remarks to the democratic leadership council december 3… · remarks to the democratic leadership...

2094

Dec. 3 / Administration of William J. Clinton, 1993

Remarks to the Democratic Leadership CouncilDecember 3, 1993

Thank you very much. Thank you very much,Senator Breaux, and ladies and gentlemen, thankyou for that warm welcome. It’s wonderful tobe back here. I want to thank John Breaux forhis leadership of the DLC, his constancy, andhis friendship and support to me in this lastchallenging year. I want to congratulate DaveMcCurdy, who has been one of our most faithfulmembers for a long time, on his upcoming lead-ership of the DLC.

I want to say how wonderful it is for meto see so many of you, my friends from allacross America here, particularly some of myfriends from New Hampshire I see in the audi-ence. Hillary spent yesterday in New Hampshireand came home gloating that she had beenthere and I hadn’t. Thank you very much.

What’s Bruno doing over here? Are you segre-gating him?

I have given a lot of thought to what I oughtto say here today. It was 8 or 9 years ago nowthat—well, almost 9 years ago—after the Demo-crats had lost yet another Presidential election,that a group of Democrats gathered to try tosharply define what we stood for and wherewe wanted our party to go. It was clear thatwe needed an infusion of new ideas and newenergy, a new direction and reinvigoration intothe party that most of us belong to by heritage,instinct, and conviction.

My wife used to tell me—I repeated oftenon the campaign trail—that insanity was doingthe same thing over and over again and expect-ing a different result. But we decided we wouldtry some new things and see if we couldproduce some different results, because weknew that our country needed a new direction.After all, in the previous 12 years we had seenthe quadrupling of the deficit, the stagnationof wages, profound economic and social prob-lems in this country going unaddressed, andmiddle class Americans continuing to stay withour opponents in the other party largely becausethey felt we could not be trusted to promotetheir economic interests or their values and ourpolicies here at home, to promote our nationalinterests abroad or to give them a Governmentthat gave them honest value for the hard-earneddollars they put into it in taxes.

In the Democratic Leadership Council we al-ways understood that for our politics and ourpolicies to move this Nation, we had to expressthe basic values of mainstream America and pro-mote those economic interests. The heart andsoul of the American experiment has alwaysbeen a personally secure and growing middleclass, challenged to achieve new opportunities,challenged to be part of a larger community,challenged ever more to assume the new re-sponsibilities of each new age.

The American dream that we were all raisedon is a simple but powerful one: If you workhard and play by the rules, you should be givena chance to go as far as your God-given abilitywill take you. Throughout our history our partyhas been the fulcrum that allowed working peo-ple to lift themselves up into the middle class.And we know that if we’re to be true to ourhistoric mission we must be the party of thevalues and the interests of the middle class and,more importantly, the values and the interestsof those who want to become part of the grow-ing middle class and the American dream. Wemust fight their fight. We must give voice totheir concerns. We must give them the chanceto build security while embracing change. Andabove all, we must honor those basic valuesof opportunity, responsibility, and community,of work and family and faith. This is what itmeans, in my view, to be a new Democrat.I was proud to campaign as one, I’m proudto govern as one.

Because we are Democrats we believe in ourparty’s historic values of opportunity, social jus-tice, and an unshakable commitment to the in-terests of working men and women and theirchildren. Because we are new Democrats wepromote those old values in new ways. We be-lieve in expanding opportunity, not Government.We believe in empowerment, not entitlement.We believe in leading the world, not retreatingfrom it. We believe that the line between do-mestic and foreign policy is becoming increas-ingly blurred as the interests and the futureof every American and every city and hamletin this country is increasingly caught up withevents that happen beyond our borders. Andmost of all, we believe in individual responsibil-

VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:07 Oct 23, 2000 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00798 Fmt 1240 Sfmt 1240 C:\93PAP2\PAP_TEXT txed01 PsN: txed01

2095

Administration of William J. Clinton, 1993 / Dec. 3

ity and mutual obligation, that Government mustoffer opportunity to all and expect somethingfrom all, and that whether we like it or not,we are all in this battle for the future together.

With that vision and those values, I believethat these ideas are beginning to change ourNation. When I was preparing this speech lastnight, I came across a talk I gave back in Marchof 1990 when I became the chairman of theDLC, and I found a few words I wanted torepeat today.

