Remarks in an interview with the Alabama press - Bill Clinton speech - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 26, 1993

July 21, 1993

The President. First of all, let me thank you for coming, and thank you for understanding why we didn't do the entire hour today. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. And I have reviewed your schedule. I hope you found it helpful coming here, and I'm very glad to see you. I saw some of you walking across the street today.

Go ahead, sir.

Economic Program

Q. The Vice President was just talking about Senator Dole's alternative plan, and your administration's spokesman has been very critical and much more so of Republicans in recent days, what they've put forward. He used the phrase that the Republicans didn't have the guts to make the tough choices. I was just curious whether you would extend that characterization to Senator Shelby, the cosponsor of that Republican plan.

The President. Well, let me characterize the plan. I mean, what bothered me about the plan was that it seemed to me to run the risk - I thought there were two things wrong with it. First of all, it had a lot less deficit reduction in it than our plan does. Secondly, under the guides of not taxing the middle class, it imposed no new revenues on the people who were paying 70 percent of our load, that is, people with incomes over $200,000 a year. That group of people, the top one percent of Americans, derived, according to all serious, studies, about 70 percent of the gains, economic gains of the 1980's, and their taxes were reduced while middle class Americans had their incomes stagnant and their taxes increased in the aggregate in the 1980's. The third problem that I saw with it was that even the deficit reduction figure that they alleged was actually quite a bit smaller because they had what we call a plug in it. And I think that must be what the Vice President must have referred to. That is, there was, I don't know. $65 billion, $70 billion, something like that where they said, "Well, we'll cut this, but we'll tell you later how we're going to do it. We'll figure that out somewhere down the road. "

Our plan really from the beginning was dedicated toward being taken seriously by the experts in this field who very often have almost made fun of Presidential budgets, so that it could really make a contribution to lowering interest rates as well as lowering the deficit. The budget expert for Price Waterhouse, for example, was quoted recently in a Philadelphia Enquirer piece as saying I had the much better side of the argument on deficit reduction as compared with Senator Dole and that it was the first genuinely honest, credible budget to be presented by a Chief Executive in a decade, and that, in fact, the only thing that I have understated was the amount of deficit reduction in it, that it would probably reduce the deficit considerably more than we had claimed.

So that's all I can say. I don't want to get into characterizing Senator Dole or Senator Shelby except to say I know these are difficult decisions. But this is not a narrow dispute over whether we should have some sort of energy tax, which I think we should because the energy tax, let me say, essentially permits us to fund some mechanisms for people to avoid paying the higher taxes through tax incentives but only if they're trying to create jobs.

And I'd like to just make that point, if I might, very quickly. This bill also has - I think it will have in its final form, it did in the House version and I think will in the final form in the Senate, an increase in the expensing provisions for small businesses. It will more than double under either provision. And what that means is - and I want to hammer this home, because this affects Alabama - this means over 90 percent of the small businesses in the country, the Sub-chapter S corporations, that is, that's in the small businesses in the Tax Codes, over 90 percent of them will not only pay no tax increase under the income tax provisions but, in fact, will get a tax break if they simply reinvest more in their companies because of this Code. Now, no one has been saying that except me. But it's a fact. The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a great article on that issue.

Secondly, the new business and small business capital gains provision enables people to cut the tax they would pay on their gains from investments in companies with a capitalization of $50 million or less when those investments are held for 5 years or more. That is a huge tax break designed to create jobs. Similarly, we do much more for research and development tax credit, for the education and training workers by employers, for investments to get the real estate and home building market going again, all those things. So that even those Americans, that top one and a half percent or so that will be affected by these income tax raises, the substantial income tax raises, they can lower those rates if they'll just simply turn around and invest their money in creating jobs in America. So that's why I wanted this plan and why I still think it's way the best.

Yes?

Q. we have heard the figure all day of 82,000 new jobs for Alabama. When you're talking about a State, though, that has in some counties people with less than a 7th grade education, they're not trained to do the type of technical jobs that you're talking about. What kind of jobs - and I've been trying to pin this down all day - what kind of jobs are Alabamans trained to handle that would bring in these 82,000 new jobs for our people?