pd08au94 Remarks to Health Security Express Participants...

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Volume 30--Number 31
Pages 1581-1636
 
Week Ending Friday, August 5, 1994
 
The President's Radio Address

July 30, 1994

    Good morning. This was a good week for America, as we Americans were 
reminded again not just of our problems but of the immense possibilities 
of our times and our country.
    First, here at the White House, two brave leaders, King Hussein of 
Jordan and Prime Minister Rabin of Israel, put an end to their state of 
war and declared their intention to work together to promote lasting 
peace between their peoples.
    Meanwhile, President Boris Yeltsin announced this week that Russian 
troops would leave Estonia by August 31st. With this withdrawal, all 
Russian troops will be out of Central and Eastern Europe for the first 
time since the end of World War II, a major goal of our policy with 
Russia for the last 18 months.
    I'm proud of everything our country has done to further the march of 
hope over despair around the world. In times of historic change, America 
has always risen to great challenges at home as well as abroad.
    Yesterday it was announced that our economy grew 3.7 percent in the 
second quarter of this year. Jobless claims were down dramatically 
again. We've got strong growth with low inflation.
    In the last 18 months, we've begun the work of renewing the American 
dream. Our

[[Page 1587]]

national economic strategy, with $255 billion of budget cuts, tax breaks 
for small business and 15 million working American families, new 
investments in education and training and expansion of trade, and a 
reduction in the Federal bureaucracy to its smallest level in 30 years, 
has produced 3 years of deficit reduction for the first time since Harry 
Truman was President, 3.8 million new jobs in our economy, the largest 
number of new businesses formed in any year since World War II, and a 
1\1/2\ percent drop in the unemployment rate. We're moving in the right 
direction.
    And this week, after 6 years of delay, congressional leaders finally 
reached agreement on the toughest, largest, smartest Federal attack on 
crime in the history of our country.
    I sought the Presidency because I was concerned about the direction 
of our Nation. I was concerned that we were losing the American dream 
for our children and that we had to restore the economy, rebuild our 
communities, and empower individuals to assume responsibilities for 
their future. To do that, we had to have a Government that worked for 
ordinary Americans. And none of that is possible as long as crime and 
violence threaten the safety of our streets, the sanctity of our homes 
and schools, and the innocence of our children. That's why the American 
people have demanded that we take action against crime.
    This crime bill will put 100,000 more police on our street, a 20 
percent increase. It will ban assault weapons. It will prohibit 
possession of handguns by minors. It will put violent career criminals 
behind bars by making ``three strikes and you're out'' the law of the 
land. And it answers the calls of hundreds of thousands of police 
officers who want big increases in crime prevention programs to give our 
young people something to say yes to as well as something to say no to.
    This month, we have learned that our children are more at risk from 
crime and violence than any other portion of the population. Children 
between the ages of 12 and 17 are 5 times more likely than the rest of 
us to suffer from violent crimes like rape and aggravated assault. This 
is madness, and we must stop it.
    The crime bill is about to reach a final vote in both Houses of the 
Congress. Unbelievably, there are still those who are trying to kill it 
with old debates about whether we ought to be going after criminals or 
guns, whether we ought to be tough or compassionate. Well, the law 
enforcement community has told us we have to do all these things, and we 
have to do it now.
    Tell your Senators and Representatives to pass the crime bill. I 
want it on my desk within 2 weeks. I want to sign it before our children 
go back to school. We owe them a future of hope, not fear.
    If 6 years is long enough to wait for a crime bill, then 60 years is 
certainly long enough to wait for health care coverage for every 
American. Now it's time for us to move forward to yet another historic 
front, one that seven Presidents of both parties have sought: 
guaranteeing every American health coverage that can never be taken 
away.
    Soon Congress will deliberate on bills to provide health security, 
the first time ever that such bills have even been voted out of 
congressional committees. We know from our experience only one way that 
really works, the way that works for the great majority of our families 
already, getting health insurance on the job.
    It's a way that's worked in Hawaii for 20 years, where health 
insurance is cheaper than it is in the rest of the country. It's the way 
that relies on the private sector, not government; that rewards work, 
not welfare; that builds on shared responsibilities between employers 
and employees.
    Many other partial reforms sound good and aren't as controversial to 
implement and have been tried elsewhere. But the experience is that 
often these more limited reforms actually reduce the number of people 
with health insurance and increase rates. In Hawaii, where everyone 
contributed so that everyone could be covered, insurance rates went down 
and coverage went up.
    Some in Congress are trying to kill health care reform altogether. 
If we don't act this year, 3 million more working Americans will lose 
their health coverage next year. Five million more Americans are 
uninsured now than were insured 5 years ago. The American people don't 
need more hemming and hawing.