I said that everyone hopes that the 1990’swill see a political renaissance for the NationalDemocratic Party. Every one of us knows wecan’t realize all our goals until we elect a Demo-cratic President, but I believe that in the endany resurgence for the Democrats depends uponthe intellectual resurgence of our party. That’sanother way of saying that ideas matter.

If you look at the elections in the last severalmonths, it seems to me the real message ofthem has been lost in the argument about partylabels, and we don’t win 100 percent of them.People say, ‘‘Well, they should have won theones they won. What about the ones they lost?’’Look what the message was in Dennis Archer’svictory in Detroit—one of our strong DLCmembers who will be here later—or in myfriend Bob Lanier’s 91 percent victory in Hous-ton. He said, ‘‘Elect me. I will stop spendingmoney on this, and I will instead spend moneyon police, and I will deploy them properly andthe crime rate will go down.’’ And sure enough,it did, and 91 percent of the people reelectedhim. Look at the common threads that runthrough all these elections and you will see theideas that we have been working to espousein the Democratic Leadership Council for yearsand years.

I believe that we have achieved a victory ofnew ideas. I come here to say more than any-thing else, however, that when you produce poli-cies that embody these values of opportunityand responsibility and community in a demo-cratic society—small d—that elects people toCongress and that requires the President towork with the Congress, that requires the ac-commodation of various interests all across thecountry in the private sector and requires a part-nership with people at the State and local level,having the best ideas in the world does notfree you of the obligation to make difficult deci-sions.

I further come here to say that we don’t wantto be in the position that some of our prede-

cessors were in the other party where they werewilling, from time to time, to exalt political rhet-oric over reality and where they were willing,from time to time, to let the perfect becomethe enemy of the good.

Our obligation is to do good things to movethis country forward that embody our ideas andour philosophies. That does not relieve us ofthe obligation to make the hard decisions. Itimposes that obligation on us, and that is whatwe are trying to do.

As we approach the end of the year it istime to take stock of how far we have come,and I want to start, again, by paying my debtsto this organization. Seven Cabinet members ofthis administration were DLC members—seven.

My Chief of Staff, Mack McLarty, who camewith me today, was an early and strong sup-porter of the DLC. We have Elaine Kamarckwho was one of yours who did such a brilliantjob on our reinventing Government program.And Bruce Reed and Bill Galston are the intel-lectual firepower behind what we’re doing inwelfare reform and crime and family preserva-tion. Jeremy Rosner wrote the wonderful wordsthat I was privileged to speak at the MiddleEast peace signing, one of the best speechesI have had the opportunity to give as the Presi-dent. I know it was a pretty good subject, butI had a pretty good speech writer, too, thanksto his growth, and I think you had a lot todo with that. There are so many others, DougRoss, Jim Blanchard, and others, who are activein the DLC, who are now part of our adminis-tration.

I also want to thank those who are here todayfrom my administration to talk about nationalservice, welfare reform, and other things, includ-ing Donna Shalala and Eli Segal and Roger Alt-man. Let’s look at what we’ve done together.And let me begin by again thanking the DLCmembers and the Congress, many of whom arehere behind me, and without whom none ofthis would have happened.

The first thing we did was to move beyondthe failed economic policies of the past, beyondtax-and-spend and beyond trickle-down. Oureconomic plan is imbued with ideas the DLChas been advocating for years. We had the larg-est deficit reduction plan in history, fueled inpart by more than 350 specific spending cutsthat I have now signed entirely into law. AndI want to remove some of the veil of rhetoric


2096


about that. I’m not talking about smaller in-creases than were in the last Bush budget. I’mtalking about 350 accounts in the Federal budg-et where we are spending less money this yearthan we did last year. Real spending cuts.

We did ask the wealthiest Americans to paytheir fair share, and overwhelmingly, most ofthem told me as I was campaigning around thecountry, ‘‘I will do that if you’ll bring the deficitdown and give me value for money in whatyou spend the money on.’’ This was not a ques-tion of class warfare; it was a question of funda-mental fairness trying to reverse the situationin which the middle class found itself for thelast 12 years of paying higher taxes on lowerincome.

