REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON MACON-GIBB SENIOR CENTER MACON, GA SEPTEMBER 1, 1992 Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Mayor, I'm glad to be back in Macon, in big Biff (phonetic) County. And this is my first trip since the primary, so I guess I ought to thank you for your wonderful vote here in the primary. I also want to thank those of you who asked about Hilary. Three people said, son, if you'd just send her, you wouldn't have to come back here any more. I want to thank all the people who are not senior citizens who are out there beyond the ropes. I'll be out there in just a minute; if you'll wait for me, I want to come shake hands with you. And I want to thank all of you here that I haven't shaken hands yet with, I want to say hi to you. But I thought that I should make my remarks first, because it's kind of hot, and I didn't want anybody to get too hot. I want to talk today--I want to first of all thank all of you who are responsible for bringing the senior citizens out. When I turned 46 a few days ago, a friend of mine sent me a card with a quote from the great Roman orator Cicero, who said, and I quote: Of this I am certain, old age begins at 46. So here we are together, folks. I wanted to come here to meet with this group of senior citizens today to try to illustrate a profound difference between me and President Bush on issues that everyone agrees need to be addressed. We all know that we've got to do something about the federal deficit. We all know that we've got to do something about health care costs. But when George Bush says there's a fundamental difference in this election, he's right. And he's especially right when it comes to dealing with the budget deficit and health care costs, and the impact of our decisions on the elderly and the veterans; the young; and the other people in this country who need some help from their government. Mr. Bush believes that the way to make the economy grow is to put more wealth in the hands of the wealthy, even if it means less opportunity in the lives of the middle class. But I believe the way to make the economy grow is to invest in our children's education, invest in our workers' skills, invest in our family's health care, and put some discipline back into the federal budget by asking the wealthy to pay their fair share, and controlling health care costs where the waste is most flagrant among insurance companies, and drug companies, and bureaucracies, and regulations. Mr. Bush wants to put money first, as he and Mr. Reagan have for 12 years. But I want to put people first. You can see the difference between us in whose won and whose lost for the last 12 years; whose been helped and whose gotten hurt; while Mr. Bush and his friends have been running our nation. For the past 12 years, they've rewarded the people who've cut corners and cut deals and made money in the short term. And they've punished people who work hard, pay their taxes, and play by the rules. For the first time since the roaring '20s, the top one percent of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Let me say that one more time: for the first time since the 1920s, the top one percent of Americans control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. But while the wealthy have certainly been winners in the last few years, the rest of America has been the loser. Ten years ago we led the world in wages; now we're 13th. And as the recent census figures demonstrate, most Americans who are working are actually working harder for less money than they were making 10 years ago. You can see the fundamental difference Mr. Bush talks about in the passion of his presidency, making sure that the wealthy pay lower taxes. He cares so much about reducing taxes for the wealthy that his number one economic priority is a short-term across-the-board $31 billion capital gains tax cut for the wealthy that will give the average millionaire $100,000, but unlike an investment tax credit for new plants and equipment here in Macon, or a tax break for long-term investment for people who start new small businesses, his capital gains cut won't create new jobs for the rest of us. He cares so much about protecting the wealthy that he even asks theInternal Revenue Service to ease up on tax audits for the wealthy and crack down on middle class taxpayers. He cares so much about protecting special interests that last week he called me a fear monger because I said that we ought to crack down on tax evasion by foreign companies doing business in the United States. Now, let me say, I didn't ask to raise the corporate taxes on foreign companies. All I did was to note that in the 1980s foreign corporations in America increased their income by 65 percent and their taxes wentdown by 15 percent. If your income went up by 65 percent, would your taxes go down by 15 percent? Not on your life. And because I said that foreign companies ought to pay their fair share of taxes just the way that American companies or American individuals would, Mr. Bush said that I was a fearmonger. The fundamental difference between us is that he wants more of the same, four more years where the rich get richer and the middle class and the working poor and the elderly do worse. If you want a taste of that future--and this is the point I wanted to make today because it hasn't gotten enough attention--just