Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930622.zip/06-22H.TXT

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From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail]  Tue Jun 22 19:57:35 1993
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 18:29-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail],
Subject: President's Remarks to the Conference of Mayors  - 6.22.93

                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                              June 22, 1993


                      REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                        IN SATELLITE FEED TO
                       CONFERENCE OF MAYORS


                  The Old Executive Office Building

10:50 A.M. EDT

         THE PRESIDENT:  I'm honored to address all the United
States mayors at your conference.  I want to thank you first for the
strong support that you've given the economic plan I presented to the
Congress and to the country.  You supported it not because -- only
because it's good for the cities, but because it's also good for
America.

         Your president, Mayor Bill Althaus, has certainly earned
my respect and support because he's looked beyond party labels to
support this plan because it's good for the people of his community.
I look forward to having just that good of a relationship with your
incoming president, my longtime friend, Mayor Jerry Abramson.  And I
want to say a special word about your host, Mayor Dinkins, a great
mayor of a very great city.

         As mayors, more than any other public official in this
country, you have been on the front lines of public service.  Every
day you hear from people who have lost their jobs, who live in fear
of crime, who desperately want to improve their children's schools
and their own way of life.  Many of you are trying to reknit a social
fabric that has been unraveling for a long time now.  From schools
with metal detectors, to hospital emergency rooms crowded with
gunshot victims, to children bearing children, you know what the real
problems of America are.

         I often think that being a mayor today is an act of
faith that somehow our cities' problems will not overwhelm their
promise.  And our cities must always be the centers of commerce and
culture, magnets for talent and ambition, places of hope and
opportunity.  We can't let the problems overcome the promise.

         I wish I could be with you today in person, and I will
look forward to doing that as you meet in the future.  But my first
obligation to you and to America is to keep fighting here in
Washington for my economic plan.  It will create jobs, increase
incomes, offer hope and opportunity, and give us the freedom we need
to invest in America in the future.

         For 12 years we have seen, all of us -- you as mayors
and me as a governor -- we saw what happened as we wrestled with many
of the problems that grip America everywhere, and got a message from
Washington, "you're on your own."  Washington ran up the national
debt from $1 trillion to $4 trillion and still reduced investments in
the things that make us stronger and wealthier and more secure as a
people.

         We got make-believe budgets from Presidents and mandates
without money from Congress.  And Washington never was willing to
take responsibility for the future of this country, leaving it to the
mayors and the governors to make all the tough choices.

         Well, I don't expect anyone in that room today with you
agrees with everything that I'm trying to do as President.  But I
think all of you understand that because of the massive debt we
inherited, I can't do everything that I want to do.  But I'll tell
you this:  I am determined to establish a new relationship, a new
partnership with our nation's cities, based on respect and
responsibility and an understanding that you ought to have more
flexibility to do your work without so much micromanagement and
regulation from the national government.

         I also want to put the nation's money where our values
are.  I want us to invest in rewarding work, strengthening families
and restoring our communities.  And I want to set an example of
responsibility by making the tough choices that have been avoided and
evaded for too long here.

         My economic plan is necessary and fair, and it will
work.  It brings down the national deficit by $500 billion over the
next five years.  For every $10 we cut the deficit, $5 comes from
spending cuts; $3.75 from the highest income Americans, those in the
upper 6 percent of income brackets; and $1.25 comes from the middle
class.  Two-thirds of this tax burden comes from people with incomes
above $200,000 because they can best afford to pay.  And over 100
specific spending cuts are over $100 million each.

         Now, it's easy to criticize this plan, maybe just
because I've put forward a plan.  Most of my critics don't have a
plan of their own.  Some say they're willing to cut Social Security
and Medicare benefits for people just above the poverty line or cut
more in veterans benefits than have been cut already, or cut tax
credits for the working poor just to reduce the tax burden on the
wealthy.  Well, I draw the line there.  I don't think that's fair.