In addition to that, for working families withless than $180,000 a year in income, there willbe no tax increase. Let me read you from areview of the new tax law written by theKiplinger personal finance magazine, hardly anarm of the Democratic Party. I quote fromKiplinger—where were these people when Ineeded them, when we were debating this inCongress? I quote, ‘‘About 110 million Ameri-cans will file individual tax returns next spring.On 108 million of them taxes will take a smallerbite than they did this year.’’ That’s right, small-er. The fact is, Kiplinger says, ‘‘More than 98percent of us are not affected by the higherincome tax rates which reach back to the firstof the year. Our tax bills will go down a biton the same income because taxes are indexedfor inflation.’’ If you are part of the forgottenmiddle class, don’t forget that.

In addition, in this economic plan there areprogrowth DLC ideas, investment incentives.Small business expensing is dramatically in-creased so that 90 percent of the small busi-nesses in this country, because of the increasein the expensing, will pay lower Federal incometaxes this year than they did last year, 90 per-cent. There is a venture capital gains tax herefor small businesses and new businesses wherethe investment is held for 5 years or longer,tax rate cut by 50 percent. There are expansionsin the resource and development tax credit andother things designed specifically to spur hightechnology growth in areas where we need itand where we have great opportunities movingtoward the 21st century.

There are pro-work, pro-family welfare reformideas in this economic plan, including theearned-income tax credit, about which I will

speak more later, I think the most significantpro-work, pro-family economic reform we haveenacted in 20 years. There are reinventing Gov-ernment DLC ideas in this economic plan, in-cluding a major overhaul of the college loanprogram in which we save billions in administra-tive costs and put it into providing lower interestloans to college students who can pay them backon easier terms as a percentage of their income.But we toughen the collection terms so we makesure they can’t beat the bill. These things wereall in that economic plan, and because of that,what really matters is the result.

And let me say here, a cautionary note, thiscountry is dealing with structural economic chal-lenges of 20-year duration. We are dealing withsocial challenges that have been building for 30years. We are reversing economic policies thatwere in place for 12 years. We will not beable to turn this around overnight. The averageAmerican has not yet felt a significant changein his or her economic circumstances. But lookat the direction we are going in. We have his-torically low interest rates. Inflation is down tovery low levels, 20-year low levels. Investmentis up. Housing sales last month were at a 14-year high. The unemployment rate drop thismonth was the best drop in 10 years.

We’ve had 1.6-plus million new jobs comeinto this economy since January. The privatesector jobs since January are about 50 percentmore, almost 50 percent more than were createdby the private sector in the previous 4 years.One of the ironies is that under this administra-tion for the next 4 years, Government jobs won’tgrow as much as they did in the past 4 years.The private sector jobs will grow more.

Now we have a long way to go. We stillare dealing with stagnant incomes. We are stilldealing with the fact that more and more peoplewho lost their jobs lose them permanently andhave to find new and different jobs. And thatimposes new obligations on us. But we haveunemployment down, investment up, no infla-tion, and low interest rates. We are moving inthe right direction.

The decision to go after the deficit and todo it in a progressive, fair way with new ideaswas the right decision. And the rhetoric is nowbeing wiped away by the reality. The Kiplingerreport will be found now by ordinary peoplewhen they get their tax forms in April. Anda lot of the blows that this administration andthis party suffered unfairly and wrongly in the


2097


last year happened because people put outbogus rhetoric that could not be overcome bythe reality. Now when you see the Kiplingerreport and the tax forms come out, and peopledon’t pay more taxes, they pay less and we’vegot low inflation, high investment, more jobs,and lower unemployment, the truth will out justlike it always does.

Again I will say, all the good ideas in theworld does not relieve you of the obligationto make the hard decisions and to do it ina way that permits us to go forward. That is,somebody has to decide, and we have to move,and we have to act, and it all has to countup to a majority so you can go forward. That’swhat democracies do.

