THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate
Release October 10, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT RECEPTION FOR REPRESENTATIVE WISE
Private Residence
Washington, D.C.
7:05 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Well, let me say, I'm delighted to be here for
a number of reasons. One is, I'm kind of tied down, you know, working and
trying to get the Congress out of town, and I don't have much time to travel,
and I meant to go see Versailles this month, so Chez Rockefeller is almost as
good. (Laughter.) And I always love coming back here.
Secondly, Jay and Sharon have been great friends to Hillary and me for
many, many years. We served as governors together. We sat together, we
cogitated together, we voted together, we did a lot of good things together.
And our states were remarkably similar in the years when we served as governors.
And maybe the similarity in part explains the fact that the people of West
Virginia had been so very good to me in 1992 and 1996, something for which I am
profoundly grateful. And so I wanted to be here for all those reasons.
I also wanted to be here because Bob Wise has also been good to me in the
Congress. He has been an excellent congressman for West Virginia and for the
United States, he's been a great ally of the good things that we have done. He
has also been a ferocious advocate for West Virginia.
And finally, I wanted to be here because I believe, as Jay said, that it
really matters to the governor. I was governor for a dozen years; I don't think
I ever would have gotten tired of doing it. And if I had thought that the
country was being aggressively moved in 1991, I think I'd probably still be
doing it.
But what I'd like to say tonight is to try to tie together the decision the
people of West Virginia have to make in national politics with the decision you
have to make in state politics, and explain why they are so important.
When I was a governor in Arkansas, we didn't have an unemployment rate
below the national average in the last 10 years I served as governor, except
one. The year I ran for President, we were first or second -- I never saw the
final figures -- in job growth, and we finally got going. But it took 10 years
to turn -- to take our state through the kind of economic transition that a lot
of the rural states with agricultural-based economies and industries that were
fading away needed to go through. And they've done very well in the last eight
years, and I'm grateful for that.
But the first thing I want to say is, it's hard for governors to see if the
nation has a bad economic problem. Therefore, the country has a big decision to
make about whether you want to continue to change in the direction that we're
in, which means that people like Jay, as he said, have to take a tax cut that's
much less than the one you'll get from the other side, but we'll have a tax cut
that will deal with the things people need most in terms of education and child
care and long-term care and retirement savings, and we'll have enough money left
to invest in education and to keep paying this debt down.
If you have their tax cut plus the Social Security privatization, plus all
their spending promises, we're back in deficits, which means higher interest
rates, lower job growth, and you all know that states like West Virginia and
Arkansas get hurt the worst when the economy turns down, job growth slows down,
interest rates are higher, it costs more to borrow money to start new businesses
and expand them, it means fewer jobs, less wage increases, and a lower stock
market. So I think our deal works pretty well for everybody up and down the
income scale, and I think we should continue it.
Now, having said that, I can tell you that if you have a good economic
policy, how well a state does depends, in no small measure, on how aggressive
and creative and consistent the governor is. And Bob Wise is aggressive,
creative, and consistent. I would put those adjectives in different order,
depending on what day it is. But he is always there. This guy will work; he'll
show up every morning, he'll be there at night, and he'll be thinking about
something new he can do; and he'll push, and that's important.
The second thing I would like to say is, there's a great interest in this
country today on education, and the voters have to decide. Both the candidates
for President favor accountability; I personally think that the Vice President's
accountability system is better than Governor Bush's, but I don't want to get
into that, because it takes -- that's an hour discussion. But we favor
accountability plus; that is, we believe we should help have smaller classes,
more well-trained teachers in the early grades, modernize schools. I did an
event on all this at a West Virginia school -- (inaudible) -- Senator Byrd, you
may remember -- preschool, after-school and summer school programs for all the
kids, and tax deductions to send your kids to college. That's what we believe.
The federal government only provides seven percent of the total education
budget of the nation. It was nine percent under President Johnson; it slipped
with -- it was heading to five when I took office; and we've reversed it. But I
think it's a mistake to do this voucher proposal, in part because we only have
seven percent of the money, and it costs a lot of money to do a little good.
Even if you assume it's a good thing, it costs a lot of money to do a
little good. And we now know something that we did not have the research on
when Jay Rockefeller and I served as governor. We now know, from research, how
to turn around failing schools. We have the research. There is no excuse,
therefore, for us not to be doing it. But I can tell you, if you make the right
decision in the presidential race, and we get a good result in the congressional
races, it still won't amount to a hill of beans if the governor has no
consuming, passionate, consistent interest in education.