         I think that we need a fair tax system, not because we
want to punish success, but because in the 1980s we ran up the
deficit while raising taxes on the middle class and lowering them on
upper income people.

         Now I ask my critics in Congress, where are your tough
choices?  What are you going to do?  If you want to reduce the tax
burden on the wealthy, where will you make up the money?  What will
you do to reduce this deficit?  Are you willing to make the same
kinds of decisions that I have?

         I wonder what the middle class, the working poor, the
old, the sick, and the veterans will do if the failed policies of the
past are not abandoned.  I also wonder what they'll do if we don't
ask all the rest of us to pay our fair share so that we can still
continue to take care of them.

         Make no mistake about it, I want to change the way
Washington works with people all across this country.  I want to move
beyond the politics of both parties in Washington, beyond the
politics of abandonment, of the politics of entitlement.  We've got
to have a sense that we're doing this together.  We can't do
everything for the cities or the people of America, but we can't turn
out backs on you either.  And, frankly, that's what you've had for
the last 12 years.

         I want a new spirit of empowerment that offers you a
hand up, not a hand out; that works with you instead of working you
over.  I want to offer more opportunity and demand more
responsibility.  And I know the mayors of this country are ready for
that kind of arrangement.  Just as we need to stop spending on things
that don't work, we need to invest more in things that do work.

         My plan does cut the deficit, but it finds the money to
invest in empowering people to build better lives.  I want to empower
families to build better lives for their children, and am fighting to
expand the Women, Infants, and Children's nutrition so that every
expectant mother who needs help can get it.

         I'm fighting for full funding for Head Start so that
every child can start school ready to learn.  I want to empower
people through education.  I'm fighting for tough standards for our
students and our schools.  I want to give them the resources they
need to meet those standards.  To offer young people new hope and
teach work habits, I'm fighting for summer jobs.  Congress has
approved 580,000 publicly funded jobs and we're asking for another
215,000, and challenging the business community to match our
commitment.  The Labor Secretary Bob Reich has been there talking to
you about that.  I want to make it possible for tens of thousands of
young people to pay off their college loans by serving the
communities in which they live.  That's the thing your previous
speaker was talking about.

         The national government can offer you our greatest
resource -- our people -- to work in the streets, in the
neighborhoods, in the communities; to work on programs that really
change people's lives for the better, programs that you couldn't
afford to have as mayors were it not for national service.  And I'm
proud to say that the national service bill has passed both
committees in the House and the Senate just in the last few days with
real bipartisan majorities.

         To provide new opportunities for young people who aren't
going to college, my plan contains the boldest national
apprenticeship program our country has ever known, more funds for
training in your communities.  I want to empower low income people by
making work pay.  By expanding the earned income tax credit, we can
establish a principle that will be important in every city in this
country.  If you work 40 hours a week and you have a child at home,
you'll no longer live in poverty.  We need to encourage full-time
work, not lifetime welfare.

         I want to empower communities to protect themselves, and
I'm fighting for $200 million to help you hire back police officers
you've had to lay off.  I want to put 100,000 more police officers on
our streets and promote community policing programs.  That's the best
anticrime program we can have.

         I want to empower our communities to create new jobs,
and I've proposed an empowerment zone program in excess of $5
billion, so that communities can work with the private sector and we
can finally see whether these incentives can attract businesses and
created new jobs for people in our distressed inner cities and small
towns.  I believe they will.

         We're offering bold, new tax incentives for businesses
to create jobs and asking each of you to create a strategy to rebuild
your own community.  We've learned that Washington can't solve
problems from the top down, but that we have to help you.  We also
know you can't have capitalism without capital.  That's why I have
proposed a $382-million funding for a network of community
development banks all across this country to provide the credit and
the banking services that are the lifeblood of local economies and
that don't really exist in too many of our communities.