But it won’t be enough. This on its own termswill not be enough to expand incomes and cre-ate jobs sufficient to restore the interest of mid-dle class America. Why? Because you have tohave a growing economy in a global context.With productivity going up, a lot of big compa-nies are downsizing. They are going to becomemore profitable. But what does productivity in-crease mean? It means the same person canproduce more, right? Sometimes it means fewerpeople can produce more. We’ve had utterlyastonishing growth in productivity in the manu-facturing section in America, now coming intothe service sector and into the Government sec-tor, as we use more and more new technology.What does that mean? That means fewer peopledo more work. That means higher unemploy-ment, and since you got all these unemployedpeople out here, it means pressure to keepwages down.

So if you want incomes to go up and jobsto increase, what must you do? You must havemore customers. There have to be more cus-tomers for America’s goods and services. Thereis no other way to increase incomes and to in-crease jobs in this country.

That is why we have pursued another course,long advocated by the DLC, trying to broadenthe opportunity for Americans to sell their goodsand services. That is why last summer I metwith the G–7 and got those countries to agreeto expanding market access for manufacturingproducts. That is why I have started trying tobuild a new and very different relationship withJapan. It is simply unsustainable over the longrun for these two great economies to have thekind of imbalance in our economic relationshipthat we have. That is why I fought so hard

along with the DLC for the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement. And that is why ourTrade Ambassador, Mickey Kantor, has hardlyslept for the last 48 hours as we try to workout an agreement with Europe that’s good forus and good for them on the GATT rounds,so that we can try to get a new worldwidetrade agreement by the end of the year.

I want to say a special word of thanks toall of you who were involved in the NAFTAstruggle. It was not an easy one. The Speakerof the House called it a Lazarus project: It cameback from the dead. But I particularly appre-ciate the courageous stance taken by those whohad to disagree with their friends honestly andopenly because none of us could figure out howto grow this economy and grow more jobs unlesswe have more customers in an environment inwhich the global economy is growing. That’s whyI went out to meet with the APEC ministers.

Someday the whole story of this great strugglewill be known, but I do want to say I am verygrateful to the people in the Congress who didthe work, and to Mr. McLarty who kept inclose touch with the President’s office in Mex-ico, and to all the people on my staff and allthe people who have made this happen, peoplelike my good friend Steny Hoyer, who reallystuck his neck out on this and took a big riskfor it.

It is a simple, elemental principle that wemust grow the global economy if a rich country,whether it’s America, Japan, or the EuropeanCommunity, is going to be able to maintainhigher incomes and more jobs.

Now, the second thing we’ve got to do isto enable people to succeed in this economy.In other words, we have to enable people inAmerica—if we have good economic policiesand if we can get global economic growth, wehave to enable more Americans to succeed. Itmust be possible in our country, in other words,to be a successful worker and a successful par-ent, since most workers are parents and mostparents have to work. That’s why I supportedand signed the Family and Medical Leave Act,something you would support. That’s why Ifought so hard in the economic plan for theearned-income tax credit.

That phrase is totally Greek to most people.They don’t understand it. But what it meansis that on April 15th between 15 and 16 millionworking families in this country, representingover 40 million American citizens who worked


2098


this year for incomes of $23,000 a year or less—going up to $26,000 in a couple of years—willget an income tax reduction. Why? Becauseeven though they work 40 hours a week andthey have children in the home, they are at,just below, or just hovering above the Federalpoverty line. This is the most important thingwe can do in welfare reform, to make a simplestatement that if you have kids and you work40 hours a week, you will not be in poverty;we will reward your work. The tax system willkeep you out of poverty.

It was a very, very difficult thing to do be-cause it costs money, and it complicated thepolitics of passing the budget. But it was theright thing to do because unless we can rewardwork and family at the same time, we are notgoing to get where we need to go. And it mat-ters. We cannot ask the American people tobe in the position every year—and for manyof them, every week and every day—of choosingbetween being a good parent and a good work-er. You have to be able to succeed at bothin the world in which we are living. And Ithink it was terribly important.

The next thing I want to say is we’ve gotto train a whole generation to think about workin a different way, and we have to reorganizeour systems. We literally have to reinvent oursystems for dealing with how people deal withwork, the loss of it, and the acquisition of newjobs. There are lots of things involved in that,but one of them plainly is opening the doorsof college education to all Americans. I men-tioned earlier that we have reformed the studentloan law. We also passed one of the DLC’smost cherished ideas, the national service act,into law, thanks to, literally, the parenting workof Eli Segal in developing the legislation, gettingit through, setting up the organization, andmaintaining the confidence of large numbers ofRepublicans as well as Democrats in the UnitedStates Congress.