look at the budget cuts that he's proposed to Congress. Because in the face of a $400 billion deficit, the biggest in our history, he is promising even more tax cuts with most of the benefits going to the wealthy. He is going to sock it to the rest of us in the budget cuts. You can see the fundamental difference between Mr. Bush and me in a Bush administration document most of you never heard of called the midsession review. It spells out the budget cuts he wants to make this year to make up a little bit for the debt that he and Mr. Reagan have piled up. He boasted about these budget cuts recently when he addressed the American Legislative Exchange Council on August the 6th, and here's what he said. I have fought for a cap on mandatory federal spending with specific proposals for savings. Now here is the midsession review, and in it tells exactly and specifically how to get the deficit down. It's been sitting and languishing up in Congress, who do not want to make the tough decisions that I have recommended year after year. Now, what are those tough decisions that Mr. Bush has recommended? And who is he being tough on? What George Bush's latest budget shows is that before he asked the wealthy, whose income went up and their taxes went down, in the 1980s, before he asks the wealthy to pay a penny more in taxes; before he asks foreign companies to obey present American tax laws; and before he gives up his dream of yet another tax cut on millionaires, he is going to make life a lot less kind and a lot less gentle for the rest of us. George Bush's new budget hits hardest at the older Americans who worked their way out of the Great Depression; saved the world from Naziism and fascism; and gave my generation opportunities they never dreamed of. Of the $294 billion in budget cuts over the next five years, Mr. Bush proposes more than $127 billion come from Medicare. Now this is the same George Bush who said Medicare was socialized medicine back in 1964; and who in 1990 tried to cut Medicare by $66 billion. Now he is going after Medicare the same way he has gone after middle class taxpayers. Most of our $30 million Medicare beneficiaries come from middle class families, and George Bush's budget makes the average Medicare beneficiary pay $2,000 more over the next five years for the same health care. His budget helps the average millionaire pay $100,000 less in taxes, but makes the average Medicare beneficiary earning under $20,000 a year pay $400 and more for health care. If you're a millionaire, his budget gives you a capital gains cut that will generate $500,000 over the next five years, but if you're one of 30 million Americans who depend on Medicare, his budget makes you $2,000 poorer over the next five years. Four more years of George Bush means more millionaires with vacation homes, and more older Americans having trouble paying their gas and electric bills in their own homes. At a time when more families are dipping into their savings to pay for health care and housing and education; at a time when most families are working harder for less money; this proposal means elderly people and their children are going to have to pay again and again. They want to cut Medicare by eliminating services now provided, or by asking the elderly to pay more for them. But they do nothing--and listen to this again--they do nothing to control the cost of health care. The exploding insurance costs. The exploding paperwork costs. The exploding drug costs. The fact that we have no incentives in America, like all other advanced countries do, to control health care costs for everyone. Already this year, the average elderly person is spending a higher percentage of their income on health care than they were back in 1965 before Medicare came in. Already the gaps in Medicare coverage cause great hardship. I don't know how many elderly Americans there are who are just a little too well off to be on Medicaid and depend on Medicare, but they have big drug bills every month, and they're choosing right now between medicine and food on their tables, right now, before these cuts go in. When you cut Medicare, and you don't control health care costs, you hurt more than elderly people. Because what will happen--what will happen when you cut payments to hospitals and payments to doctors, without controlling costs? I'll tell you what will happen, the same thing that happens today: the costs will be passed by the providers onto the people who have health insurance. Although younger people in the audience who have health insurance will have your insurance premiums go up, each of us who pay for a health insurance premium will pay hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars more, in the next five years, because of the stubborn refusal of this administration to control health care costs, and instead, their determination to shift the government's costs off onto the private sector. So our families will pay more in health insurance; businesses will pay more for health insurance. They'll either cut their payroll or drop their health insurance, so there will be more people without any health care, and their costs will be passed on to the rest of us. According to an independent study done recently by the University of North Carolina, nearly 1.8 million workers will lose their jobs over the next five years because of the Medicare cuts and the Bush