue is how many cuts can you
get without pulling the economy into a recession.  What do you have
to cut, how many cuts can you get without unfairly cutting the
elderly?  The same people who say we don't have enough cuts are also
often saying we shouldn't cut what we're cutting.  And the truth is,
if you want to get to a balanced budget through spending reductions,
the only way to do it now is to get control of health care costs.
And that, basically, in the later part of this decade, if we can
adopt a national health system and -- you know, Hillary has been
working on that with hundreds of others -- and we can bring the
governments deficit down to zero, but you can't do that overnight.
And the biggest part of our deficit growth now is in health care
costs and interest on the debt.

         We're not spending a bigger percentage of our income on
Social Security -- our national income -- than we were ten years ago.
We're spending a smaller percentage of our income on federal aid in
education than we were 10 or 12 years ago.  What's happened now is,
we started cutting defense, but health care increases overcame the
defense cuts.  So what I'm trying to do is to cut everything I can
now, get health care costs under control and look towards, not only
cutting the deficit, but bringing it down to zero over a multi-year
period.  You just can't do this overnight.

         You know, we took the national debt from $1 trillion to
$4 trillion in 12 years with a $300-plus billion a year deficit when
I took office.  You can't just eliminate that overnight without
having serious economic dislocations.  You've got to do it in a
disciplined way and take it down.

         Q      There's already been some compromise with some
members of your own party in Congress.  Do you anticipate any more of
that, or is it --

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I think there have been some
changes that make it better.  After all, we put this plan on the
table only 30 days after I had taken office and I invited people to
comment on it but to keep its essential features intact.  That is, we
had to have the spending cuts before I would agree to tax increases.
The tax increases had to be largely progressive, that is they ought
to be on people at higher income levels whose tax rates went down in
the 1980's while their incomes went up.

         That we ought to have a earned income tax credit --
that's taxpayer jargon for giving a tax break to working class people
with children, particularly who would be especially hard hit by the
energy tax; and that affects people with incomes up to about $29,000
a year, where they'll get an offset on their income tax to make up
for the energy tax.

         And there ought to be some incentives for investment in
the American economy, either mine or some others.  And we emphasize
small business and we emphasize new plant and equipment for big
business; and those things are all going to be in the ultimate tax
package.  So I feel good about it.  I think that, you know, the
changes that are being made basically, at least so far the ones that
have been discussed with me, don't in any way undermine the
fundamental principles of the tax program and the spending cut
program I laid out.

         Q      There is a dramatic picture of you and an agonizing
Lyndon Johnson on the cover of the current issue of TIME magazine
asking the question if Bosnia is going to be your Vietnam.  One, let
me ask you, do you think it has that potential?  And, two, what is
the United States policy in Bosnia?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me answer the first question.
There are similarities to Vietnam in the sense that there is a civil
war and there is a national dividing line -- that is between Bosnia
and Serbia, which doesn't fully coincide with the ethnic cohesion of
the Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia.  Same thing on the other end of the
country with Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina.

         It's a very complicated thing.  Those folks have been
fighting with each other for a long time.  There are also some
differences, however.  You have the continuation of a principle of
ethnic cleansing that you didn't have in Vietnam, people getting
killed or raped just because of their religion, just because they're
Muslims and because of their historic conflict in that area.

         And you have a United Nations resolution which has, in
effect, given a military victory to the Serbians.  That is the U.N.
imposed an arms embargo which had the effect of opening up for the
Serbs the entire arms cache of the Yugoslav army and denying weapons
to the Bosnian Muslims and, to a lesser extent, the Croatians.  So
the international community has been involved.

         The third and a big difference from the point of view of
the average Americans is, I've made it very clear that the United
States, unlike Vietnam, is not about to act alone, it should not act
alone.  This is a European issue, it's an issue for the world
community to address.

