pd23oc95 Remarks to the Business Council in Williamsburg, Virginia...

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[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
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[Page i-ii]
 
Monday, October 23, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 42
Pages 1831-1892
 
Contents

[[Page i]]

Weekly Compilation of

Presidential

Documents



[[Page ii]]



Addresses and Remarks

    California, Concert For Hope in Hollywood--1858
    Connecticut
        Thomas J. Dodd Archives and Research Center in Storrs, 
            dedication--1839
        University of Connecticut in Storrs--1840
    National Medals of Science and Technology, presentation ceremony--
        1873
    Ohio
        Midwest Economic Conference, opening session in Columbus--1883
        Ohio State University in Columbus--1888
    Radio address--1838
    Texas
        Dinner in Houston--1864
        Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio--1859, 1860
        Luncheon in Dallas--1853
        University of Texas at Austin--1847
    Virginia, Business Council in Williamsburg--1831

Communications to Congress

    Budget deferrals, message transmitting--1880
    ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act,'' letter to Senator Kennedy on 
        proposed legislation--1881

Executive Orders

    Interagency Security Committee--1881

Interviews With the News Media

    New conference, October 19 (No. 103)--1876

Proclamations

    National Character Counts Week--1846
    National Forest Products Week--1847

Supplementary Materials

    Acts approved by the President--1892
    Checklist of White House press releases--1891
    Digest of other White House announcements--1890
    Nominations submitted to the Senate--1891

  

  

Editor's Note: The President was in Des Moines, IA, on October 20, the 
closing date of this issue. Releases and announcements issued by the 
Office of the Press Secretary but not received in time for inclusion in 
this issue will be printed next week.




              WEEKLY COMPILATION OF
          ------------------------------
              PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS

Published every Monday by the Office of the Federal Register, National 
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[[Page 1831]]




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[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
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[Page 1831-1837]
 
Monday, October 23, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 42
Pages 1831-1892
 
Week Ending Friday, October 20, 1995
 
Remarks to the Business Council in Williamsburg, Virginia


October 13, 1995

    Thank you very much. The last time I was with the Woolards we were 
in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the Grand Tetons. And this outfit would 
have been highly inappropriate there. I felt more at home, but I saw Ed 
tonight and I kind of--I'm jealous of the beautiful shirt. I want to 
know where you got it. [Laughter] I'm so glad to see all of you. I know 
some of our administration members have been here--Secretary Rubin, who 
feels right at home. I still can't believe Bob Rubin is a Democrat. 
[Laughter] He told me not very long ago we were going to have to change 
the currency to avoid counterfeiting. And I said, ``Well, all right.'' 
And he said, ``But I want to start with 100-dollar bills.'' [Laughter] 
So that's where we started. I have reviewed a little bit about who spoke 
here today and what they said, and, Ed, if Hugh Sidey really said that, 
he must have been awful tough on the people who are running against me. 
[Laughter]
    I want to talk to you tonight about, obviously, about the major 
controversy presently raging in Washington about the balanced budget. 
But I want to try to set the stage for what this really means and what's 
really going on. And I'd like to begin with what I think is the most 
important thing, which is what kind of country we live in and what kind 
of country we wish to live in and what kind of country we wish to leave 
for our children and our grandchildren. That, after all, is the most 
important thing of all.
    When I sought this job in 1992, I did it because I wanted to restore 
the American dream for all of our people and because I wanted this 
country to go into the next century still as the world's leader for 
freedom and peace and prosperity and democracy. Because I really believe 
that we're all better off in a country where people have opportunity but 
exercise responsibility, where we strengthen work but we also strengthen 
our families, and where we recognize that the real power in America 
should be at the community level where people work together and where 
they deal with each other directly, instead of through the filters that 
exist between me and Washington and you where you live.
    This is a remarkable period of success for America's economy. All of 
you are doing a remarkable job. We've had a great 2\1/2\ years. And I 
believe there are better times ahead if we make the right decisions. 
It's a time of profound change. We're moving from the industrial to the 
information and technology age. We've moved out of the cold war into a 
global marketplace. We have problems, to be sure, but they're nowhere 
near as great as the opportunities we have.
    When I sought the Presidency, I said that I wanted to do three 
things: I wanted to restore pro-growth economics. I wanted to put 
mainstream values back at the heart of our social policy. And I wanted 
to give America a modern Government that was more entrepreneurial and 
smaller and gave more authority to the State and local governments, to 
the private sector, and operated more as a partner with others to build 
a better America.
    I said then, and I believe I have been true to this, that I wanted 
to see new ideas injected into our political life, everything from 
welfare reform to national service to empowerment zones for our inner 
cities to the reinventing Government program that the Vice President has 
done such a good job with. I said I would make a good-faith effort to 
move beyond the partisan labels that had divided people so much in the 
past. And believe it or not, I have done my best to do that. It's a lot 
harder in Washington than it is in the State capitals and the cities of 
the country, but it can be done and it will be done again, I believe, in 
the next few weeks.

