pd07au95 Message to the Congress on Iraq...

	Web GovRecords.org

how he intends to reform Medicare so that there is no confusion about 
the differences between his proposal and the Republican proposal.]

    The President. That's what the First Lady said. These personal costs 
that are going to be loaded on the individual seniors under their plan 
do not make a contribution to stabilizing the trust fund. They are not 
necessary to stabilize the trust fund, and we don't have to do it.
    I know we've got to break up. We'll hear from one more person.

[[Page 1341]]

[A participant expressed concern for minorities, many of whom live in 
poverty, if Medicaid is no longer an entitlement, especially in view of 
cutbacks in assistance at the local level.]

    The President. It's a mistake. Let me just say this. Just look at 
the--you know, of course, the main Medicaid benefit to seniors is 
nursing home care. And, you know, most States have more people in 
nursing homes under Medicaid than Medicare--way more.
    But let's just talk about the next generation. Let's talk about the 
children. We've all got a big stake in seeing how well they do. If you--
Medicaid is the program that provides health insurance to really poor 
children in this country. Now, you tell me what's going to happen if you 
block-grant Medicaid and you don't require the States to come up with 
their portion, and the next time the State legislature meets in 
Florida--let's take Florida, a State I know quite a bit about--you know, 
Hillary and I have--her family live there, two of her brothers. Let's 
just take Florida. And it's a fast-growing state. And they come in and 
we have a legislature, and the people say, we don't have enough money 
for the schools. And they're telling the truth, because it's fast-
growing. And then they say, we've got all these new communities, and we 
don't have enough money for the water systems we need or the sewer 
systems we need. And they'll be telling the truth. Or we don't have 
enough money for the road systems we need. And they'll be telling the 
truth.
    Now, then let's say the seniors have a strong enough lobby to come 
in and save the money for the nursing homes. What happens? They'll cut 
off all the aid to the poor children. And then what happens if you take 
the health care away from the poor children? Then all of us will be 
paying for them when they're either really sick or they don't develop 
mentally and physically as they should 5, 10, 15 years down the road.
    This is not a good idea. This is a bad idea. Not all change is good. 
We've got to have the right kind of change. And you're absolutely right. 
And I hope you will fight for it. And I will fight for it. And we just 
need to tell the American people about it. We can prevail.
    Thank you. You guys have been great.
    Q. Mr. President, just to give you a chance to respond to, 
undoubtedly, what the Republican response will be. They say that you 
have not offered a really detailed proposal of your own for changes with 
Medicare----
    The President. Have they? Have they? What I have done--I have done 
what's important. I have said, we are not going to accept the 
beneficiary increases that they are. I have said that we can fix the 
Medicare trust fund without requiring the kind of cost increases on 
these folks that they are recommending to pay for their tax cut. That is 
a huge change.
    Secondly, I have said that we don't have to do as much on the 
provider side into the health care system as they want to do, because I 
want to balance the budget in 10 years instead of 7. So, any set of 
options I adopt, they will have to adopt more severe options, which is 
why they want to go into the August recess with their plan a secret and 
why they allegedly apparently have plans to come back here and drop this 
thing out right before the fiscal year begins and allow about 2 days 
debate on it and then roll it through.
    Now, I have proved--when I had responsibility for the budget, I did 
that. We made the Medicare trust fund better, with no help, I might add, 
from them. Not a single vote. We made it better. They denied that there 
was a problem with the trust fund. Then when they won the majority in 
the Congress, what happened? All of a sudden they discovered this 
problem in the trust fund and they used it as a pretext to raise costs 
on Medicare beneficiaries so much so they could pay for the big tax cut 
they promised and meet the 7-year balanced budget deadline they 
promised.
    If you want to talk about--am I willing to work with them on 
Medicare reform to fix the Medicare trust fund? Absolutely, I am. Why 
did I present a balanced budget and alternative? So I could reach out my 
hand in good faith to work with them. So far that has not been an 
option. So far they have been proceeding down their own course. All I'm 
saying is, I am serving notice that I will not support what they are 
attempting to do to the seniors.

[[Page 1342]]

    Now, we can fix the Medicare trust fund. It doesn't have anything to 
do with what we've been talking about here today.

