Remarks on Returning Without Approval to the House of Representatives the District of Columbia, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill and an Exchange With Reporters

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 8, 1999

November 3, 1999

Shootings in Honolulu and Seattle

The President. Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that I join with all Americans in expressing shock and profound sorrow at the shootings which have occurred over the last 2 days in Honolulu and Seattle. I have been briefed on both situations. The Federal Government has offered all appropriate assistance to local officials. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and with their families.

Veto of H.R. 3064

Yesterday I returned from Oslo, Norway, where, with American support, Israeli and Palestinian leaders entered a new critical phase in their efforts to resolve their ancient conflict. Tomorrow I will begin a journey to places here in America that are only just beginning to feel the benefits of our remarkable economic recovery, an expansion which, in February, will become the longest in the history of our country. I will highlight new ideas and efforts that can make these communities and those like them all across America new markets for American investment, entrepreneurism, and opportunity.

In the last 7 years, our country has gone from conditions of economic distress, social division, and political drift to a nation headed in the right direction for the 21st century. But to truly fulfill our promise, we must all continue to do our jobs. And Congress, in that vein, must produce the right kind of budget, a budget that reflects the values of our people, respects the need for Government to live within its means, and looks to our future.

Moments ago I vetoed a bill because it does not meet those criteria, a Labor, Health, and Education bill that Congress sent me yesterday. The bill is a catalog of missed opportunities, misguided priorities, and mindless cuts in everything from education to national defense to the environment. It forces school children to pay for the failure of Congress to make responsible choices. And it fails to reflect our deepest values.

We value education. Yet this bill fails to invest the right way in education. It reneges on last year's bipartisan agreement to fund 100,000 new, highly trained teachers to reduce class size in the early grades. And at the same time, it opens the door for Federal funds to be used for private school vouchers. We need more teachers in smaller classes in our public schools, instead.

The bill fails to include my initiative to demand accountability by helping school districts to turn around failing schools or close them down. And it shortchanges other priorities, from enhancing worker safety to expanding child care to immunizing our children, at the moment when we have finally reached our goal of immunizing 90 percent of them, to protecting Americans from the threat of bioterrorism.

We value fiscal responsibility. But this bill abdicates that responsibility by imposing across-the-board cuts that clearly will damage vital priorities, even as the Republican majority has larded the budget with wasteful projects.

For example, Congress would spend hundreds of millions of dollars for projects the Pentagon did not ask for. Yet this bill would force the military to cut jobs for tens of thousands of soldiers and other military personnel. It would mean fewer FBI agents to fight crime, no food assistance to tens of thousands of low-income women, infants and children, and less help to master the basics to over 100,000 children in our poorest school districts.

We value a clean environment. But the budget Congress has passed would roll back important environmental protections. We value the safety of our families and the fact that we now have the lowest crime rate in 30 years and the lowest murder rate in 32 years. But their budget fails to put 50,000 new community police officers in our neighborhoods where the crime rates are highest, to keep those rates coming down until we're the safest big country in the world. We value peace and freedom and security. But their budget would undermine our ability to lead the world in pursuit of these goals.

Some Members of Congress have said they're willing to restore funding for one critical effort they left out of the bill that was passed, our commitment to the Middle East peace process. That is very good but not good enough. We also need a budget that will enable America to advance our critical interests all around the world, including paying our U.N. dues, continuing America's work to reduce nuclear weapon threats in Russia, and doing our fair share of the world's efforts to reduce the debt of the poorest nations.

Now Congress is more than a month behind schedule. I know a lot of the Members want to leave town. But the American people want Congress to lead first and to do their work first. There are a lot of important matters that remain unfinished. Let me just mention a few of them.

Our Nation continues on this day to be reminded of the horrors of gun violence. We need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children. Congress needs to send me commonsense legislation that closes the gun show loophole, bans the importation of large ammunition clips, and has child safety locks as a requirement of new gun sales.