pd05de94 Statement on Action in the House of Representatives on the General...

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Week Ending Friday, December 2, 1994
 
Remarks on Senate Action on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

December 1, 1994

    The President. Thank you very much. Let me begin by expressing my 
thanks to all those who are here and to some who are not, beginning with 
Senator Mitchell and Senator Dole. I thank them for their strong leader- 


[[Page 2451]]

ship in the remarkable vote in the Senate tonight. I also want to thank 
Senator Packwood, who is here, and Senator Moynihan, who is not, for 
their fine work. I thank Speaker Foley and Congressman Gibbons, 
Congressman Matsui. I'd also like to say a special word of thanks to 
Leader Michel and to Congressman Gingrich, who worked so hard on this. I 
thank Ambassador Kantor and Secretary Bentsen and Mr. Panetta, Mr. 
Rubin, and all of the others in the administration who worked so 
terribly hard to see this victory for America tonight, a bipartisan 
victory that really, really gives our country the boost we need to keep 
moving forward toward the 21st century to create more high-wage jobs for 
the American people.
    Many things have been said about the GATT in the last few days, and 
some of them not altogether favorable in some quarters. [Laughter] But I 
was especially struck by what Senator Barbara Mikulski said during this 
debate. She said, and I quote, ``I'm associated with the protectionist 
wing of the Democratic Party, but I'm going to go for GATT because I'm 
absolutely convinced that the old ways are not working, that the world 
is changing, that a new economy is about to be born.''
    She is absolutely right, and the American people know it. According 
to a new survey, for the first time ever, a majority of our fellow 
countrymen and women see trade as an opportunity, not a threat. For 
middle class Americans who work hard and play by the rules, more trade 
and fair trade means more and better high-wage jobs for themselves and 
for their children. It will help us to build good lives and to restore 
not only jobs but rising wages in America.
    Just like the historic vote on NAFTA a year ago, this vote for GATT 
shows once again that our country is moving in the right direction, 
reaching out to the rest of the world, and looking at the best interest 
of our own people. We're also going to be doing that again next week at 
the Summit of the Americas, pushing for open markets here and around the 
world but especially in our hemisphere.
    Let me close by saying that this vote was really a vote about the 
two greatest challenges we face, our role in the world and what we're 
doing for our own people. We said loud and clear that America will 
continue to lead the world to a more prosperous and secure place after 
the cold war. We also said loud and clear we're going to do what it 
takes to get our incomes growing and our jobs going in the right 
direction.
    I urge everyone here to continue to work to keep our country 
optimistic and hopeful and outward-looking, brave as we march into the 
future. Let's make the GATT vote the first vote of a new era of 
cooperation. America's best days are still ahead of us.
    I'd like now to ask Senator Mitchell to come up and make some 
remarks and thank him again and Senator Dole for their great cooperation 
and the stunning parity and depth of support among both Republicans and 
Democrats in the Senate tonight.

[At this point, Senator George Mitchell made brief remarks.]

    The President. Before I introduce Senator Dole, I want to make two 
other brief acknowledgements. First of all, I apologize for my failure 
to introduce Congressman David Dreier who did so much on the Republican 
side to help us pass this. Thank you very much. He and Congressman Kolbe 
were pivotal to our success in NAFTA last year, and I thank him for his 
leadership on GATT.
    The second thing I'd like to do is to say how much I think we all 
should express our appreciation to the teams who started work on GATT 
under Presidents Reagan and Bush, and I would like to thank them for 
their support of this agreement, as well as President Carter, and 
President Ford who was making phone calls right up until the vote today; 
I thank him especially for his efforts.
    And now I'd like to ask Senator Dole to come up here and explain to 
us how it really was democracy in action and everybody's free will that 
produced exactly 76 percent of the votes from both parties for this. 
[Laughter]

[At this point, Senator Bob Dole made brief remarks.]

    The President. That's great. Thank you. Thank you.
    I'd like to give the last word to Speaker Foley. Certainly, his last 
vote as the Speaker

[[Page 2452]]

was one of the most momentous of his illustrious career. We are very 
grateful for his leadership on so many things, but especially for his 
leadership on GATT.

Note: The President spoke at 7:54 p.m. at the South Portico at the White 
House.


