Remarks to Independent Insurance Agents of America's National Legislative Conference - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 8, 2000

May 2, 2000

The President. Thank you very, very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to be here. And I thank you, President Houston, and I thank your CEO, Paul Equale, whom I see all the time here in Washington pleading your cause. And I thank my old friend George Frazier. I heard that introduction. The truth is that only he and my mother thought I had a chance to be elected President when I ran. [Laughter] But it's nice to have someone like that in your corner.

I came here today, in part, on a sentimental journey. I couldn't hear everything George said, but the first speech I gave outside Arkansas as an elected official was in 1977, when I flew to California to speak for George when he was president of your organization. So, in a real sense, my political career began with George Frazier's presidency and ended with my own. And I am delighted to be here.

I also want to acknowledge and thank another member of this group from Arkansas, my friend Lib Carlisle, who agreed to become chairman of the Democratic Party when I was reelected Governor in 1982. I told him that it would just be about a half-a-day-a-week job. The truth was he had about a half a day a week left to devote to this job. And I'm surprised as a result of his public service that he could afford the airplane ticket up here. [Laughter] But I am delighted that he and all of you are here.

I also want to say I'm glad I got here for a few minutes of Senator Hatch's speech. Believe it or not, we're good friends. [Laughter] And it's nearly mined him in the Republican caucus. [Laughter] And so he has to give me a little grief when he shows up. I would say in my own defense that it is true that tax receipts--I heard him talking about the tax burden--it is true that tax receipts as a percentage of national income are up. But the reason is, unemployment is low and incomes have grown so much. The actual percentage of income being paid by middle income families is the lowest it's been in over 35 years. So I think that's worth pointing out.

I also would say, on the education issue--I heard what he said about burden of regulations--the Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, who was Governor of South Carolina for many years, has cut two-thirds of the regulations and paperwork burdens on local school districts that existed when we became the new administration in 1993. And in fact, our administration, even though we've had to promulgate some new regulations over the whole Federal Government, has gotten rid of more regulations, some 16,000 pages of them, in every Federal agency than were eliminated in the previous 12 years. And we have the smallest Government since 1960. So I think the record will look pretty good on that score.

But I also want to say I appreciate the fact that Orrin Hatch has worked with me, particularly, to try to encourage the orderly confirmation of judges, when so many people would rather not deal with that issue. I've done my best to take that Out of politics, and I think it's important.

I want to thank you for several things. If I could begin, I want to thank you for what you do every day when you're not being politically active. I want to thank you for what you do day-in and day-out to give personal insurance service to people across this country. I want to thank you for the work you're doing to modernize insurance, to build a presence on-line and in E-commerce. And I want to ask you to continue to help to preserve the privacy of your clients in the face of this new technology.

On Sunday I went to Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan, not too far from Detroit, to talk about the promise of the Internet age and the challenges to our privacy, including our financial privacy, that it presents. And I think it's very, very important that we maximize the possibilities of technology without giving up the American people's right to determine what basic information is or is not in the hands of people that they don't know and whom they have not approved to receive the information.

I also want to congratulate you for diversifying this organization, by reaching out to the National African American Insurance Organization and by appointing the first woman to your board. The First Lady, particularly, thought that was a good idea. [Laughter]

And I want to thank you for the quality of representation you have here in Washington. We have not always agreed over the last 7 years, but I have always been impressed by the straight talk and the honest, open effort that I have seen from your organization to try to work out difficulties, work out genuine differences. And when we have worked together, we have done some very good things indeed.

We've worked together to get our economy moving again. When I became President, we had a $295 billion deficit. It was scheduled to be nearly $400 billion this year. The debt of the country had quadrupled over the previous 12 years, and I knew there was no easy way to get rid of it. So we passed an economic plan in 1993 that took us about 70 percent of the way there, and then we passed a bipartisan balanced budget in 1997 that had big majorities in both parties in both Houses supporting eliminating the deficit entirely.