         Almost a year ago, I left another convention in New York
on a bus tour through America's heartland, to Mayor Althaus's
hometown of York, Pennsylvania, to Mayor Abramson's hometown of
Louisville, and to many of your own cities and towns.  Every day I go
to work in the White House, I think about how to create jobs and hope
and opportunities for the people I visited on those bus tours.

         I can't do it alone.  I need your support in the tough
choices that are coming up in Congress.  If you'll stay involved and
vigilant and vocal, we can create a vibrant economic growth for every
community in this country.  We can do it.  We can cut the deficit.
We can build on the successes we've had.

         Just in the last five months you see interest rates
down, homebuilding up, 130,000 new construction jobs -- that's the
biggest increase in nine years -- 755,000 new jobs in the economy in
only five months, 90 percent of them in the private sector.  This
program to bring the interest rates down through deficit reduction is
working.  And when we do it we will then have the funds we need to
invest in the kind of partnerships that will help us to deal with the
problems that all of you face.

         So that's what I offer you -- a partnership, an economic
program that works and, finally, over the long run, the way to deal
with a lot of these underlying, deeply-seated cultural and social
problems that I know have bothered all of you.  We have to find new
and different ways, one on one, to help to deal with the scourges of
drug abuse, of crime, of unsafe streets, and of all these children
who are out there having children themselves.

         But I am very, very hopeful, because I still believe the
most creative and innovative leaders in America are those at the
grass roots.  I'll work with you and I'll try to be the best partner
you ever had in the White House.

         Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

         MAYOR ALTHAUS:  Mr. President, I'm sorry I must begin by
taking issue with something you said.  You expressed regret at not
being with us.  I say you are with us.  Your policy initiatives are
here, your Cabinet is here, your heart is here. I say you are with
us, and I say thank you.  (Applause.)

         I want to take this opportunity and I want to call upon
our friend, Mayor David Dinkins, for a comment, Mr. President.

         Q      Mr. President, thank you very much.  As you well
know, nearly all federal dollars flow through the states and then
eventually the money trickles down to cities.  It is clear to many
mayors that for several federal programs, including the Intermodal
Service Transportation Efficiency Act of '91 -- or ISTEA, as we all
know it -- and the federal criminal justice program, the dollars do
not necessarily reach the intended priority projects in our cities.

         State projects usually receive special consideration,
while city priority projects are shunted aside.  Mr. President, let
me assure you that this is not simply an issue of who controls
federal funds.  It is much larger than that.  It is an issue of great
significance to many of us, because it determines whether city
priorities are adequately addressed.

         I would urge you, sir, and your Cabinet secretaries to
seek direct funding solutions for city problems.  We're only capable
of solving some of our problems and our priorities with federal
dollars if we receive the money directly.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, let me say a word of
greeting to Secretary Brown -- I see him sitting next to you.  I
understand five of my Cabinet secretaries have been there and I can't
find anybody on the phone here in Washington.  I hope nothing bad
happens while the Mayors Conference is going on.  (Laughter.)

         I wanted to say just a word about that.  As you know,
that's a matter that's been debated for years among the mayors, the
governors, and the Congress.  We are in the process right now,
through the Vice President's Task Force on Reinventing Government, of
reexamining the way the federal government relates to the cities and
the states.

         And if I might make a specific suggestion, I think it
would be very helpful if you, or Mayor Abramson, if that's the
appropriate person to do it, would designate a group of mayors to
make a very specific proposal to our task force because -- and
obviously, we'll have to invite people who might disagree to do the
same thing -- but I think it's very important that we examine this
because one of the things that I'm concerned about is the colossal
amount of money we waste every year trying to micro-manage these
grants, trying to have extra layers of regulation.  And I think that
a lot of these things need to be reexamined.

         So I think the proper forum for us to do that in is this
one.  And it's on a very fast track because the report is due in
September, so it's not anything we're going to dilly-dally around
about.  And I would like you to make a proposal to our commission.
(Applause.)

         Q      With the Commission and assent of our President, I
would be delighted to do that.  I can demonstrate with respect to
ISTEA, for instance, that in excess of $300 million flowed to the
state and we got $4.3 million.