administration's refusal to control health care costs. There is a right way to do this. Other nations are doing it. We're already spending 30 percent more on health care than any country in the world. We can control costs, but to do it right, you have to control costs for everybody: the people who are buying insurance, and the people who are getting health care from the government. You have to start with the insurance costs, with the paperwork costs, with the drug costs. You have to give people incentives to get care early, primary preventive care, instead of late, when it's too expensive. We can do it, but you have to have a president who will take on these special interests. George Bush won't, and I will. There is another group of people that get hurt a lot in this midsession recommendation for budget cuts: America's veterans. People who have already paid a steep price for freedom, and often have to give up later benefits and health opportunity and vigor because of their earlier service. Under George Bush, veterans' benefits have already been cut, and the veterans' health network is crumbling, as many of you in this audience doubtless know. His new budget will cut benefits earned by veterans by $3.5 billion over the next five years. He wants them to pay more in fees, and in services that used to cost little or nothing, like required downpayments and in higher fees for home mortgages, and more payments for medical treatment. He wants to make it more difficult to take advantage of education. Even as education costs have skyrocketed, Mr. Bush as Mr. Reagan before him fought to keep the GI bill limited to $300 a month. He wants them to wait longer for their pension and claims to be processed. The VA bureaucracy is already so overburdened and understaffed that it can take longer to get your check than it took to liberate Kuwait in the Gulf War. This administration wants veterans, like elderly people to get less health care and pay more for it. The VA health system is already in trouble after years of inadequate funding, going up at far less than the rate of inflation. Wards have been closed and services limited. Equipment isn't being bought, and technology is not being modernized. The new budget has the unkindest cut of all. It cuts benefits to disabled veterans by $10.3 billion over the next four years. That would slash benefits completely for 1.2 million disabled veterans. Mr. Bush wants to go back on that historic commitment Americans have made and veterans have trusted for decades; I don't. He's right, there is a fundamental difference between the two of us. He puts wealthy special interests first; I put people first. That's a fundamental difference. Now, let me say, this is not a matter of agreeing on the problems; this is a matter of disagreeing on the priorities. Do we have to get control of spending and reduce the debt? Yes, we do. The difference is how. I want a disciplined national system to control all health care costs, so that we can get the waste out of the system and the profiteering out of the system, not just hurt those who are most vulnerable. I want to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes for a change, and I do believe that people at very high levels of income should pay more for the government entitlement they get, including Medicare. But I don't want to hurt the middle class and the poor who are already poorer than they used to be, and paying more for health care. I want to reduce the federal employment by 100,000, not by firing people but by attrition. There are 600,000 federal employees who leave their jobs every year. We can reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, and put that money into investing in our future. I want to cut the administrative and paperwork costs to the federal government by three percent a year for four years. I want to freeze consultants' contract, like those $600 a hour lawyer fees for the Resolution Trust Corporation in the S&L bailout. I've given a whole list of budget cuts that I want to see done. And let me say this: unlike the present administration, I want to set an example. I have called for cutting the White House staff by 25 percent. Now, let's look at what they did. Between 1990 and 1991 the White House staff's budget increased in one year by 23 percent. Ten times the rate at which revenues are going up. While the president is telling elderly people to do without medical care, telling the veterans to do without health care, they increased the size of the White House staff by 23 percent in one year, ten times as much as revenues went up, even more than health care went up. What kind of example is that? They talk one way, and act another when their own interest is at stake. We have just about nine weeks, before the next election, to choose between the past and the future, between election year promises and our real economic plan; between more trickle down economics and investing in our people for a change. Together, we can have the courage to make the right choice. The choices we face will not be easy. The road ahead will be difficult and challenging. But we can meet the needs of this country and do it in a fair and decent way that puts our people first and rebuilds the American dream. The American dream has not failed. Mr. Bush's policies have, and it's time to change them. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all.