Note: The President spoke at 10:12 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Arthur Flemming, chair, Save Our 
Security.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]


[Page 1342]
 
Monday, August 7, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 31
Pages 1335-1381
 
Week Ending Friday, August 4, 1995
 
Statement on the Death of Major Richard J. Meadows

July 29, 1995

    I mourn the passing today of Major Richard J. Meadows, USA (Ret.), 
whose dedicated and exceptional service is cherished by everyone who 
knew of his extraordinary courage and selfless service.
    I recently had asked General Wayne Downing, the commander-in-chief 
of the U.S. Special Operations Command, to present the Presidential 
Citizens Medal to Major Meadows. I am gratified to know that Major 
Meadows' wife, Pamela, his son, Mark, a U.S. Army captain, and daughter, 
Michele, will receive this award tonight at a gathering of those 
involved in the Sontay raid at Hurlburt Field. Although this will now be 
a posthumous honor, I am pleased that Major Meadows knew of this honor 
before he died.
    To Major Meadows' family and friends and to the Special Operations 
community, I extend my heartfelt condolences. We will all remember him 
as a soldier's soldier and one of America's finest unsung heroes.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]


[Page 1342-1349]
 
Monday, August 7, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 31
Pages 1335-1381
 
Week Ending Friday, August 4, 1995
 
Remarks to the National Governors' Association in Burlington, Vermont

July 31, 1995

    Thank you very much, Governor Dean. And thank you for the gift of 
those proceedings. I discovered two things looking through that book 
very quickly, which will be interesting perhaps to some of you. One is 
that the first Governors' conference--one thing I knew and one I 
didn't--the first Governors' conference was called by President Theodore 
Roosevelt to bring all the Governors together to develop a plan to 
conserve our Nation's resources. It was an environmental Governors' 
conference.
    The second thing was that they really set the tone of bipartisanship 
which has endured through all these years--something I didn't know--I 
saw that the two special guests at the Governors' conference were 
William Jennings Bryan and Andrew Carnegie. So they were spanning the 
waterfront even then.
    I really look forward to this, but I kind of got my feelings hurt. I 
understand Senator Dole came in here and told you that my cholesterol 
was higher than his. [Laughter] I came to Vermont determined to get my 
cholesterol down with low-fat Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia. [Laughter] I 
do want you to know that my standing heart rate, however--pulse rate--is 
much lower than Senator Dole's. But that's really not his fault, I don't 
have to deal with Phil Gramm every day. [Laughter] I think on matters of 
health, age, and political anxiety, we have come to a draw.
    I thank you very much for having me here. I love looking around the 
table and seeing old friends and new faces. I thank Governor Dean for 
his leadership of the Governors' conference. And Governor Thompson, I 
wish you well, and I thank you for the work that we have done together 
over so many years. I thank all the State officials from Vermont who 
came out to the airport to say hello and the mayor here of Burlington. I 
know that your former Governor, Madeleine Kunin, is here, the Deputy 
Secretary of Education. She has done a very great job for us, and I 
thank her for that.
    I want to talk to you today primarily about welfare reform. But I'd 
like to put it in the context of the other things that we are attempting 
to do in Washington. I see Senator Leahy and Congressman Sanders back 
there; Senator Jeffords may be here. I think I'm taking him back to 
Washington in a couple of hours.
    I ran for President because I was genuinely concerned about whether 
our country was ready for the 21st century, because of the slow rate of 
job growth, 20 years of stagnant incomes, 30 years of social problems. I 
knew that we were still better than any other country in the world at so 
many things, but we seemed to be coming apart when, clearly, we've 
always done better when we went forward together as a nation.

[[Page 1343]]