         We have worked very carefully with our allies to make
the sanctions tougher and to keep the pressure on to try to do two
things:  to try to contain the conflict and to try to put an end to
the slaughter.  And our policy is that it is in the United States
national interest to keep this conflict from spilling over into a lot
of other countries which could drag the United States into something
with NATO that we don't want and to do everything we can with our
allies to stop the slaughter and to end the fighting.  And that's our
policy.  Our policy is not to do what we did in Vietnam, which was to
get in and fight with one side in a civil way to assure a military
victory.  That is not what we're involved in.  We are trying to
promote a settlement and we have signed onto a plan -- two of the
three political factions in that area have signed onto it and we have
committed ourselves to working with our allies.  So the policy is
very, very different than the policy the United States pursued in
Vietnam.

         Q      Any scenario, any place down the road -- this may
be a dumb question, but I ask -- that you see ground troops somehow
getting involved there?  Does it every reach that point?  Say all the
allies get on board and --

         THE PRESIDENT:  We believe that there could be a United
Nations force which we could take part in that could help to enforce
the peace agreement or keep the peace.  We've been involved in
peacekeeping operations of this kind in many places.  But the United
States is not going to unilaterally enter the conflict on the side of
one of the combatants and do what we did in Vietnam.  That is not our
policy and that's not what we're going to do.

         Q      You know, I agreed with you when you said during
the campaign that history has shown that you can't allow the mass
extermination of people and just sit by and watch it happen and that
really is driving this, isn't it?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.  It is a difficult issue.  Let me
say that when we have people here who've been involved in many
previous administrations that are involved in National Security
including, obviously, a lot of people who were involved in the two
previous ones, I mean, and everybody I talk to believes that this is
the toughest foreign policy problem our country has faced in a long
time.  And I'm trying to proceed in a very deliberate way to try to
make sure there isn't a Vietnam problem here.  But also to try to
made sure that he United States keeps pushing to save lives and to
confine the conflict.  I don't think we can just turn away from this
just because we don't want to make the mistake we did in Vietnam
doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing anything.  There are things that
we can do and we're trying to do more to try to push this thing
toward a settlement.

         I also think that in terms of our clear self-interest in
addition to the humanitarian issue, if we can stop this conflict from
spreading and it has powder keg potential that that is clearly in our
interest.

         Q      You know what I've always wondered, Mr. President,
you read the editorials in the Washington Post, the New York Times
and the Wall Street Journal and you read these op-ed pieces -- do you
ever read one of those and then look at -- call Al and say, man
that's a good idea why don't we do that.  (Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  Actually, I do.

         Q      Do you?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Absolutely, I do.  I also often read
editorials that question our policies or our op-ed pieces that
question our policy and I send it to the Vice President and to and to
other people in the administration and I say, if we don't have an
answer to this we shouldn't go on.  This is the best case against our
policy -- what's our answer to it?  I think that's important.

         You know I don't mind, frankly, I don't mind criticism;
in fact, I welcome it when it's rooted in ideas, when people are
questioning whether a policy is right or wrong.  But what I try to do
is to have a new spirit of possibility here.  I want a sense that,
you know, we stop all this other political give and take and real
harsh partisanship and calculating personal advantage and just talk
about the ideas and the issues at stake and try to keep our focus on
what's best for the American people.  We're really in a new and
unchartered time in many ways.  It's very exciting, there are all
kinds of economic opportunities out there for the United States, but
there are also a lot of very, very stiff challenges that we have to
meet.  And I think in order to do the right thing, we're going to
have to keep our minds open and our ears open and be willing to
experiment and to try some things until we find a course that will
clearly work that helps to support the security of the American
people.

         Q      You know, I was talking at the beginning of our
conversation, Mr. President -- I was actually just kidding about this
focus issue -- but, you know, what looked great was when you and
Hillary went up to Capitol Hill and when you had that first town
meeting in Michigan, and now you are in Cleveland and Chicago, and
this telephone call.  You know, it began to look for a time -- I
remember I was watching Willie Nelson and Neil Young out there at
Farm Aid and they were talking about you and Al Gore, and they said,
"What change?"  And I think -- you know, from the outside looking in,
it's like we had eight years of watching old Reagan get off and on
that helicopter, and we wanted to see you do stuff like this.  And I
think this is great, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you
calling.