[[Page 1832]]

    I also believed then and I believe more strongly now that in a time 
of change, it's important that the President make decisions based on 
their long-term impact as opposed to their short-term benefits or 
burdens.
    Now, if you look at the last 2\1/2\ years, you must all be very 
proud. Our country has produced 7\1/2\ million jobs, 2\1/2\ million new 
homeowners, about 2 million new small business owners, the largest 
number of new small businesses in such a time period in the history of 
the United States, a record number of new self-made millionaires. Trade 
has increased in the last 3 years from 4 percent in '93, 10 percent in 
'94, and it's going up 16 percent this year--our exports. The deficit 
has come from $290 billion a year down to $160 billion a year.
    Of course, there are still problems. In any period of profound 
change, there tends to be a big disruption and a significant problem of 
income inequality. We have that in America. We need to get more energy 
and growth back into middle class families' incomes. We have still some 
isolated areas in our country that have not felt the benefits of this 
recovery. And I believe that the budget proposal now in Congress would 
undermine our economic growth in the future unless it's modified 
significantly, and I'll say more about that in a moment.
    I think the policies of this administration have made a contribution 
to that economic record by reducing the deficit; by expanding trade 
through NAFTA and GATT and taking all those outdated cold war controls 
off of our high technology exports; by concluding over 80 trade 
agreements through the efforts of Ambassador Kantor, including 15 with 
Japan alone; by investing in technology, research and development, and 
defense conversion; and by working with so many of you to manifest the 
real commitment to the education of all Americans, more money but also 
higher standards, higher expectations, and more accountability in 
education.
    If you look at the question of our social problems and whether we've 
been successful in putting middle class values into our approach, you 
can all be somewhat hopeful there. The crime rate is down in almost 
every place in America. The murder rate is down. The welfare rolls are 
down. The food stamp rolls are down. The poverty rate is down. The teen 
pregnancy rate has gone down for 2 years in a row. Americans are 
reasserting their beliefs in old-fashioned personal, family, and 
community responsibility. And it is beginning to work.
    Yes, we have some problems. We still need to pass a national welfare 
reform plan, I believe. We still need to avoid the tendency that's now 
alive in Congress to believe that all you need to do on the crime 
problem is to put people in jail and we don't need anything to do with 
prevention and giving our young people something to say yes to. But 
basically we are moving in the right direction to reassert and reinsert 
into American life mainstream values.
    And I believe the initiatives of our administration have played a 
role in that: The crime bill, which is putting 100,000 more police on 
the street, keeping repeat offenders off the street; passing the Brady 
bill; passing the assault weapons ban; doing things that enable our 
local communities to help prevent crimes. I think it's making a 
difference.
    I believe the work we've done and what the New York Times called ``a 
quiet revolution'' in welfare--our administration has given 35 States 
over 40 separate approvals to get around Federal rules and regulations 
to move people from welfare to work. When the Congress wouldn't pass the 
bill, we just decided to reform welfare State by State, community by 
community. We have offered all 50 States within any 30-day period a 
complete relief from any number of Federal rules and regulations if they 
will present a comprehensive plan to move people from welfare to work 
without hurting their children.
    I think when we almost doubled the family tax credit that President 
Reagan said was the best antipoverty program the country had ever come 
up with, so that we can now say that anybody who works 40 hours a week 
and has children in the home will not live in poverty, that was a major 
step toward rewarding work and family and helping us to reform welfare 
and get people out of welfare into the work rolls.
    I think the national service program is an important advance. We 
celebrated its first year yesterday with a young woman from Kansas City 
who's working her way through

[[Page 1833]]

college from an inner-city neighborhood in Kansas City with a project of 
young volunteers who have closed 44 crack houses in Kansas City in the 
last year. And this is the kind of thing being done by these young 
people all over America, whether they're building houses with Habitat 
for Humanity, tutoring kids in rural Kentucky where they have increased 
the grade level in reading by threefold in one year, or helping to fight 
the crime problem.
    All these things manifest our values. And something I know that 
means a lot to all of you, we have tried to give the American people a 
more modern Government. The size of the Federal Government tonight when 
I left Washington was 163,000 smaller than it was the day I became 
President. It's the smallest Federal Government since John Kennedy was 
President. We will reduce it by another 110,000 in the next 2 years, no 
matter what the Congress does with this budget. This Government as a 
percentage of the civilian nonfarm payroll is the smallest Government 
the United States has had in Washington since 1933.
    Now, those are facts. We've reduced 16,000 pages of regulations, cut 
the regulations of the Small Business Administration by 50 percent, the 
regulations of the Education Department by 40 percent. Next year, the 
paperwork time that businesses spend fooling with the Environmental 
Protection Agency will be down by 25 percent.
    More important than all that to me, I think our Government's working 
better. The Small Business Administration has cut its budget by 40 
percent and doubled its loan output. The Export-Import Bank is helping 
small businesses that never knew what it was before to sell their 
products all around the world. The Commerce Department and the State 
Department have done more good for American businesses overseas than any 
Commerce Department and State Department in modern history. And every 
one of you who has worked with them knows that that is the absolute 

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