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[Page 2452]
 
Monday, December 5, 1994
 
Volume 30--Number 48
Pages 2435-2457
 
Week Ending Friday, December 2, 1994
 
Memorandum on Drug Interdiction Assistance to the Government of Colombia

December 1, 1994

Presidential Determination No. 95-7

Memorandum for the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense

Subject: Resumption of U.S. Drug Interdiction Assistance to the

Government of Colombia

    Pursuant to the authority vested in me by section 1012 of the 
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995, Public Law 103-
337, I hereby determine with respect to Colombia that: (a) interdiction 
of aircraft reasonably suspected to be primarily engaged in illicit drug 
trafficking in that country's airspace is necessary because of the 
extraordinary threat posed by illicit drug trafficking to the national 
security of that country; and (b) that country has appropriate 
procedures in place to protect against innocent loss of life in the air 
and on the ground in connection with such interdiction, which shall at a 
minimum include effective means to identify and warn an aircraft before 
the use of force is directed against the aircraft.
    The Secretary of State is authorized and directed to publish this 
determination in the Federal Register.
                                            William J. Clinton

Note: This memorandum was released by the Office of the Press Secretary 
on December 2.


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[Page 2452-2456]
 
Monday, December 5, 1994
 
Volume 30--Number 48
Pages 2435-2457
 
Week Ending Friday, December 2, 1994
 
Remarks to the National League of Cities

December 2, 1994

    The President. Thank you very much, Carolyn Long Banks, and thank 
you all for that very warm welcome. I wish you the best in your new job, 
Carolyn, as League president. I want to say to all of you, I wish I 
could be there in Minneapolis with my many friends in the National 
League of Cities.
    I'd like to say a special word of hello to two of your members of 
the Board of the Directors whom I have known for a very long time from 
my home State, Sharon Priest, the City Director of Little Rock, and 
Martin Gipson, Alderman in North Little Rock. I'd also like to say a 
special word of thanks to your outgoing president, Sharpe James who's 
been a good friend of mine. And because of his leadership of other 
League members, we now have the toughest and smartest crime bill in our 
history. I thank you for that, Sharpe, and I thank all of you.
    I have long admired the work of the National League of Cities. As a 
Governor, I worked with many of you on many tough issues. And as 
President, I'm committed to doing all I can to face those issues with 
you in a genuine spirit of partnership. To do that, I believe, as many 
of you do, that while Government cannot be society's savior, neither can 
it sit on the sidelines.
    Our job, yours and mine, is to create opportunity, to remove 
barriers to that opportunity, to give our people the tools they need to 
make the most of their lives. When it comes to our cities, we've 
developed a public-private partnership designed to provide opportunity 
where it's most needed. We've encouraged businesses to take root and 
grow in neglected communities. With the Community Development and 
Regulatory Improvement Act, we're steering billions of dollars in 
private investment to the places people need it the most. And very soon, 
we'll announce the winners of our empowerment zones and enterprise 
communities. We're helping Americans to rebuild the American dream for 
themselves. The most important thing we can do, what we've been working 
to do since the beginning of our administration, is to create high-
quality, high-wage jobs, jobs that enable our people to build good lives 
for themselves.
    In recent days, we've had a string of indicators that show just how 
strong this recovery has been. This morning we have the latest job 
figures that show strong success in building good jobs for Americans. 
Unemployment

[[Page 2453]]