Now, I'll just give you one other example. In 1992 -- in '91 and '92, when
I ran for President, I used to talk to Jay Rockefeller all the time about health
care, because I knew how much he cared about it. I knew he knew more about it
than I did, and he had a big influence on me on this issue. When Governor Bush
tells you that we had eight years and didn't do anything, that's just not true.
When we took office, Medicare was supposed to go broke last year. It's now
alive until 2026 -- we put 27 years on the life of Medicare. That's the longest
life it's had since it was created in 1965. And you can now keep your health
insurance if you change jobs in a period of sickness. We have a lot more
preventive care for -- under Medicare -- for breast cancer screenings, for
prostate screenings; we've dramatically diabetes care; we've insured two and
half million kids on the Children's Health Insurance program; and the number of
uninsured people in American went down last year for the first time since 1987.
So we've done a lot, but there's still a lot to do. And we're in a big
debate. Jay and I were just talking about the debate we're having with the
Republicans now. We actually cut too much money out of the Medicare program in
the Balanced Budget Act. We have to put some back in. We believe that we ought
to help the hospitals, the nursing homes, and the community and home providers,
and make sure that we can maintain the fabric of health care. Fifty-five
percent of the money in the Republicans' budget goes to the HMOs. This is a
huge issue that will affect the ability of the next governor of West Virginia to
protect the health care of the country.
So there's big partisan issues here -- whether you're for the patients'
bill of rights, whether you believe everybody -- all the old people in the
country, the retired people -- I hope to be one of them one of these days --
should have access to affordable medicine -- 65 is not old anymore; if you live
to be 65 in America today, your life expectancy is 82. And the Human Genome
Project will mean young women within a decade -- I'll predict it; you want and
see if I'm right -- I believe within a decade young women will come home from
the hospital with babies that will have a life expectancy of 90 years. That's
what I believe will happen because of the Human Genome Project.
But I think this is all-important, and this is a matter of national policy.
Now, having said that, let me tell you that when we made the agreement with the
Republicans in 1997, on the Balanced Budget, we agreed to give the money to all
the states to design a children's health insurance program. And you've got
states that are just doing fabulously with it.
In states, you can never predict -- Alaska -- with a lot of desperately
poor people living, all strewed out from here to yonder has an enormously high
enrollment. Why? Because the governor wanted the kids enrolled. Arizona has a
very low enrollment. Why? Because the legislature asked to be passed a bill
prohibiting the children from being enrolled in the schools where they are.
Because the legislative majority there -- I need to say, of the other party --
saw this as some great scheme to socialize medicine. All they're doing is
paying for medicine -- for medical coverage -- for kids in low-income working
families. And everybody else is somewhere in between.
But you get the point. If you want children in West Virginia to have good
health care, it doesn't matter what we do in Washington, even if we have good
policy, unless the governor cares enough to make sure that maximum efforts are
made in an intelligent way to take care of the families. And West Virginia is
just like Arkansas -- you've got a whole lot of people who work like crazy, work
40 or 50 hours a week for low incomes who cannot afford health insurance. This
is a big deal to you.
So what I want to say is, obviously, you know, I'm interested in the races
for Congress, especially one Senate race, and I'm passionately committed to the
campaign of the Vice President and Senator Lieberman. But I'm telling you, I
spent a dozen years as a governor, and I worked with some of the ablest people I
ever met in that period, and I think I know something about West Virginia. It
really matters. You need somebody that is creative, aggressive and consistent;
somebody that understands the economy, education and health care. He does; he
should win; and I hope you won't quit helping him tonight.
I know this is a close race. Listen, it's hard to beat any incumbent
governor when the economy is doing well. I used to tell everybody, if the
economy was better, I could have a lobotomy and get reelected -- (laughter) --
when I was running. It's hard. But he is doing very well, and he's doing very
well because people sense these things about him. So we still -- we've got more
than a month left in this campaign, folks. And if you can give him any more
money, you ought to. And if you can't give him any more money, you ought to go
home and start talking to people about why this matters.
But I'm just -- we have got a chance here to see stakes that have been left
out and left behind for a long time, and if we could just keep this economy
going -- really balloon, and do well. But it will matter profoundly who the
governor is. And I think, again, you need somebody that understands how
Washington works and how it affects West Virginia; somebody that's committed to
jobs, schools and health care; and somebody that's intelligent, creative,
aggressive and consistent. He is.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 7:16 P.M. EDT
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