


			 THE WHITE HOUSE

		  Office of the Press Secretary
		   (Charlotte, North Carolina)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                          April 5, 1994     

	     
		     REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
		  IN "EVENING WITH THE PRESIDENT"
	     
	     
		 WCNC-TV-NBC News Channel Studios
		    Charlotte, North Carolina  
	     
	     
7:35 P.M. EDT
	     
	     
	     Q    Welcome, Mr. President.  
	     
	     We will be getting to our first question for 
President Clinton, but first he would like to begin with some 
opening remarks.
	     
	     Mr. President.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Well, first of all, I 
want to thank you for hosting this town meeting.  And I want to 
thank all of you for participating and all the people in the 
communities that are hooked into us tonight.
	     
	     I try to do a number of these every year as a way of 
sort of getting in closer touch with the American people, 
listening to people directly about their concerns and making a 
report.  Last year, in my first year as President, I devoted most 
of my time to try to get the economy back in order, to impose 
some discipline on the federal budget and to start investing in 
growth for the jobs of the 21st century.
	     
	     This year we are working on trying to keep that 
economic renewal going.  Our economy in 14 months has produced 
2.3 million private sector jobs.  That's more than twice as many 
as in the previous four years.  If the budget which I have 
proposed to Congress passes, we will eliminate another 100 
government programs, cut another 200 and something more and have 
three years of reduction in the federal deficit for the first 
time since Harry Truman was President of the United States.  
That's a long time.  So we're moving in the right direction.
	     
	     This year we're also trying to improve our political 
system.  We've got a lobby reform law which will restrict 
lobbying in Washington and increase reporting requirements for 
lobbyists, which I think is a very good thing.  
	     
	     The Congress just passed and I just signed our major 
education bill for public education goals 2000, which for the 
first time will set world-class standards of excellence for our 
public schools and promote all kinds of domestic grass-roots 
reforms school district by school district to achieve them.  
	     
	     We are dealing with welfare reform in the Congress.  
We are dealing with health care reform, and I know a lot of you 
have questions about that.  I visited today in Troy, North 
Carolina, in a rural hospital and with people in that community, 
talking about the problems of providing health care in rural 
America.
	     
	     And the first item of business -- and I will close 
with this -- when the Congress comes back will be to take up the 
crime bill.  I know you just had a special legislative session 
here in North Carolina.  Governor Hunt proposed some legislation.  
Our crime bill will put another 100,000 police officers on the 
street, will ban 28 kinds of assault weapons, will have a three 
strikes and your out provision to affect the relatively small 
number of criminals that commit a large percentage of the truly 
violent crimes, and will provide some funds to communities to try 
to give our kids a chance to avoid getting in real trouble --more 
funds for drug treatment, for recreation, for alternatives to 
imprisonment for first-time offenders.  It's going to be a very 
busy year in Congress.
	     
	     What I want you to know is that this work is going 
on.  Sometimes I think maybe, out here in the country, because of 
what comes across the airwaves, you may not know that the work of 
the people is going on, and that's my first concern.  And we're 
doing everything we can to push an agenda which would make this 
year -- if we can complete it -- even more important to the 
American people and their future than what happened last year.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, we will open up our 
town hall meeting now with questions and Kim Hindrew is standing 
by with the first questioner.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, we have with us here a 
gentleman who has a question on crime.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Good evening.
	     
	     Q    With the inner-city crime rate at an all-time 
high, is there any plans for Congress to allot funds for programs 
that would help the inner-city families deal with these problems?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Yes, there are.  Let me just explain 
a little bit about how our crime bill works.  This crime bill 
would do far more than Congress has often done in the past.  It's 
not just a posturing bill where we say we're getting tougher on 
crime but we don't give the cities and the rural areas the means 
to deal with it.  
	     
	     We actually would put another 100,000 police 
officers on the street in our cities over the next five years in 
community policing; that is where people could walk the streets, 
know their neighbors, know the kids, work with people and prevent 
crime, as well as catch criminals.  We provide the communities 
funds to help to promote more community activities for young 
people; to help to provide for after-school activities, for jobs, 
for recreational activities, for drug treatment, for the kinds of 
things that will prevent crime, as well as for boot camps and 
other alternatives to prison for first-time offenders who are 
nonviolent.
	     
	     And, as I said, we do increase penalties for the 
relatively small number of people who commit a large number of 
the violent crimes.  And we eliminate several -- 28, to be exact 
-- kinds of assault weapons, which have no hunting or sporting 
purpose, which are just used to make sure that gang members are 
often better armed than police officers.  So that's what this 
crime bill does.  And it's all paid for not with a tax increase, 
but with a trust fund which will be funded by reducing the 
federal employment rolls by 252,000 over five years -- not by 
firing anybody, but by attrition.  We will have -- if this budget 
passes, this year's budget, combined with what we did last year, 
five years from my first year in office, the federal government 
of the United States will be as small as it was when John Kennedy 
was president; it will be the smallest it has been in 30 years, 
which is a huge change.
	     
	     And all the money will be right back into local 
communities and into law enforcement.  So that's what we're going 
to do.  It will make a difference, sir.
	     

	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, we have a question now 
about government efficiency.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, federal government does not 
presently have a good track record in its operation of other 
health care programs.  Examples are Medicaid and Medicare, where 
the costs have continued to skyrocket.  Also a very good example 
are VA hospitals that have empty beds and yet waiting lists 
because of funding; they're not operating at full capacity.  In 
light of that, why do you think we can operate your proposed 
health care program without adding greatly to our already serious 
deficit in this country?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that's why I don't propose 
that the government take it over.  My program is guaranteed 
private insurance.  My program is take the people who are working 
who don't have health insurance and extend the same system that 
they have now.  Eighty percent of the people without health 
insurance in America today are in working families , and what we 
propose to do is to guarantee them private insurance and then 
give them the chance to choose their own doctor, choose their own 
medical plan and to have a new choice every year -- not to have 
the government run it.
	     
