Remarks to the National Governors' Association conference

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 12, 1996

Thank you very much. Thank you, Governor Thompson, Governor Miller, fellow Governors and friends. It is always good to be back here, and I very much appreciate what you said, Governor Thompson. I must say, I also enjoyed standing outside in the hall and listening to the last three or four speakers discuss the last resolution. It made me homesick and proud that I once was a member of this body.

Let me begin, Governor, by congratulating you on the work that you have done on Medicaid, on welfare, and on a number of other issues. And let me also thank the lead Republican and Democratic Governors who worked on the Medicaid issue. I see you around this table. You were good enough to work with us in the White House to keep us up with what you were doing, to enter into intense discussions with us, and I'll have a little more to say about it in a minute. But this is, in any case, a very impressive accomplishment that all of you have voted for a new framework that will preserve the guarantee of health care coverage to the people who need it, and give the States the flexibility they need to operate the program.

Let me also say, in general, this Governors' conference has, I think, been in the best tradition of the National Governors' Association, as people have worked together in good faith across party lines to find real solutions to real problems.

I'd also like to express my appreciation to Senator Dole for what he said earlier here today, and the genuine spirit of cooperation that he evidenced in his remarks, I must say, was also evidenced in the more than 50 hours we have spent together in discussing the budget. And, like him, I believe we will get a budget deal. I didn't like everything he said about wanting to spend some more time around the White House next year. [Laughter.] But then again, I was a little concerned the other night when Gary Morris was singing at the White House, and I discovered that Governor Thompson and Governor Engler and Governor Voinovich were checking out Al Gore's office. [Laughter]

But it's good for America, this kind of competition. I also want to say, Governor Branstad, I was encouraged to hear Senator Dole say he thought we'd get a farm bill pretty soon. We've got a 15-year high in wheat prices and about an 18-year high in bean prices, and corn is about 3.60. We need a farm bill, and we need to strike while the iron's hot so we can keep this going.

This has been a good meeting for you, and it's been a good day for me. And yesterday and the day before, when you were at the White House, were good days, because I always enjoy working with the Governors.

As I said at the dinner, I think the framers would be pleased by this great debate in which we are engaged in Washington and in which you are also engaged. It goes beyond the very important questions of what government should do in our society and what we should not do, to the question of which level of government should do certain things and how they should be done. This movement is part of the sweeping changes now going on in our society.

We see that the changes in how we work and live together in a world that is dominated by information technologies and the markets of the global village are changing the way everybody does business. And I'd like for you to take just a minute before we get back into the substance of the issues that you've been working on to step back and look at the context in which this debate is taking place.

We are living in a world that includes dramatic changes in the nature of work, principally defined by work becoming more and more identified by the content of ideas and information, and less with physical labor. We have changes in the nature of work organizations: they're more flexible, they're less bureaucratic, and often they're smaller. It's interesting in that all the new businesses that have been created - new jobs that have been created in our country, for the last 15 years the Fortune 500 companies have reduced their aggregate employment in each of those years. In the last 3 years, however, small businesses owned by women alone have created more new jobs than the Fortune 500 has laid off - changes in the nature of work organizations.

And finally, there are dramatic changes in the nature of markets, both financial markets and markets for goods and services. They are more instantaneous in their movement and more worldwide in their scope.

Now these changes have given our country, with a strong and diverse economy, what I called in the State of the Union a great new age of possibility. I believe that. I believe that more of our people will be able to live out their own dreams than ever before. But these changes have also done what fundamental changes always do. They have led to a great uprooting in the patterns of life and work in America. And there are new challenges to us to preserve the American dream for all citizens who are willing to work for it, to maintain our cherished values and our leadership for peace and freedom.