[[Page 1588]]

They need health care they can count on so they can get on with building 
their lives.
    Later today I'll be in Independence, Missouri, the home of President 
Harry Truman, to talk about health care. President Truman believed in 
the common sense and the common decency of the American people, and he 
tried very hard to get health care security for all Americans. It's time 
for us to fulfill Harry Truman's mission, to act with his vision and 
courage, to do what he always believed we should do: guarantee health 
security for all Americans.
    Let's continue to build a land of limitless hope and to remain an 
inspiration to the world.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 11:47 a.m. on July 29 in the Roosevelt 
Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on July 30.


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[Page 1588-1591]
 
Monday, August 8, 1994
 
Volume 30--Number 31
Pages 1581-1636
 
Week Ending Friday, August 5, 1994
 
Remarks to Health Security Express Participants in Independence, 
Missouri

July 30, 1994

    Thank you, Governor Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Vice President and 
Tipper and Hillary. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming. 
And let me especially thank those two fine women, mother and daughter, 
that stood up here and spoke for the nearly 40 million Americans who 
deserve health care.
    I have to tell you, a lot of things have been said here today; maybe 
everything that needs to be said has been said. But I would like to 
offer one mildly dissenting view. I believe that most of the people here 
who disagree with me today about national health reform do admire Harry 
Truman. They probably think he ought to be on Mt. Rushmore. And it must 
be surprising to them to know that they had the same arguments that are 
being made against us made against him 50 years ago. That is always the 
case when you try to change things and why it's so important to use the 
Presidency to fight to help the ordinary American to live a better life.
    You've already heard it. You've heard it in what the other people 
have said. Harry Truman had to say, ``No, this is not socialized 
medicine, this is private insurance. No, this is not a Government 
takeover, we're preserving the choice and the private medical system. 
No, we're not going to waste more money covering everybody, we'll 
actually save money.'' And what did they say? ``Harry Truman's a radical 
liberal. He's for socialized medicine. He's for big Government. He's 
going to take this country down.''
    Well, the truth is Harry Truman had Independence, Missouri, values. 
He had this old-fashioned notion that we value work and family and 
faith. And people who work hard and play by the rules ought to help one 
another when they need it, ought to join together to help themselves and 
to help their children have a better life.
    And that is really what is at stake here. All this screaming and 
yelling, what's really hurting America today is that we're shouting too 
much and listening too little and speaking in a respectful tone too 
little.
    Two years ago, on Labor Day when we all came here to kick off our 
general election campaign, what a wet day it was. Do you remember how 
wet it was? And we stood here in the rain because we believed we were on 
a mission to restore the American dream. We were tired of the screaming, 
yelling, anti-Government crowd that told us one thing and did another, 
that exploded the deficit, reduced investment in the American people, 
drove our economy into the ground. We were tired of seeing our country 
come apart and be divided by this rhetoric of hatred and division when 
we need to be coming together, to pull together for the 21st century. 
And we knew that at the end of the cold war we had a great test before 
us: Would we move into the next century with confidence, hope, united, 
so that we can compete and win and every one of our children can live up 
to the fullest of their God given abilities, or would we give into the 
same old dark fears and divisions that have been dredged up over and 
over and over again in this country's history?
    My fellow Americans, that is the real truth of what your President, 
Harry Truman, had to face. At the end of World War II, when he was the 
victor in the war, 80 percent of the people thought he was just great. 
But then a new world had to be created. And the question was would the 
President just

[[Page 1589]]