         But I would say this:  Let's not wait until these
approval ratings get down to single digits before you call me again,
because -- (laughter) --

         THE PRESIDENT:  Let me tell you, one of the things I
did, though -- and you may think this is a mistake.  But I mean, put
yourself in my position.  Partly, when you get out of focus -- when I
get out of focus with the people is when I'm not communicating
directly with them, when I'm just answering other people's questions
and I'm at the mercy of whatever is on the evening news.

         But I came to this city with a determination to work
with the Congress and to try to get some things done.  In the first
three months, I thought that, having been out across the country for
the last year and a half, I should spend a great deal of time in
intense efforts to develop an economic package, a health care package
and to get the basis of our national security and foreign policy down
so that I would have a framework to proceed in.  Most of the time
I've been here, I've spent on the economy and on health care.  In
other words, my time has been sharply focused.  I don't think the
American people know that because I haven't been out here talking to
you and people like you out there.

         But there's been a big difference between the way I've
spent my time in the efforts of the administration and, I think, what
the perception is.  That's my fault, in a way, and I'm going to get
out and correct it.  But I had to spend a couple of months, I think,
just going to work in the office, getting the details down, working
through the procedures, making sure I understood how the thing
worked, and now I can go back on the road and do the things that I
think are important to connect the American people to their
government.  And I recognize that that's my responsibility.  Only the
President can do that; and if I don't do it, it won't be done.

         Q      I know, Mr. President, you're coming to New York
this afternoon.  Do you want to go to the Knicks game tonight, or --
(laughter) --

         THE PRESIDENT:  You're betraying your all-sports radio.
(Laughter.)  I know you're trying to convince your listeners that you
know something about this.  (Laughter.)  You're trying to get your
approval ratings up on sports.  I know that.

         Actually, I'd like to do it.  But I'm going to speak at
the Cooper Union this afternoon.  And then I'm going to a Democratic
Party event tonight.  So I can't go to the ballgame.  Although I'd
like to; I'm a big baseball fan, as you know.

         Q      Well, of course, this would be basketball, Mr.
President.  (Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, did you say Knicks?  I thought you
said Mets.

         Q      No, nobody wants to see the Mets.  Are you kidding?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Let me tell you something.  My wife grew
up in Chicago as a Cubs fan.  Once you get for a baseball team you
can't quit it just because it doesn't win.

         Q      Well --

         THE PRESIDENT:  I thought you said Mets.  No, I'd love
to go to the Knicks game, but I'm otherwise occupied.  I watched two
of those games last night on television.  Do you think the American
people would think less of me if they thought I stayed up late and
watched basketball?  (Laughter.)

         Q      No, I don't think -- in fact, I read you've been
watching the Houston Rockets and the Clippers.

         You know, I'll let you go here.  Just one final
observation that I thought was kind of funny.  Did you see any clips
of Strom Thurmond interviewing one of those gay sailors?  Here he is
-- I don't know if you know what he was saying -- you know, have you
seen a psychiatrist or -- (laughter) -- I thought, man if I could be
90 years old and have it that together, there really isn't any other
goal.  Let's hope the same happens for you, Mr. President.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Since we're on an all-sports network,
let me give Senator Thurmond a plug.  He still works out for 50
minutes a day, and that's why he's still out there doing it.  So if
everybody listening to us will start spending 50 minutes a day taking
care of themselves, a lot of them will be 90, 91 and still plugging
away like Strom.

         Q      May I ask you a question about your jogging?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Sure.

         Q      What are your mile splits?  We have an estimate
here that's right around 12 minutes.

         THE PRESIDENT:  No.  When I ran with the Boston Marathon
runners, we ran a 5k, and this is allergy time for me so I have to
start out slow.  We ran the first mile in nine minutes, the second
mile in eight minutes, and the third mile in seven minutes.

         Q      Man, that's a lot faster than I do it.  (Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  And I average about -- when I run here
in town, I average probably about an 8.5 minute mile.  But I can run
if faster on Valentine's Day.  The Vice President and I did 2.5 miles
in a Heart Association run at about 7.5 minutes a mile.

         Q      Terrific.  Mr. President, thank you very much,
thanks for coming on, and good luck.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Thanks.  Talk to you again, I hope.


                                 END8:05 A.M. EDT