         Q      I'm very glad you're able to join us.  And I might
just mention I was a strong supporter of your stimulus package, and I
caught quite a lot of flack about that from other Republicans.  One
of the reasons that I supported the package was -- and one of the
things I pointed out to people was that as the federal government
requires us to do things through mandates, I thought it was
appropriate for us to seek the money to pay for those things.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Absolutely.

         Q      Yesterday the conference passed a strong resolution
calling for the President and Congress to pass legislation to end the
practice of unfunded federal mandates.  Senator Dirk Kempthorne, who
is the former mayor of Boise, was here with us and indicated that he
had introduced legislation that states very simply that if Congress
gives a federal mandate, then Congress should also give us the money
to pay for that mandate.  Now, this is a bipartisan issue; it's one
that affects city government, county government, state government,
too.  And we'd like to know what your position is with regard to
unfunded mandates, and whether you're willing to join us in
supporting Dirk Kempthorne's bill.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I haven't reviewed the bill, Paul,
but I certainly think that we shouldn't have unfunded mandates.  I
spoke out against them as a governor.  I told the mayors that I would
be opposed to adding to your burdens.  I don't believe in that.  And
I do want to -- I'll be glad -- I'll review the bill and see whether
or not we should support the bill, too.  But I have told our
administration clearly that I don't want us up there on the Hill
supporting bills to load up a bunch of new burdens on the mayors and
the governors when they're broke, when we're not increasing funding
to the states and the cities as we should.  And I've sent a very
clear signal on it.  And I will review the legislation.

         I also want to thank you and Bill Althaus and many other
Republican mayors for supporting the jobs stimulus program.  And let
me say that, I think after we pass this budget, we'll be able,
together, in a very bipartisan fashion, to try to make the argument
that was made there again, which is that there is a difference
between investment and consumption spending; and that while the
federal government may be spending too much on regulation, on the
programs of the past and on uncontrolled health care costs, we are
actually not anywhere nearly where we need to be in targeted
investments that create jobs and opportunities not only in the public
sector but in the private sector.

         And the mayors were very, very helpful in that regard.
I'll never forget what you did.  And I don't want you to think that
the battle that you waged more ferociously than any other single
group in the United States -- you did more to try to help that
package -- and I don't want you to think that the battle you waged
was for nothing, because the battle you waged was about an idea that
we're still going to have to fight to get back into our national
consciousness.  Not all federal spending is the same; not all taxes
are the same.  We have to learn to make very rigorous distinctions if
we want to grow this economy.

         And so I do want to thank you for that.  And I will
review the Kempthorne legislation.  Thank you.

         Q      Mr. President, I don't know that we've ever been
called ferocious before, but we appreciate it.  (Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  I can't believe you were never called
ferocious.

         Q      Mr. President, good morning.  We very much
appreciate your support and what you are able to put forward for job
creation, infrastructure, enhancement, Head Start, immunization, and
all that was contained in the stimulus package as well as the
empowerment zones, which mean so much to our home towns.

         The issue that has percolated through this meeting over
the last couple of days is defense conversion.  We've talked a lot
about the conversion that we look forward to happening in America
from a military-based economy to a domestic-based economy, which
you've talked about often.

         The concern was that as we attempt to transfer
technology, as we attempt to move research and development into the
weapons of the future, which will be products and quality of
products, that you've got the Defense Department entrenched with
almost 40 percent of all our research funds still left in the Defense
Department.  You've got defense interested in this transformation and
conversion; you've got the Commerce    Department and my friend,
Secretary Brown, interested; you've got the Labor Department
interested.  And we want to make sure that we can help and support in
the effort -- and, of course, you've got the National Economic
Council.  But we want to make sure there's a focus and there's a game
plan that we can support your efforts.  And I wondered if you could
share that with us.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Secretary Brown can discuss this in
greater detail, but let me say that we have spent a lot of time
through the National Economic Council, with all the departments that
you mentioned, trying to make sure that we have a coordinated
conversion plan.