is down to 5.6 percent, the lowest it's been in 4\1/2\ years. Since I 
became President, our economy has produced 5.2 million new jobs. So far 
this year, there have been more new jobs created in high-wage industries 
than in the previous 5 years combined. Manufacturing jobs are up for 11 
consecutive months for the first time in more than a decade. And more 
construction jobs have been created this year alone than in the previous 
9 years combined.
    Our strategy of opening up foreign markets to our goods and services 
has certainly contributed to this success. In just a year, NAFTA has 
created an estimated 100,000 new jobs. And yesterday, with strong 
bipartisan support, we took an historic step and passed the GATT world 
trade agreement, which will create hundreds of thousands of good jobs 
here in America.
    Despite these successes, you and I both know there are too many 
hard-working Americans who are still deeply anxious about their economic 
futures and their families. I understand that. For 20 years, stagnant 
wages and a declining rate of job security have taken a terrible toll. 
As our workers face these terrible changes and these exciting challenges 
of the global economy, they are rightly worried about how they and their 
children will adjust. We know that male workers without a college 
education have actually seen a decline in their earnings over the last 
10 years. And we know that most working families are actually working 
more; they have less leisure time. We also know that this is the only 
advanced country in the world where working people are actually losing 
ground in terms of their health coverage. A million Americans in working 
families lost health insurance last year alone. That's why, even as we 
open up trade and create jobs, we've got to work hard to help Americans 
adjust to these changes so that they can win in the global economy.
    The most important thing we can do is to help our people to learn 
the skills they need to compete and win in the years to come. That's the 
idea behind the education and training programs we've worked so hard for 
in the 103d Congress: a big expansion of Head Start; the Goals 2000 
program with its high national standards; the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Reform Act, with its grassroots reforms; more computers for 
our schools; things like charter schools, more public school choice, 
better education for poor children; character education in our schools. 
That's what's behind our determination to give more affordable loans for 
millions and millions of middle class students to go to college. It's 
behind the national service act, AmeriCorps, which allows tens of 
thousands of our young people to earn money for their college education 
by serving their communities at the grassroots level. And it's what's 
behind our apprenticeship programs for people who don't go to college 
but do want to have good jobs and good skills.
    The strength of all these programs is that they're rooted in the 
idea that individual citizens and communities can decide how best to 
build their own futures. Now for you, nothing in our agenda may be more 
important than our efforts to fight crime. The crime bill we passed is 
the crime bill many of you helped to write. It's a model for how we must 
continue to reinvent our Government to meet the needs of our people and 
to move power out of Washington back to the grassroots. We're moving 
quickly to put 100,000 more police on the street and to institute our 
prevention and our punishment programs. And we're paying for it by 
reducing the Federal work force by 272,000 positions to its smallest 
level since President Kennedy. Already, there are more than 70,000 fewer 
people working for the Federal Government than there were on the day I 
was inaugurated President. And every dollar we save is going back to 
you, going back to grassroots communities who know best how to fight 
crime in the streets. That's a good deal. It will work for America.
    We've made a good beginning on crime, a good beginning on the 
economy. But to do more, I hope we can continue the spirit of 
cooperation with the new Congress that we've seen on GATT this week. I 
hope we can find common ground on your concerns about unfunded Federal 
mandates which I have long opposed; the Glenn-Kempthorne legislation 
would restrict these mandates. And we're working closely with the 
lawmakers to make this bill a priority early, early in the next session 
of Congress.

[[Page 2454]]

    We should also continue to cooperate on health care reform. The 
American people still want it, and they still need it. We have to find a 
way to provide working families with that help. We can't continue to be 
the only advanced country in the world where more and more working 
people are losing their health insurance every year and where the cost 
of health care is going up at 3 times the rate of inflation. And for 
small businesses, health insurance premiums this year went up at almost 
5 times the rate of inflation. When the health of the American people 
and working families suffer, the health of our economy suffers. All of 
you know that more and more of our Federal budget is going to health 
care. Medicare, Medicaid, they're the fastest increasing areas of the 
Federal budget. We've held everything else constant or reduced it. So we 
need to find ways that, step by step, we can in a bipartisan spirit make 
progress on this.
    We also have to find ways to cooperate on welfare reform. We have to 
build a strong bridge from dependency to work for millions of Americans. 
We have to attack problems that feed dependency, including the runaway 
problem of teen pregnancies. I've been working on this welfare reform 
issue for more than a decade now. I know that the people on welfare 
overwhelmingly want to get off. We have got a system that was designed 
for another age, as so many governmental systems are, and we need to 
change it dramatically to make it rooted in independence and 
responsibility, not to subsidize dependence. Every American wants this, 
and we're going to do it and do it together.
    On these and many, many other issues, I hope and believe we can 
cooperate with the new Congress. But cooperation for me cannot mean 
abandoning principle, abandoning the hard work we have already 
accomplished together in our fight to restore our economy, our fight 
against crime, our fight to give this country back to hard-working 
people who play by the rules. I will oppose any efforts to take us back 
on those issues. We've worked too hard to build an economic recovery and 
a job strategy and to reduce this deficit that 12 years of irresponsible 

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