And I know he’s going to talk about thatin a moment, but 3 years from now, 100,000young people will be able to earn some moneyfor further education while rebuilding their com-munities from the grassroots up. This idea hasthe potential to totally reshape the way Ameri-cans think about their country and to bring adramatic change in this country on a wholerange of social problems from the grassroots up.And Senator Nunn and Congressman McCurdyand any number of other people in the DLC

were out there pounding on this idea for yearsand years and years. And I thank you for that,and I hope you are proud of the fact that itis a law of the land.

The last thing I want to say about what we’vetried to do already is that we recognized inthis organization a long time ago that if peopledidn’t feel a certain level of basic security, itwas very difficult for them to make the changeswe need to make. If you want to challenge peo-ple to seize opportunities and to assume moreresponsibility, if you want people to be ableto live with, basically, the chaotic nature of theworld in which we find ourselves—a very excit-ing world if you can figure out how to winin it—there has to be some sense that the basicfabric of society is being maintained, that thereis some order, some security, some disciplinewhich we need to observe.

That is why this crime and violence issue isso important: huge increases in violent crimein many communities in this country; police atan increasingly disadvantageous position—nowover three violent crimes for every police officerin the country, where it used to be the reverse,three police officers for every crime just 30years ago; and all the stories you know aboutchildren killing children, or young teenagersbeing better armed than police officers.

We know there are some things that work.We know—the DLC does, we’ve been advo-cating this for years—that community policingworks. Mayor Lanier in Houston just provedit in the ultimate way, by getting over 90 per-cent of the vote. I was trying to think of whoelse could get 90 percent of the vote for any-thing. It tells you how passionately people careabout this public safety issue.

We are trying our best in these difficult budg-et times to get a crime bill out that will produce100,000 new police officers. But they must beproperly trained and properly deployed. Thatis a challenge for you in the DLC; it is a chal-lenge for us as Americans to make sure notonly that we pass a bill in Congress that providesthe police officers but that when they get downto whatever town or city they’re in, that theyare properly trained and properly deployed.Community policing works. You can lowercrime, not just by catching more criminals butbecause it actually helps to prevent crime fromoccurring in the first place. It really matters.

There are some other things we ought to doin that crime bill, too, and I’ll just mention


2099


two. We need to provide alternative punish-ments for youthful offenders so that we canuse the prison space we have to keep peoplewho shouldn’t get out for as long as they shouldstay in. The boot camp proposals are in thiscrime bill, another DLC idea that we have advo-cated for years and years, something that I triedto do at home when I was a Governor. Andit’s an important part of the bill.

There are two other things in the bill. SenatorKohl, from Wisconsin, has put an amendmentin to ban the ownership of handguns by youngpeople under 18 and to limit access to themto properly controlled circumstances by minors.And it passed overwhelmingly.

Then there was an amendment by SenatorFeinstein to ban several assault weapons andto specify a number of hunting weapons thatcannot be restricted at all because they’re hunt-ing rifles and they are things that people usefor sporting purposes. I think it is a good, bal-anced amendment, and I hope it will be inthe final provision of the crime bill.

Lastly, let me say that I was elated earlierthis week, on Tuesday, to sign the Brady billinto law, and I thank the DLC for its long-standing support of the Brady bill.

I also want to say that it is perfectly clearto me that one of the biggest problems we faceas Democrats is that we know that the Govern-ment has a role to play in dealing with a lotof these problems. But we also know that inAmerica there is a historic distrust of Govern-ment that is healthy. And in the more recentyears that distrust has risen to record levelswhich is not healthy, and we have to do some-thing about it. But the only way we can doanything about it is by giving people better valuefor their Government. And I want to really saya special word of thanks for the work that DavidOsborne and Elaine Kamarck have done in help-ing the Vice President on this reinventing Gov-ernment project.

I want you to know that this is not just areport. The report recommends that we do whatmost companies have been doing for years toeliminate unnecessary layers of management andempower front-line workers to become more re-sponsive to customers to constantly improve ourservices. We are moving to implement that re-port. The House voted right before they leftto implement our recommendation to reduceby 252,000 by attrition, not by laying peopleoff, the Federal work force over a 5-year period.