    I have this vision of what our country will look like 20 or 30 or 40 
years from now. I want America to be a high-opportunity, smart-work 
country, not a hard-work, low-wage country. I want America to be a 
country with strong families and strong communities, where people have 
the ability to make the most of their own lives and families and 
communities have the ability to solve their own problems, where we have 
good schools and a clean environment and decent health care and safe 
streets.
    I think the strategy to achieve that is clear. We have to create 
more opportunity and demand more responsibility from our people, and we 
have to do it together. I have concluded, having worked at this job now 
for 2\1/2\ years, that we cannot achieve the specific strategies of 
creating opportunity or providing for more responsibility unless we find 
a way to do more together.
    In the last 2\1/2\ years, as Governor Dean said, I have spent most 
of my time working on trying to make sure we had a sound economic 
policy, to bring the deficit down and increase trade and investment in 
technology and research and development and education, to open up new 
educational opportunities, and to work with you to achieve standards of 
excellence with less direction from the National Government.
    We also have tried to put some more specific responsibilities into 
the programs that benefit the American people. That's what the national 
service program was all about. We'll help you go to college, but you 
need to serve your country at the grassroots level. We reformed the 
college loan program to cut the cost and make the repayment terms 
better, but we toughened dramatically the collection of delinquent 
college loans so that the taxpayers wouldn't be out more money. We 
passed the family leave law, but we've also tried to strengthen child 
support enforcement, as so many of you have.
    I want to help people on welfare, but I also want to reward people 
who, on their own, are off of welfare, on modest incomes, which is why 
we have dramatically expanded the earned-income tax credit, the program 
that President Reagan said was the most pro-family, pro-work initiative 
undertaken by the United States in the last generation. Now, this year, 
families with children with incomes of under $28,000 will pay about 
$1,300 less in income tax than they would have if the laws hadn't been 
changed in 1993.
    We also tried to change the way the Government works. It's smaller 
than it used to be. There are 150,000 fewer people working for the 
Federal Government than there were the day I became President. We have 
dramatically reduced Government regulations in many areas. We're on the 
way to reducing the regulatory burden of the Department of Education by 
40 percent, the Small Business Administration by 50 percent. We are 
reducing this year the time it takes to comply with the EPA rules and 
regulations by 25 percent and establishing a program in which anybody, 
any small business person who calls the EPA and honestly asks for help 
in dealing with a problem cannot be fined as a result of any discovery 
arising from the phone call while the person is trying to meet the 
requirements of Federal law.
    We have also tried to solve problems that have been ignored. We 
reformed the pension system in the country to save 8\1/2\ million 
troubled pensions and stabilize 40 million more. Secretary Cisneros has 
formed an unbelievable partnership to expand homeownership with no new 
tax dollars, which will get us by the end of this decade more than two-
thirds of Americans in their own homes for the first time in the history 
of the Republic.
    The results of all this are overwhelmingly positive but still 
somewhat troubling. On the economic front, we have 7 million more jobs, 
1\1/2\ million more small businesses--the largest rate of small business 
formation in history--2.4 million new homeowners, record stock markets, 
low inflation, record profits. And yet--and a record number of new 
millionaires, which is something to be proud of in this country, people 
who've worked their way into becoming millionaires; they didn't inherit 
the money. But still, the median income is about where it was 2\1/2\ 
years ago, which means most wage-earning Americans are still working 
harder for the same or lower wages. And the level of anxiety is quite 
high.
    On the social front, you see the same things. The number of people 
on food stamps is down. The number of people on welfare

[[Page 1344]]

is down. The divorce rate is down. The crime rate is down in almost 
every major metropolitan area in the country. The rate of serious drug 
use is down. But the rate of random violence among very young people is 
up. The continuing, gnawing sense of insecurity is up. The rate of 
casual marijuana smoking among very young people is up, even as serious 
drug use goes down.
    So, what we have is a sense in America that we're kind of drifting 
apart. And this future that I visualize, that I think all of you share, 
is being rapidly embraced by tens of millions of Americans and achieved 
with stunning success. But we are still being held back in fulfilling 
our real destiny as a country because so many people are kind of shut 
off from that American dream.
    I am convinced that the American people want us to go forward 
together. I am convinced that there really is a common ground out there 
on most of these issues that seem so divisive when we read about them in 
the newspaper or see them on the evening news. I think if just ordinary 
Americans could get in a room like this and sit around a table, two-
thirds of them or more would come to the same answer on most of these 
questions. And I believe that we cannot bring the country together and 
move the country forward unless we deal with some issues that we still 
haven't faced.
    I've tried to find a way to talk about really controversial issues 
in a way that would promote a discussion instead of another word combat. 
I've given talks in the last few days about family and media, about 
affirmative action, about the relationship of religion and prayer to 
schools in the hope that we could have genuine conversations about these 
things.
    But I am convinced that almost more than any other issue in American 
life, this welfare issue sort of stands as a symbol of what divides us, 
because most Americans know that there are people who are trapped in a 
cycle of dependency that takes their tax dollars, but doesn't achieve 
the goals designed that they have, which is to have people on welfare 
become successful parents and successful workers and to have parents who 
can pay, pay for their children so the taxpayers don't have to do it. I 
am convinced that unless we do this, and until we do it, there will 
still be a sort of wedge that will be very hard to get out of the spirit 
and the life of America.
    There is here--maybe more than on any other issue that we're dealing 
with that's controversial--a huge common ground in America, maybe not in 
Washington yet, but out in the country there is a common ground. Not so 
very long ago there were liberals who opposed requiring all people on 

Other Popular 1995 Presidential Documents Documents:

Other Documents:

1995 Presidential Documents Records and Documents