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From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:jcma@REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU Wed Jun 2 19:15:46 1993
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 17:08-0400
From: The White House <75300.3115@compuserve.com>
To: Clinton-News-Distribution@campaign92.org
Subject: President's Remarks Along Rope Line in Press Q&A 6.1.93
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release June 1, 1993
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN Q&A WITH THE PRESS ALONG ROPE LINE
Milwaukee Exposition Convention Center and Arena
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Q view the whole treatment where you basically
-- first with having to deal day after day with the news accounts
that kind of talk about the haircuts and the travel office and
things? No, no, I'm asking you how important --
Q That's a cheap shot. That's a cheap shot. You
are the President of the United States. You should --
Q Can I do my job, please?
Q Get out of here. We don't need those cheap
shots. That's a cheap shot, get out of here.
THE PRESIDENT: The answer is, I have to work in
Washington, but you have to work outside, too. The real issue is
not so much what you said, but the real issue is, I secured
agreement early on for about $250 billion in tax cuts -- spending
cuts, I mean. A little under -- about $245 billion. And as a
result of that, because they weren't the focus of controversy, no
one knows we did it.
And then we got agreement early on for the new
incentives, for small businesses and for starting new businesses
and for investing in our depressed areas, reviving the housing
market. Because there was no controversy people don't know we
did it. So the only controversy has been over the taxes. It's
important that people know that there are budget cuts in here.
It's important that people know there are real incentives to the
private sector in here. It's important that people know what we
still spend money on. And it's important for people to know that
over 70 percent of the money is being paid by the top 6 percent
of income earners. If I don't get out here an do all that work,
they won't know it, so that's what I'm doing.
Q Let me follow, sir. Are you going to recommend
a tax on hospitals to pay for the health care program -- on the
theory that they're going to have a windfall profit from your
reform program?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, if we do it right -- let me
say this, if we do it right, they will have significantly lower
administrative costs. That is, if we do health care right, they
will have lower administrative costs. Let me just give you one
example: The average American doctor in 1980 took home 75
percent of the income that he or she generated into the clinic.
By 1992, that figure had dropped to 52 percent, all the rest of
it going to administrative costs caused by insurance companies
and the government just piling on regulations and rules and
paperwork and thousands of different insurance costs. If we
simplify that, their costs will drop dramatically.
So one of the options that has been recommended is
that they -- that we leave some of that money with them, but have
some of that money to be -- flow back in to cover the uninsured,
which will also help them because that will come right back to
the doctors and the hospitals in the form of insurance for the
uninsured. So it would be almost like returning the money to
them in a different form for services rendered. We'll just have
to see whether that works out. No final decision has been made
on that.
Q But you like that idea?
THE PRESIDENT: I have made no decision on it. I
don't want to flame the story anymore. That is one of the
options that has been presented, and one of ones that, frankly,
some hospital people have talked to us about.
Q Are you going to hold off the health plan until
the fall, Mr. President?
Q That's all. You talk --
THE PRESIDENT: Hold it off until what?
Q Are you going to hold off the plan until the
fall to let the Congress concentrate --
Q That's enough --
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, no, no, no. I hope we move this
budget through in a hurry.
* * *
THE PRESIDENT: -- I think he's got some really good
ideas. But once he committed himself to cutting as much as he
did, he actually lost more Republicans than I lost Democrats.
Q It's just the issue of party politics that you
talked about -- the Democrats, I feel, are doing the same thing.
So I just think you should address that part of it. The
Democrats are doing the same thing.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I didn't let them off the
hook.
Q I'm just bringing up the point because the
people need to know that.
* * *
THE PRESIDENT: I have nothing to add over and above
what's been in the paper already. I mean, the senators on the
Senate Finance Committee have discussed with me and also with the
House members who voted for this program, the options that are
there within the principles that I established. I always said -
on February 17th I said if we can meet these principles -- $500
billion in deficit reduction, aggressive taxation, incentives to
invest in America, move from welfare to work, lift the working
poor out of poverty, and these targeted investments in technology
jobs and education which will meet those principles, with some
less tax and some more spending cuts, I'm for it. And I think
that's what we're working toward.
Q What would you be willing to accept in less
taxes --
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to get into that --
Q How about --
THE PRESIDENT: No, I'm not going to get into it
because Congress is on recess and our commitment is twofold of
our administration. One is to work with the senators of any
party who will work with us; and secondly, to make sure the
Senate Finance Committee works with all the House members who
voted for this budget with our solemn commitment that we would
all work together in the Senate to keep these principles intact
and see if these principles can be achieved with less tax and
more spending cuts. So that's what we're trying to do.
Q Good way to sell your plan here?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I think so. This was terrific.
I loved it.
Q What's your position on Russia's not paying
back your $80 billion in debt -- loans that are still
outstanding?
THE PRESIDENT: They're broke, they can't right now.
Q What is your feeling on that? Are you looking
for them to repay those loans in the next two years, or is that
part of their plan to balance the budget?
THE PRESIDENT: They can't do it right now. They
have no money. They're absolutely flat broke. What we ought to
do -- I think the Russians have now undertaken -- their recent
credits, in other words, the things that they've gotten since
they adopted a free market approach, since they got rid of
communism, I think they will honor those debts once they start
making money again. But the history is that countries need a few
years to basically move from a communist economy to a free market
economy. As they do that and they begin to acquire some success,
then I think they'll be able to pay down their debt.
But if we -- the dilemma now is if we tried to make
them pay it off now, we'd just drive them further in the economic
hole and run the risk of having them revert to a dictatorship of
some kind. And we don't want to do that.
So I wouldn't let anybody off the hook that could
pay it back, but the point is for them, they never really --
unlike the Chinese, for example, who were traders for centuries
and had a whole market history, the Russians essentially went
from a feudal agricultural economy under the czars to a communist
economy that then became dominated by heavy industry. And moving
into a modern free market economy is very difficult for them.
Q So we're going to work with them?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I think we should.
Thank you. Good-bye, folks. Thank you.
END