Remarks on Returning Without Approval to the House of Representatives the Death Tax Elimination Act of 2000 - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 4, 2000

August 31, 2000

Thank you very much. I want to thank Secretary Mineta and John Sumption and his wife, Margaret, for being here. Martin Rothenberg, thank you very much, and thank you, Sandra, for being here.

I was listening to them talk, wishing I didn't have to say a word. [Laughter] It made me proud to be an American, listening to those two people talk. Didn't they do a good job? [Applause]

Western Wildfires

Before I begin with the remarks I have on the estate tax, and since this is my only opportunity to speak to the American people through our friends in the press today, I need to make a statement about continuing efforts to combat one of the worst wildfire seasons in the history of America.

For months now, we have been marshaling Federal resources so that the men and women fighting these blazes out West will have the tools they need to protect our public and our lands. There are already 30,000 Federal, State, and local personnel engaged in the effort to fight the wildfires, including four full military battalions. Today I'm releasing another $90 million to ensure that the Federal firefighters have the resources they need. Now a total of $590 million has been spent on emergency funding to combat these fires. I want you to remember that for a point I want to make later in my remarks. These things happen.

There will be no shortage of human effort. Tomorrow we are dispatching a new marine battalion from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to help fight the Clear Creek fire in Idaho's Salmon-Challis National Forest. Last night we issued a disaster declaration for Montana and are expediting a similar request from Idaho.

There is a lot to be done out there. Those people are working hard. The Departments of Agriculture and the Interior have begun to move 2,000 Federal supervisors into the field to assist the firefighters and to get adequate compensation for people that are working long and very stressful hours.

Our Nation owes a great debt of gratitude to the firefighters, the managers, and their loved ones who are making extraordinary sacrifices. Many of them are literally risking their lives today in service to their neighbors and their country. Our losses this year in wildfires have been much, much, much greater than the 10-year average.

And I was out in Idaho recently, and I wish every American could see what they try to do with those fires and how fast they can move and how they can go from being a foot high to 100 feet high in no time at all. So we may have to do more out there, but they're doing their best to protect as much land and to protect the houses and lives of the people as possible.

Estate Tax Legislation Veto

Now, to the matter at hand. As Secretary Mineta said, 71/2 years ago we charted a course for a new economy, a new course focused on giving the American people the tools they needed to make the most of the information age and creating the conditions which would make sure that the hard work of our people would be rewarded. And we all know that since then, we've had the longest economic expansion in history, that we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years; we learned last week, the lowest violent crime rate in 28 years; and the highest homeownership in history.

We also had these horrible deficits and a debt which had quadrupled in the 12 years I took office, over the previous 200 years, and we've begun to pay it down at a record rate. This has effectively worked as a tax cut. Why? Because all the economic analyses show that when we went from record deficits to record surpluses and started paying the debt down, it's kept interest rates lower over these last 8 years, much lower than they otherwise would have been.

What has that been worth in tax cuts? Well, the Council of Economic Advisers says that on average it's worth $2,000 in lower home mortgages a year for the average home, $200 a year in lower car payments, $200 a year in lower student loan payments.

We have also supported tax cuts within the context of paying the debt down. For example, in the Balanced Budget Act, we had the HOPE scholarship tax credit and lifelong learning tax credits: the HOPE scholarship for the first 2 years of college, $1,500; and the lifelong learning credits for the junior and senior year and lifetime education, which can be even greater. Ten million families are taking advantage of that to pay for a college education this year.

The earned-income tax credit, which we doubled, which goes to lower income working people, will help $15 million families this year work their way into the middle class. The $500 child tax credit, which was a part of the Balanced Budget Act, will now go to 25 million families. We gave upper income people tax credits to invest in poor areas in America in the empowerment zones, and it's worked to generate thousands of jobs in some of the most distressed areas of the country.

In 1997 we also reduced the burden of the estate tax for small-business owners and family farmers by raising the threshold at which it applies. The typical American family today is paying a lower share of its income in Federal income taxes than at any time during the last 35 years. That is a pretty good thing to be able to say, and yet we're healthy financially because we have proceeded in a balanced and disciplined way.