Remarks on the economic plan in Hyde Park, New York - Bill Clinton's speech, February 19, 1993 - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 1, 1993

I know what you're thinking. Please don't say that. |Laughter~ So, forgive me, Senator Moynihan, I had to say that. |Laughter~ But you get it. I mean, it's squeezing the life out of the money you're giving up in taxes.

The second reason, even more important, is the more money the Government borrows every year, the less money there is for people to borrow in the private sector and the higher the cost of the money is. Just since the election, since we made it clear that there was going to be a determined effort to lower the deficit, interest rates long-term have dropped considerably. I'll come back to this in a moment.

But if you think about it, this year if we pass this budget, everybody in America who borrows long-term to finance a business, to finance a car, to finance a home, to finance credit card purchases, everybody that has access to variable interest rates will have those interest rates go down. And in my judgment, virtually everybody who has credit will save more money in lower interest costs than they will pay in higher taxes. Now, that's very, very important.

Now, how are we going to do this? The first thing we have to do, and I mean the first, is to cut inessential Government spending. I've been President 4 weeks, and I've found things that I wouldn't have believed. The White House, when I became President, was running on Jimmy Carter's telephone system and Lyndon Johnson's switchboard. |Laughter~ In this--true--high wage, this high technology era with a procurement system that would have broken Einstein's brain. |Laughter~

There were a lot of things that needed to be changed in the Federal Government, and there still are. But in 4 weeks, we have cut the White House staff by 25 percent, starting at the beginning of the next fiscal year, and reorganized the White House so it will work more efficiently; not just cut but serve better. We have authorized in this budget administrative cuts in every Government Department, totaling 14 percent over the next 4 years for a savings of $9 billion. And there have been 150 specific cuts in Government programs, including programs that help a lot of good people but that I don't think we can afford at the present level anymore, programs like the two uranium enrichment facilities we have when we now know we only need one. And I was in one congressional district where one of those two facilities are this morning.

You can say these cuts are not difficult, but when you look into the eyes of people who may be personally affected by them, they are, including reductions in the interest subsidies to the Rural Electrification Authority, something that brought electricity to my relatives in my State and which is still a very major force. Things that have some good in them, but we simply can't afford them.

We've cut things out that have no good purpose anymore as far as I can tell, including a whole slew of commissions. Do you remember when we had the Tall Ships come into New York Harbor for the Bicentennial? That was a long time ago. Remember that? There's still a Bicentennial Commission. |Laughter~ That's just one example. It's the funniest, but not the most costly. There are a lot of others.