The Senate voted to pay for the crime bill bydoing that. But both have agreed that we oughtto do it.

The question now is whether we will be giventhe tools to do it in a humane and responsibleway, in a way that is good for the Federal em-ployees, good for the Federal work force, goodfor the taxpayers of the country. But it is avery important thing. We can only make thisGovernment work if we have the tools to doit. We have, for example, clear evidence thatthe Pentagon can meet a lot more of our na-tional security needs if we have procurementreform, that we are still wasting billions of dol-lars in the way we buy things.

When I was in Alameda the other day onthe U.S. carrier Carl Vincent having lunch withsome career Navy personnel, an enlisted manwith 19 years of service told me that he hadjust—because he was on a ship he had accessto emergency procurement, sort of an escapehatch from the procurement clause—he said,‘‘I went down to a computer store and I boughta personal computer for this ship for somethingwe needed that cost one-half as much and hadtwice the capacity of the computer required tobe bought in the procurement regulations ofthe Federal Government.’’ That is still goingon.

We have a procurement reform bill pendingin the Congress. If we are going to do whatyou want us to do on reinventing Governmentwe have got to be given the legal authority tomanage this Government with the same sortof flexibility and common sense that people inthe private sector have.

And you know, I’ve got my longtime friendand former colleague and your former chairman,Chuck Robb, behind me. I mean, he’s beenpreaching this stuff for years, and when he wasa Governor, he worked on it. And I can justtell you that there are things we can do tosave billions of dollars and still increase invest-ment where we need it, but we have to begiven the tools to do it.

So I ask the DLC to urge the Congress topass the structural reforms we need to havethe kind of budgeting, procurement, and per-sonnel practices that will permit us to savemoney and increase investment in our futureat the same time.

Now, next year we have a lot of challengesahead of us: health care, welfare reform, re-doing the system of education and job training


2100


and unemployment, to mention the three big-gest, perhaps. And I would like to say just aword about each of them in terms of the ideasof the DLC.

First, we have to provide our workers andbusinesses the security they need to know thatthey will not be bankrupted by an illness orparalyzed by the constant fear of the loss ofcoverage. Almost nobody in America today reallyknows for sure that they will never lose theirhealth care coverage—for sure, no matter whathappens to them or what happens to their busi-ness.

I want you to know what this budget reallylooks like, and the only reason the deficit isa continuing problem. I wish I had a graphhere. If I had a graph here and this were zeroon spending—this is zero, zero increases. Hereis where defense is going, down; domesticspending, flat. That means every time we putmore money into Head Start we have cut thatmuch money somewhere else. Interest on thedebt is going up some because even thoughinterest rates are low, the corpus of the debtis getting bigger. Then our revenues are goingup like this, about 8 percent next year, retire-ment going up because of the cost-of-living thateverybody gets who is on Social Security or anykind of retirement. But the big numbers areMedicare, 11 percent, one year. This is at 31⁄2percent inflation max, right? One percentgrowth in the Medicare rolls, 2 percent growthin the Medicaid rolls. Medicare going up 11percent, Medicaid going up 16 percent. Thatis it. At a time when the most conservative Re-publicans in the Congress would say we shouldbe spending more on new high-technology ven-tures and in defense conversion and in tryingto help us adjust from a defense to a domesticeconomy, that’s what we’re spending our moneyon.

And I talked to executive after executive fac-ing the same thing. But there is good news.The Federal health insurance program, whichis big and has bargaining power, has actuallyhad many of its policies lower this year thanthey were last year. The State of California,which is in terrible financial shape—so every-body knows they don’t have a lot of moneyand which has huge bargaining power—has ne-gotiated a cost increase in its premiums lessthan the rate of inflation.

So what do we have to do with health care?Again, to avoid the stale debate of right and

left—one side says, well, the present system isjust going to cure itself, and another is sayingthat the Government ought to take it over andoperate it—what can we do?

If you go back to what you wrote in ‘‘Mandatefor Change’’—when Jeremy Rosner was back indomestic policy instead of foreign policy—yousay we should be able to change the rules ofthe private health care market to produce uni-versal coverage and lower cost, better qualitycare. I agree with that.

