Remarks and a question-and-answer session at the Cleveland City Club

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 31, 1994

October 24, 1994

The President. Thank you. It's kind of nice to be out of Washington. And it's very nice to be back here for my third appearance. On the way in I told Steve, I said, "Shoot, if I show up again, you're going to have to start charging me dues." He said, "You've forgotten Senator Metzenbaum's already paid your dues." [Laughter] So I thank you, Senator, for paying my dues.

I'm glad to be joined here by so many guests and especially by some of your distinguished political leaders. I want to thank Howard Metzenbaum, as he leaves the Senate, for the things he's done for Ohio and for the United States over the years.

This is not what I came to talk about, but I want to mention in particular a bill that he got into the very last set of bills that passed in the filibuster-wild Senate at the end of the session. It's a bill that has achieved, finally, some long overdue national notice, to make it easier for parents to adopt children and to make it easier to get these kids out of long-term interminable delays in foster homes and into solid adoptive homes. And it's a great contribution to what I think ought to be the pro-family position of the United States of America. I thank you for that, sir. It was great.

I'm glad to be here with Senator Glenn and Congressman Fingerhut, Congressman Stokes, Congressman Sawyer, Congressman Hoke, former Congressman Mary Rose Oakar is here and as an Arab-American is going to the Middle East with the American delegation. I'm glad to see you here. Mayor White, I thank you for meeting me at the airport last night at midnight. I thought, now, there is a guy who is leaving no stone unturned. I thought Cleveland already had all the Federal money the law allowed, and there was Mike at the airport at midnight. [Laughter]

Your ex-treasurer, our new Treasurer, Mary Ellen Withrow is here. [Applause] Thank you. The only person happier than I was when Mary Ellen Withrow was appointed was Lloyd Bentsen, the Secretary of the Treasury, because you can't print a new dollar bill until you've got a Treasurer, and he didn't have his name on any dollar bills. So after Mary Ellen was confirmed, Lloyd Bentsen sent me the first dollar bill with his name on it and with her name on it, which is framed in the White House.

I'm glad to see my friend Joel Hyatt here, and so many other friends of mine here in Ohio. I thank you for coming.

Eighteen months ago I had the privilege of speaking here at your club and outlining our economic programs to get the economy moving again. That was on May 10th of 1993. Ninety days after I spoke to this distinguished gathering, Congress passed that economic program by a landslide, you may remember, one vote in both Houses. [Laughter] As the Vice President always says, he's the most successful member of my administration; whenever he votes, we win. [Laughter]

Today I wanted to come back here to discuss with you the progress that's been made and what we still have to do and the decisions that lie before you as citizens of this great country. We have made an important beginning with a comprehensive economic strategy designed to empower American workers to compete and win in the 21st century. That is, after all, our mission.

The key elements of the strategy are simple and direct and important: First, reduce the deficit; second, expand trade and intensify the efforts of the United States Government to be a partner with American business in doing business beyond our borders; third, increase our investment in education and training, in technology and defense conversion; fourth, bring the benefits of free enterprise to areas which have been isolated from it, in our inner cities and rural areas, with new strategies, including but not limited to welfare reform; fifth, reinvent the Federal Government, make it smaller, more effective, less regulatory, more efficient.

These strategies have all been implemented. And I want to go through them point by point, but I want to say what is clearly obvious. The implementation of these strategies required a reversal of the policies of the past 12 years. It required much more aggressive, innovative partnership with the private sector. We recognized that Government's role cannot be either to save the economy, because we don't have the capacity to do that in the global economy, or to sit on the sidelines but instead to do everything we can to create the right climate, the right conditions and to empower people so that they can compete and win by taking responsibility for themselves and their families. The increasing changes in the world make this imperative.

The course of the last 21 months is very different from the previous course, as I have said, and one of the great questions in this election season is whether we will press on this course or return to the course we abandoned just 21 months ago, a course with easy promises and superficial attraction, but which is a proven failure. We cannot afford to bankrupt the country when we need to invest and grow the economy.