Archive
Title: President's Remarks- 12/19/94 Press Conf.
Author: Office of the Press Secretary, White House
Date: December 19, 1994
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release December 19, 1994
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON THE MIDDLE CLASS BILL OF RIGHTS
Room 450
Old Executive Office Building
12:13 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Last week I outlined my proposal for
a Middle Class Bill of Rights to help the American
people restore the American Dream. The G.I. Bill
after World War II gave a generation Americans a
chance to build their own lives and their own
dreams. Now we can help a new generation of
hardworking people get the right education and
skills, raise their children, and keep their
families strong so that they can get ahead in the
new American economy.
I want to take just a moment to remind you of the
four features in that Bill of Rights. First, for a
family making less than $120,000, the tuition they
pay for post-secondary education, training and
retraining would be fully deductible from a taxable
income, phased up to $10,000 a year.
Second, for a family with an income of $75,000 a
year or less, a tax cut phased up to $500 a year for
every child under the age of 13. Third, for families
with incomes under $100,000 a year, the ability to
put away $2,000 tax-free into an IRA, and then
withdraw that money tax-free for a cost of
education, health care, first-time home, or the care
of an elderly parent.
Finally, we will make billions of dollars available
that the government normally spends itself through
separate job-training programs directly to workers,
who can decide on how best to use the money to learn
new skills. There is only one reason we can afford
to do this at this time. We have worked very hard to
cut government spending and to bring the deficit
under control. The government debt increased by
four times during the 12 years before I took office.
I want to remind you what that burden means; it
means that this April when people make out their
checks to the government, 28 cents of every dollar
of federal income tax will be necessary to pay
interest on the debt accumulated between 1981 and
the day I was inaugurated. It is our responsibility
to turn that around, and we have been working to
fulfill it. We have already passed budgets that cut
the deficit by $700 billion, eliminate 100
government programs and cut over 300 others.
A major part of this endeavor has been the
Reinventing Government Initiative, led by the Vice
President. I have worked hard to reduce and to
redirect governments for many years, since my early
days as governor of my state, when we were one of
the first states in the country to adopt a statewide
total quality management program, which resulted in
cutting regulation and paperwork, eliminating
agencies and departments and programs that were
unnecessary. Now we are cutting things that can be
cut. We propose to stop doing things that government
doesn't do very well and that don't need to be done
by government. And we believe that we should
increase our efforts where government can make a
real positive difference in the lives of
ordinary Americans. We have to change yesterday's
government and make it work for the America of today
and tomorrow.
In the last two years, we have made a good
beginning. We have begun to shrink the federal
government's bureaucracy to its smallest size in 30
years. The work force of the federal government
is already almost 100,000 below where it was on the
day we were inaugurated. We are on the way to a
reduction of 272,000 positions -- cuts that are
freeing up money to invest in our people. For
example, every dollar that goes to fund the crime
bill, which is a direct transfer of investment to
our local communities at the grass roots level,
comes from the cuts we are making. Later today, at
the Justice Department, I will announce new efforts
under the crime bill to finish our commitment of
putting 100,000 more police officers on the street,
and stop the crime that punishes so many American
families.
We have to continue to meet our responsibilities to
the next generation. We must pay, therefore, for the
Middle Class Bill of Rights, with new reductions in
government spending, dollar for dollar -- spending
cuts to pay for tax cuts, with no new cuts in
Medicare and Social Security. I call on Congress to
meet that same responsibility in their
deliberations.
Our administration has just completed a review in
which we have identified $24 billion in cuts in
bureaucracy, red tape, and outmoded programs to help
to do this. And we are committed to continuing the
freeze on discretionary spending, which will save
another $52 billion in the next five-year budget
cycle.
We will do even more to shrink yesterday's
government. I have called on the Vice President to
review every single government program and
department for further possible reductions. He's
also going to review the federal regulatory process,
and we have spent a good deal of time on that
already, so that we can get better results for the
public with less interference in their lives.
Vice President Gore is here to discuss the details
of our next round of proposals in reinventing
government, along with Director Alice Rivlin and the
heads or representatives of five agencies in which
we are proposing reductions now, including Secretary
Cisneros, Secretary Pena, Deputy Secretary White,
General Services Administration Director Roger
Johnson, and Office of Personnel Management Director
Jim King. I want to thank them and our entire
economic team for their hard work in the last few
weeks.
I also want to say a special word of thanks to
people who often get overlooked in this, and that is
the employees of the United States government. The
work they have done in the last two years to help us
to reduce the size of the federal work force by
100,000 already; to implement plans to take it down
to a total of 272,000, and even more, with the
announcements we are making today - that work is
truly exemplary. It would be envied by many of our
biggest corporations in this country. They have
rolled up their sleeves, they have been creative,
they have found ways for us to save taxpayer money
and redirect that into the Middle Class Bill of
Rights and to investing in our future.
This has been -- I want to emphasize -- a very
disciplined, well-organized process. We have not let
rhetoric and recklessness dominate it. This has been
about reality. And, again, as we go into the New
Year, that ought to be our motto, as I said the
other night: Country first, politics as usual dead
last; focus on reality, not rhetoric and not
recklessness.
It is not enough to cut government just for the sake
of cutting it. Government is not inherently good or
bad. In a new time, with a new economy, with new
demands on ordinary American families, we need a
leaner, but not a meaner, government. We need to
put government back on the side of hardworking
Americans.
That means I will oppose certain cuts if they
undermine our economic recovery, undermine
middle-class living standards, undermine our
attempts to support poor people who are doing their
best to raise their children and want to work their
way into the middle class, undermine our attempts to
improve education, protect our environment and move
us into the future with a high-wage, high-growth
economy.
As I said last Thursday night, what we really need
is a new American government for this new American
economy in the 21st century -- one that is creative
and flexible; that's a high-quality, low-cost
producer of services that the American people need
and that can best be provided at the national level.
The best thing we can do in this process is to
follow the model that smart companies have done,
which is to develop a good plan, put good people in
charge and pursue the goal with vigor.
I am confident that I chose the right person to lead
the reinventing government effort. I want to thank
the Vice President and all of his team. They have
done wonderful work. And I'd like now to turn the
podium over to Vice President Gore.