We have to offer the American people a newchoice, that is, guaranteed private insurance. Ithink there have to be two changes in the exist-ing system. First of all, you have to providehealth insurance that you can never lose, wheth-er you are in or out of work, and no matterwhat kind of job you are in, because a lot ofpeople are going to go from big companies thathave big benefits to smaller companies in theinevitable restructuring of the economy.

And you have to give greater consumerpower, market power, to small businesses andto self-employed people. And in order to doit you have to go to a broad-based communityrating scheme, in my judgment, so that thereis no disincentive for little companies to hirepeople who have had somebody in their familywho has been sick, who has had a preexistingcondition.

Now, every other country in the world withwhich we compete, including those that aredoing quite well, has figured out how to dothis. We’re the only people who haven’t figuredout how to do it. I just refuse to believe thatwe can’t figure out how to give health caresecurity to everybody in this country and to giveequal bargaining power, market power, in themarketplace to small businesses and self-em-ployed people. I just refuse to believe that. Ithink we can.

We can disagree about a lot of things, butI think everybody would admit we ought to havea system in which there is a good comprehensivebenefit package, including primary and preven-tive care that is given to every family, and thatpeople have to assume some personal responsi-bility for it and ought to be prepared to paysomething for it, but that we ought to do that.

If we don’t, you’re going to continue to seeyour Federal Government faced with insolvency.We’re going to continue to have to cut all ofour spending from domestic investments, manyof which 80 percent of the people in this room


2101


think we ought to be making. We’re going tocontinue to see massive cost shifting from theGovernment to the private sector and withinthe private sector from some companies to oth-ers, and often the companies with the most gen-erous health care benefits are the ones that arethe most vulnerable in global competition.

This is a nutty system, and we have to fixit. And we have to fix it without messing upwhat is wonderful about it, the quality of care,the availability of emerging technologies. Thethings that people do today in this health caresystem that are very good—we can fix what’swrong without messing that up. And there area lot of options we can pursue to get there,but I would just urge you to stick with whatwas in the ‘‘Mandate for Change.’’ Do not giveup on universal coverage. And do not give upon the proposition that there has to be a com-petitive capacity for all, all employers, includingsmall businesses and the self-employed. If youwill stay with that, then we can reach an agree-ment next year which will be the most historicdomestic achievement for this country in a gen-eration. And we have to do that.

With regard to welfare reform, let me justsay very briefly—I want to say again how muchI appreciate the work that Bruce Reed has done,the work that Bill Galston has done. We aremoving toward making welfare a second chance,not a way of life. We have made this debatean interesting one in which there is now a Re-publican counterproposal. I don’t agree with allof it, but there are some very good ideas init. It really gives me the cause to believe thatwe might be able to make a bipartisan coalitionhere with a big majority, to try to give peoplewho are trapped in poverty and unemployablein present circumstances a chance to be success-ful parents and successful workers. And I amvery, very encouraged by that. I think you willbe too.

Finally, just let me say this. We have terribleproblems today in America because a lot of peo-ple who want to work are not employable orcan’t ever get a job where their wages will goup because they don’t have the skills. Let mejust mention two or three things that we aretrying to do.

The Secretary of Education, one of theformer DLC members, has his education reformbill which will pass early when the Congresscomes back, the Goals 2000 bill, that does whatwe’ve been advocating for years. It puts the

Federal Government—instead of trying tomicromanage the schools, we’re going to providethe schools with the money that the teachersand the principals need at the grassroots levelto figure out how to meet the national educationgoals. And we will measure schools by theirresults, not by overregulating their influence.And we will give them some standards by whichthey will be able to tell whether they are meas-uring up to global standards or not. And wewill focus more on trying to give them the toolsand the information they need to follow strate-gies that work.

I’m telling you, every problem in Americaneducation has been solved by somebody some-where, including people under the most adversecircumstances. What we need to do is to havethe Federal Government help to spread thatinstead of getting in the way. And we are chang-ing the whole approach to that, thanks to Sec-retary Riley and the support we have receivedall across the education community, from theNEA, from the AFT, from the administrators,from the school boards, from people who arereally committed to changing the nature of theFederal role in public education. There is alsoin this bill explicit provision for the kind ofreforms the DLC has advocated in terms ofsupporting local districts who want to have char-ter schools, who want to have public schoolchoice, who want to do the kinds of things thatmany districts have wanted to do where theFederal Government has essentially taken no po-sition in the past. That can be a part of thisreform.

