The president's news conference

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 23, 1995

The President. Good morning. The Congress is about to take some votes that I believe will move this country in the wrong direction. Before they do it, I want to urge them to think again. There's a right way to balance this budget and a wrong way. I strongly believe the Republicans in Congress are taking the wrong way.

On Medicare, the House is voting on a $270 billion cut in Medicare that will evis-cerate the health care system for our older Americans. It goes far beyond what is necessary to secure the Medicare Trust Fund. Our plan to secure the Medicare Trust Fund secures it for just as long as the Republican plan at less than half the cost and with far less burden on our seniors.

The House plan, by contrast, actually weakens existing law on waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare program, which is a serious problem. And therefore, it will undermine our efforts to save funds through cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse, as the Attorney General has outlined. On the other hand, it increases costs on older Americans dramatically. That is the wrong way.

So my message to the Republicans is simple: I hope you will think again; I will not let you destroy Medicare; and I will veto this bill. I have to do that to protect the people of the United States and to protect the integrity of this program.

On taxes, just last night we learned from the Republicans' own Joint Committee on Taxation that more than half of the American people who live in the group earning under $30,000 will pay more taxes if the Republican economic plan passes. Why? Because they have a $43-billion tax hike targeted at working families. Now this doesn't count the cost to working families of the increases in college loans, the child support collection fees, the Medicare increases, the Medicaid increases, all told, over $140 billion of taxes, fees, and other increases on the most vulnerable people in our country and on working families.

So again, I would say, think again. I won't let you raise taxes on working families $48 billion. That is not the right way to balance the budget. It isn't fair, and it won't happen. These bills undermine our values, our values of supporting both work and family, our values of being responsible and creating opportunity. They are not necessary to balance the budget.

Meanwhile, Congress is lagging behind on its other business. For the budget this year - the fiscal year, as all of you know, ended 3 weeks ago, and they have still sent me only 3 of the 13 appropriations bills. Last year, all 13 were here and signed into law by the beginning of the fiscal year.

It's been 6 months since the Oklahoma City bombing killed 169 of our fellow Americans and 6 months since congressional leaders promised that they would pass the anti-terrorism legislation by Memorial Day. They still haven't passed the bill. They haven't even scheduled it for a final vote. I might add also, one of the important items in their contract which I did support, the line-item veto, has still not been passed by the Congress and sent to me. And perhaps most troubling of all, because they refuse to extend the debt limit, they are threatening to plunge our country into default for the first time in the entire history of the Republic. This would, of course, mean higher interest rates, which would increase the deficit we both want to reduce, and it would also lead to higher home mortgage costs for millions of homeowners whose mortgages are tied to Federal interest rates.

I was told this morning by the Council of Economic Advisers probably somewhere between 7 and 10 million homeowners have mortgages that are tied to Federal interest rates. So again, my message to Congress on this issue is simple: We must not play political games with the good faith and credit of the United States. Pass the debt limit, and I will sign it.

It's time for Congress to turn back from passing extreme measures that never will become law and instead to work with me for the American people to balance this budget in a way that advances our values and supports our interests. That is what we ought to do. We can still do that, it is what I still believe we will do.

1993 Budget

Now, I can only imagine what the first question is. [Laughter] Wait a minute, let me just say one thing. Before you ask this question, I want to say something about my speech - well, the two speeches I gave in which I made reference to the economic plan of 1993. If anything I said was interpreted by anybody to imply that I am not proud of that program, proud of the people who voted for it, or that I don't believe it was the right thing to do, then I shouldn't have said that, because I am very proud of it. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I am proud of the people in Congress who voted for it. And the results speak for themselves. After all, that program actually did reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over 7 years. That program drove down interest rates. That program created an economic climate in which the American people were able to produce 7 1/2 million new jobs, 2 1/2 million new homeowners, a record number of new businesses, and put this country moving in the right direction.