tell people what they wanted to hear, or would he set about creating 
that new world?
    And what did we get: the GI bill, a way to educate our families; a 
way to build houses; a way to build the middle class, bringing down the 
deficit; stabilizing the economy; rebuilding Europe with the Marshall 
plan; rebuilding Japan; standing up against Soviet expansionism so we 
could eventually win the cold war. That's what he did. And every step 
along the way the American people were subject to the most vicious and 
brutal attacks. Why? Because when people leave one era, when everybody 
can look at the future through the same set of glasses and they have to 
pick up another set of glasses to figure out how to understand things, 
we are always vulnerable.
    You think about your own life. Every time you've been asked to 
change you may have a mixture of hope and fear. And the real test every 
time is are your fears going to overtake you, and are you going to give 
in? Or are you going to live by your hopes and your courage and charge 
forward and grow and become better? That is the test for the United 
States today.
    This health care fight is far from the first one in which we have 
been engaged. When I became President, I told the American people I was 
tired of hearing people say they were conservative and they hated 
Government and they didn't like the deficit, and presiding over the 
biggest deficits in history, and I would do something about it. And we 
passed, against the solid opposition of every member of the other party 
in the United States Congress, an economic program. And what did it do? 
Two hundred fifty-five billion dollars worth of spending cuts; tax cuts 
for 15 million working Americans, including 295,000 Missouri families; a 
tax increase for the wealthiest 1.5 percent of our people; a reduction 
in the Federal work force, something the conservatives say they want, a 
reduction in the Federal work force of 250,000. And what did we produce? 
Three years of deficit reduction for the first time since Harry Truman 
was the President of the United States and 3.8 million new jobs, more 
than in the previous 4 years put together by far and a 1.5-percent drop 
in the unemployment rate and the largest number of new business starts 
since World War II. They said we would wreck the economy. Instead we 
brought it back, because we wouldn't give in to this hatred and rhetoric 
of division and destruction, and we moved forward.
    And then we moved on to try to make sure all of you could compete 
and win in this global economy, expanding trade against opposition, 
providing for lifetime training, more for Head Start, world-class 
standards for our public schools for the first time, apprenticeship 
programs for our young people who do not go to 4-year colleges but need 
more training and a reduction in interest rates and better repayment 
terms for student loans, so that 20 million Americans are immediately 
eligible for lower interest on their student loans.
    My fellow Americans, this is not about hot air and hot signs. This 
is about what we talked about here in the rain, what Al Gore and I wrote 
about in ``Putting People First,'' and most of all, it's about what 
counts in your life as you move forward with your families and your 
hopes. And we are going to continue doing that.
    Just look at the last week in America. What a great week America 
had. Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel. Now, with our strong 
help, Israel and Jordan have agreed to end the state of war between them 
and to work for peace and to make us more secure.
    Harry Truman set up a system that enabled us to win the cold war. 
Now, after the cold war, after much hard work by the United States, 
Russia has announced that by the end of August, for the first time since 
Harry Truman was President, there will be no Russian soldiers in Central 
and Eastern Europe, making the world more secure.
    After 6 years of tough talk and anticrime rhetoric by previous 
administrations, at long last, at long last, this week the House and the 
Senate agreed to send the toughest, smartest crime bill in the history 
of the United States to a vote on the floor of the United States 
Congress this coming week.
    And as has been said, your majority leader, Dick Gephardt, and the 
Speaker of the House have, for the first time in American history, voted 
out a bill to the floor of the Congress that would provide for 
affordable health care for all of the American people.

[[Page 1590]]

It has been a good week for the United States.
    But the only way we can go forward is if we go beyond the slogans to 
the facts, go beyond all the posturing to the people. Look at this crime 
bill, folks. Children are 5 times more likely to be the victims of 
violent crime. Violent crime has gone up by 300 percent in the last 30 
years, the police forces by only 10 percent. This crime bill will add 
100,000 police to our streets. It will make ``three strikes and you're 
out'' the law of the land. It will take the assault weapons out of the 
hands of the gangs that make them better armed than the police forces. 
It will make handgun possession and ownership by juveniles illegal 
unless they're under the supervision of an adult. It will make our 
schools safer. And it ought to pass next week, not because of all the 
rhetoric against it but because our families deserve a better and a 
safer and a more secure future.
    But if we had to wait 6 long years for a crime bill, isn't 60 years 
way too long to wait for all the American people to have health care 
security? That's how long we've been waiting. President Roosevelt wanted 
it. President Truman proposed it three times. Seven Presidents of both 
parties have tried to achieve it.
    Let me ask you something, and I want you to listen to this, it's so 
ironic. What is the real big fight here? The big fight is whether 
employers and employees should be asked to purchase private health 
insurance and whether the Government saying to the American people, 
``You must purchase private health insurance'' is either socialized 
medicine, somehow unethical, or bad for the economy. That's what all 
this boils down to, whether it would be better to keep on doing what 
we're doing.
    Well, let me ask you to consider this. Number one, in 1971, 
President Richard Nixon and the ranking member of the Senate Finance 
Committee today, the Republican Senator from Oregon, Bob Packwood, 
proposed that all employers pay for half of the health insurance costs 
of all their employees and that we do it. If it was such a hot idea in 
1971, why are the members of the other party running against it today as 
if it had the plague? It was a good idea then, and it's a good idea 

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