The other thing that we are doing is to tryto work out with the Secretary of Educationand the Secretary of Labor a national systemof apprenticeships to move people from schoolto work who aren’t going to 4-year colleges.Everybody who doesn’t go to a 4-year collegeand get the degree at least needs 2 years offurther education and training. And our school-to-work program makes a good beginning onthat.

The final thing we’re trying to do is to dealwith the terrible problem of the unemploymentsystem. Today, if you are an employer and youpay the unemployment tax, you are paying fora system that is dysfunctional. You are basicallypaying for a lot of workers to draw a reducedincome until it’s obvious that the unemploymentruns out and they are not being called backto their old jobs. The unemployment system was


2102


developed in a time when people were calledback to their old jobs.

What we need to do is to develop an imme-diate system of reemployment so that theminute someone knows they are going to beunemployed, they are immediately eligible forretraining, for job placement, for the kind ofservices that will give people the chance to makea quick start back in life and to use that unem-ployment stream to get continuous retraining.I hope that we can get the employer commu-nity, the labor community together in this coun-try to do this. Secretary Reich’s most importantcontribution to this entire administration maybe changing people’s understanding of the waythe institution we have here has nothing to dowith the nature of unemployment for mostAmericans anymore. That is our big reinventingGovernment challenge for next year.

Now, let me say finally that the reports saythat this administration had the best year interms of congressional success of any in thelast 40 years. You heard Senator Breaux say—and I’ve called Senator Lieberman in the middleof the night enough to know—that the Congressworked 40 percent more this year, spent 40percent more hours on the job than last year,40 percent more. We made a difference. If wecan do health care, welfare reform and reformthe education and training system next year,we’ll make more of a difference. If we can keepgrowing this economy with stable, secure poli-cies, it will begin to be felt in the lives ofmiddle class Americans.

But I will end where I began. The Demo-cratic Party has got to be a grassroots party.It has got to reflect not only the economic inter-ests but the basic values of most American peo-ple. And there are a lot of things that we haveto do in this country that deal with crime andviolence and restoring the family and restoringcommunities that cannot be done, not now, notever, by the President and the Congress alone

that require private sector initiatives, that re-quire people at the State and local level to act.

The most important thing we ever said inthe DLC was that in the end there can beno successful opportunity without responsibility,and you can’t run a country unless everybodyrecognizes that we are in a community in whichwe have responsibilities to one another and inwhich we go up or down together. That wasthe most important thing we ever said.

So I ask you as you leave here, I hope youwill go home and talk about how the ideas thatyou have fought for are being brought to lifein this administration. But more important thanthat, I hope you will go home and rememberthat no matter who the President of the UnitedStates is, until the American people are pre-pared to take responsibility for their futures anduntil we are prepared to recognize again notjust in our rhetoric but in our lives that thisis one country and we have got to find a wayto make a strength out of our diversity, we havegot to stop wasting so many kids, we have gotto stop permitting the incredible level of socialdisintegration that we have permitted, we willnever become what we ought to.

And when we become the party that is thegrassroots, bottom-up, personal responsibility,community-oriented party committed not onlyto saying to the President and the Congress,‘‘This is what we want you to do for America,’’but to proclaiming every day, ‘‘Here is whatwe are doing for America,’’ we will not be wherewe all set out to go. I think we’re well onthe way.

Thank you very much, and God bless you.

NOTE: The President spoke at 10:31 a.m. at theSheraton Washington Hotel. In his remarks, hereferred to George Bruno, DLC New HampshireState chapter organizer, and David Osborne, con-sultant with the National Performance Review.

Exchange With ReportersDecember 3, 1993

Personal Security and Responsibility

Q. [Inaudible]—as far about what you meantby personal security when you talked about thattheme and also about values?

The President. Personal security means,among other things, that people who are out


remarks to the democratic leadership council december 3… · remarks to the democratic leadership...

Documents