Home > 1995 Presidential Documents > pd06fe95 Remarks to the National Governors' Association Meeting...pd06fe95 Remarks to the National Governors' Association Meeting...
<DOC> [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents] [frwais.access.gpo.gov] [Page i-ii] Monday, February 6, 1995 Volume 31--Number 5 Pages 131-191 Contents [[Page i]] Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents [[Page ii]] Addresses and Remarks See also Appointments and Nominations Boston, MA Mayor's Youth Council--158 New England Presidential dinner--164 Defense budget--171 Democratic Governors Association dinner--147 Minimum wage initiative--184 Moldova, visit of President Snegur--141 National Association of Home Builders--143 National Governors' Association Conference--151 Dinner--137 Gala--138 Meeting--139 National Prayer Breakfast--172 Radio address--135 Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers--138 U.S. Conference of Mayors--131 Welfare reform--135 Appointments and Nominations Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, statement--182 Health and Human Services Department, Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, remarks--179 State Department, Ambassador to Panama, letter on withdrawal--151 Communications to Congress Armenia, message on trade--188 Haiti, report--185 Health and Human Services Department, message transmitting report-- 146 Libya, report--156 Narcotics producing and transit countries, letter--182 National Institute of Building Sciences, message transmitting report--147 Science, Technology, and American Diplomacy, letter transmitting report--188 Executive Orders Amendment to Executive Order No. 12898 (Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations)--146 Interviews With the News Media Exchanges with reporters Oval Office--141, 179 Pentagon--171 Interview with religious journalists--173 Joint Statements President Snegur of Moldova--142 Meetings With Foreign Leaders Moldova, President Snegur--141, 142 Proclamations To Amend the Generalized System of Preferences--187 (Contents continued on inside of back cover.) Contents--Continued Statements by the President See also Appointments and Nominations Algeria, terrorist attack--155 Death of Jim Grant--137 Mexico, financial assistance--155 Ramadan--155 Supplementary Materials Acts approved by the President--191 Checklist of White House press releases--190 Digest of other White House announcements--189 Nominations submitted to the Senate--190 WEEKLY COMPILATION OF ------------------------------ PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS Published every Monday by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408, the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents contains statements, messages, and other Presidential materials released by the White House during the preceding week. The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is published pursuant to the authority contained in the Federal Register Act (49 Stat. 500, as amended; 44 U.S.C. Ch. 15), under regulations prescribed by the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register, approved by the President (37 FR 23607; 1 CFR Part 10). Distribution is made only by the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents will be furnished by mail to domestic subscribers for $80.00 per year ($137.00 for mailing first class) and to foreign subscribers for $93.75 per year, payable to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. The charge for a single copy is $3.00 ($3.75 for foreign mailing). There are no restrictions on the republication of material appearing in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. [[Page 131]] <DOC> [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents] [frwais.access.gpo.gov] [Page 131-135] Monday, February 6, 1995 Volume 31--Number 5 Pages 131-191 Week Ending Friday, February 3, 1995 Remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors January 27, 1995 Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. I see that half of the Cabinet is here. I guess they've already answered all your questions, solved all your problems. Now they can come solve ours. [Laughter] Mayor Ashe and distinguished members of the organization, I'm delighted to see all of you. Is Mayor Grant from East Providence here? Your wife told me this was your birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Just wanted you to know I was checking up on you. [Laughter] Let me begin by saying congratulations to all of you on the overwhelming passage of the unfunded mandate legislation by the Senate today, 86 to 10 the bill passed. I have not had a chance to look at the final version of the Senate bill. It just passed a little while ago. But I know some very good amendments were added, and I want to congratulate Senator Glenn and Senator Kempthorne. We worked very hard on this bill last year, and I was sorry we didn't pass it then. Both of them did very, very good work. And I believe the bill is a very strong one as it goes to the House. But I have not seen its final form, but I heard it was in good shape. And it must have been pretty good if it passed 86 to 10. And I think that should be reassuring to you; it certainly is to me. I want to thank you for the resolution you passed on the baseball strike and the action we are taking. We will work very hard on that. I know how important it is to you. I sometimes think that the full economic implications of this whole thing have not been evaluated, not just for the cities that have major league teams but also for the cities that host spring training. This is a big deal, and we're working on it. I want to thank your international committee for the vote you took on the Mexican stabilization package that we have offered. As you know, this is not the most popular issue in America today, but it's important. And I thank you for your support. It's in the interest of our working people and our economy. And it's not a gift; it's not foreign aid; it's not even a loan. It's cosigning a note with good collateral. So it's in our interests, and I thank you for that. When I came here 2 years ago with a mission to restore the American dream for