         Some of the work has to be done in the Defense
Department.  We are shifting more research and development into other
areas.  We are doing what we can to make sure that the work that is
done in Commerce and Energy -- Energy has the national labs as you
know, and the Labor Department that all these things are coordinated
and that you will be able to work with the National Economic Council
or with any Cabinet secretary and still have the benefits of all of
us working together.  We really tried to minimize the turf battles
here.

         I also asked for quite a large increase in defense
conversion funds over the next five years, although I don't think
it's as much as we need and I think we'll be asking for more as we go
along.  And I want to emphasize basically three things because this
is not an easy issue.  I've done a lot of work on this myself as a
governor.  We have to be prepared to retrain workers who can't keep
the jobs they have.  We have to be prepared to invest in companies to
help them find dual-use technologies in the hope that those companies
can keep as many workers as possible and can find new products and
services they can provide.  We also have to be prepared to invest
directly in communities that will have to develop all new economic
strategies.  There are communities which basically don't have a
diverse economic base today, where if they lose a base, for example,
instead of a plant, that may have great difficulty in redesigning an
economic strategy, even though they may have the resource of the base
right there that they can use.

         So my view is that we can't -- there is no silver bullet
here.  You have to work on the workers, the companies and the
communities.  And we've got to keep working on this.  I will say
this:  I think there is a lot of sympathy and understanding of these
problems in the Congress.  And I think that the mayors will be able
to have some significant successes in the years ahead.  If we can go
on and pass this economic program, lock down our determination to
bring the deficit down and keep these interest rates down, then I
think we'll be able to come back to the Congress on conversion issues
and do quite well.

         MAYOR ALTHAUS:  Mr. President, a final comment from
another old friend, Mayor Juanita Crabb of Binghamton.

         Q      Good morning, Mr. President.  It means a great for
you to be talking with us this morning, especially because mayors of
this country and your administration are so close in policy and
programs.  As a matter of fact, I think it was barely a week after
the election that we endorsed your Putting People First program.

         Part of that program called for a 100,000 new police
officers for the streets of our city.  And as a matter of fact, one
of the running themes through this conference has been the issue of
safety for all of our people.  We are very much into community
policing and implementing and promoting those programs.  But it would
be very important for us to meet with you and also the police chiefs
to implement your new proposal.  And I would very much like to ask
for that meeting.

         THE PRESIDENT:  I think that's a good idea, Mayor Crabb.
I think the goal can be achieved, but it's important that we achieve
it in a way that you feel is maximizing your ability to do a good
job, and that we do it in a way that achieves the ultimate objective,
which is safer streets and more robust and hopeful communities.  So
I'd like to have the meeting with you and, obviously, representatives
of the police chiefs.

         There are three or four different avenues that we can
pursue that we can get to our ultimate goal of having 100,000 more
police officers.  And we really need to talk about what's best for
you, what works best, how you can get folks with the maximum
flexibility to pursue community policing strategies.  I'm very
interested in this.  This is something that the Attorney General and
I have had several conversations about already, and there are a lot
of people in the White House itself working hard on this.  I think we
ought to get our group together and meet with your group and just
talk it out and we can develop a coordinated four-year plan to get
the job done.  I'm anxious to do it.  It's one thing we can do that
will literally change the lives of most Americans who live in the
communities affected by it.  And we need to continue to work on it
until we get the job done.  (Applause.)

         MAYOR ALTHAUS:  Mr. President, we thank you so very much
for taking your time for being with us.  We appreciate not only your
presentation, but your focused response to the questions that have
been asked.  And we are there with you shoulder to shoulder, as we
have been in the past.  You can count on us.  We'll be counting on
you, and hopefully, together we can make a brighter future for our
cities.  Thank you.

         THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Mayor.  Good-bye.

                          END11:16 A.M. EDT