all of the people of this country and to make sure we moved to the next century still the strongest force in the world for freedom and democracy and peace and prosperity, I said then and had said all during my campaign that I wanted a new partnership for the American people. I called it a New Covenant of more opportunity and more responsibility, recognizing that unless we had more of both, we could not hope to do the things that have to be done. I have sought to essentially focus on three things that I think are critical to making sure we succeed in this new economy: empowering our people to make the most of their own lives, expanding opportunity but shrinking the Federal Government bureaucracy, giving more authority to State and local governments and to the private sector. And I have sought to enhance the security of our people at home and abroad. In all those things you have been very helpful and supportive, both of the specific initiatives of this administration and of your own efforts which fit so well into that framework. As all of you know, in the last 2 years we've had a lot of successes. We now have the figures in on 1994's growth rate. We know it was the best economic year our country had since 1984. We know that the combined rates of unemployment and inflation are the lowest they have been in 30 years. We know that we have inflation at a 30-year low. We know that, among other things, the African-Amer- [[Page 132]] ican unemployment rate went into single digits for the first time in 20 years. So there is a lot--[applause]--we've tried to expand more authority to our States and to our cities, and we're bringing the Federal Government down in size and reach where it's appropriate. We already have 100,000 fewer people working for the National Government than we did when I became President. And if nothing else is done, it will shrink by another 170,000. And of course, in terms of security, the most important things we did were to pass the Brady bill and the crime bill, which you were active in and supportive of, and I thank you for all that. As we look ahead in this year, which promises to be somewhat unpredictable but exciting and I think could be very productive for our country--and I must say this passage of this bill today and the reasonable deliberation in the Senate and the way the amendments were debated in good faith is quite encouraging to me--there are some things that I think we have to do. In terms of empowering our people to meet the challenges of this age, we have to realize our job is still to expand the middle class and to shrink the underclass. And the two main initiatives our administration has this year are the middle class bill of rights and raising the minimum wage. We want to pass this middle class bill of rights, not only to give tax relief to middle class people who have been working harder for lower wages or for at least no wage increases but to do it in a way that will raise incomes in the short term and in the long term. That's why the focus is on tax deduction for all educational expenses after high school and an IRA with tax-free withdrawal for education expenses or for health care expenses or for the care of a parent or purchasing a first-time home, and why we seek to consolidate the 70 various training programs into one huge block and let people get directly a voucher that they can use if they're unemployed or if they have a low-wage job and they're eligible for training to take to the local community college or wherever else they wish to take it to get the education and training of their choice. I think it's important to raise the minimum wage, because if we don't next year the buying power of the minimum wage will be at a 40- year low. And the evidence is clear that if you raise the minimum wage a modest amount, it doesn't cause increased unemployed and indeed may bring people back into the job market who otherwise are not willing to come in and go to work. So I would hope you would support both of those things. In the area of expanding opportunity and shrinking the bureaucracy, we're coming back with a second round of reinventing Government proposals--and perhaps Secretary Cisneros has already talked to you about what we're proposing for HUD--to collapse the 60 programs into 3. I want to emphasize that we're doing this to strengthen the mission of HUD and to strengthen the partnership that we have with the cities of this country, not to gut the Department's partnership or its capacity to help you do your job. And so I hope that you will help us as we debate this on both parts, say that you want to support a reduction in the size of the Federal bureaucracy, but you do not want to see the mission of HUD as carried out by the mayors of this country undermined and weakened because you have a job to do. Finally, let me say some things about the crime bill. I very much hope that we will be able to work through, in this session of Congress, a good faith carrying forward of the crime bill that was passed last year. It became unfortunately embroiled in politics; you know that better than I do. And I think you also know that the prevention programs that were passed were programs that were recommended to us in the strongest possible terms not only by mayors, not only by community leaders but by the leaders of the law enforcement community and that a lot of those prevention programs that were later labeled as pork were cosponsored, the first time they came up, by people who later said they were pork. Well, all that's behind us now, and the only thing that matters now is, what is the best thing for the people of this country? What will keep our streets safer? What will reduce the crime rate more? What is the most likely approach to actually make the American peo- [[Page 133]] ple feel more secure? We must enhance our security at home. At the end of the cold war, I think it's fair to say that most Americans put their children to bed at night more worried about their security concerns at home than abroad. So what we should seek to do without regard to party or region of Other Popular 1995 Presidential Documents Documents:
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