	     But let me just say, sir, I don't agree with you.  I 
don't think Medicare is a poorly run program at all.  And the 
Medicare program, I think, has worked right well.  It only has a 
three percent administrative cost.  By contrast, most private 
insurance plans have administrative costs four and five and six 
times that.  So I don't think you can make a very good case of 
Medicare's not well run -- I think it is.  
	     
	     Medicaid is growing so fast and Medicare is growing 
so fast in part because there are more and more people on it 
because we don't have enough other kinds of insurance.  But I 
don't think that either one of those programs, but particularly 
the Medicare program, is poorly managed.  I think Medicare works 
real well for elderly people, and I think it ought to be left 
alone.  Under my plan we leave it alone just as it is.  But we 
don't extend Medicare to the uninsured; we extend private 
insurance.  
	     
	     I think we should have a private plan.  I do believe 
that you're going to have to have some way to let small business 
people and self-employed people buy health insurance at the same 
competitive rates that people in the government and people in big 
business get it now.  Those of us that are in the federal 
government have terrific health insurance plans.  Why?  Because 
there's a whole lot of us, so we can get good plans.
	     
	     But farmers or self-employed people or small 
business people, they pay 35 to 40 percent more because they 
don't have any buying power.  So under our system, what the 
government does it to create buying pools -- almost like old-
fashioned farmers co-ops -- so that people can buy insurance 
that's more adequate for lower cost.  In California, the first 
big buying pool was set up by the state of California this year, 
and small businesses actually got their insurance at a lower 
cost.  The same thing is about to happen in Florida.  So that's 
what the government does -- we require private insurance and 
provide the buying pools.  Otherwise it should all be left in the 
private sector, because I agree with you, we can't run it; we 
shouldn't try.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, do you vow to veto any 
health care reform bill that does not include universal health 
care?  Your plan has been changed somewhat.  You've compromised, 
have been willing to compromise.  Are you still going to stick to 
that, or would you be willing to accept something short of 
universal health care?
	     

	     THE PRESIDENT:  I think if you -- well, let me just 
quote to back what the doctors and the nurses and the hospital 
folks said in Troy, North Carolina, today.  We were out there 
with doctors that have spent their entire life in rural areas.   
They said unless you're going to cover everybody, you can't have 
health care reform.
	     
	     In the hospital I saw in Troy today, 50 percent of 
the people who come into the emergency room are people without 
health insurance.  That cost is either going to be passed onto 
the rest of the folks in Montgomery County who have insurance, or 
is going to be absorbed by the hospital in ways that undermine 
their ability to provide health care.  We are the only advanced 
country in the world that doesn't do this.  I just refuse to 
believe we can't figure out how to cover all of our people just 
like every country we compete with does.  
	     
	     So, no, that's something that I don't feel we can 
compromise on, because if we don't do that, we can't stop this 
explosion in cost.  The gentleman mentioned how much Medicare and 
Medicaid's going; how much other rates are going up -- one of the 
ways we're going to get health care costs in line with inflation 
is to provide insurance to everybody, get primary and preventive 
care out there, and then let people buy it in a competitive 
marketplace.  So you've got to cover everybody to get that done, 
so I can't compromise on that.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you.  We're going to go to our 
first question tonight from Bristol, Connecticut, Mr. President.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Bristol, Tennessee.  Or Virginia, 
depending on which side of the line you're standing on, right?  
(Laughter.)
	     
	     Q    You're exactly right, Mr. President.  Good 
evening.  And welcome to Bristol and WCYB.  Now, as you know, 
we're in the tri-cities -- Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol 
in East Tennessee and Southwest  Virginia.  I'm Steve Hawkins, 
and with me tonight a woman who has a question about education.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.  At one time our 
schools seemed a protective and enriching environment for our 
children.  Now not only are our children falling academically 
behind those of many other nations, they're also too often unsafe 
in their schools.  The preceding administration developed the 
Goals 2000 for education.  What new initiatives has your 
administration developed that would address the seemingly 
worsening educational crisis, particularly as it reflects the 
social conditions in our country and that would help our children 
find futures in our changing world?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Let me try to answer the question 
with three or four points.  First of all, the national education 
goals for the year 2000 were developed at a meeting of the 
governors and the White House under the previous administration.  
I represented the governors in that.  We stayed up all night long 
and we wrote those educational goals.  
	     
	     The legislation I signed last week for the first 
time actually provides funds to school districts to promote the 
kind of grass-roots reforms necessary to meet world-class 
standards.  So we've finally done something on that.  And also, 
we'll actually set up those standards in the law.  They've never 
been done before.
	     
	     This country has never had any education standards, 
any way of measuring whether students in Bristol, Tennessee, or 
New York City, or El Paso, Texas, were learning what they needed 
to know in a global economy.  
	     
	     The second thing we're doing is passing something 
called school to work legislation which will provide extra 

training opportunities for young people who don't want to go on 
to college but do need further training.  Our evidence is that if 
you don't at least two years of high school -- post-high school 
education or training when you get out of high school, you don't 
have a very good chance of getting a job with a growing income.
	     
	     The third thing that we're trying to do is to change 
the unemployment system into a reemployment system so that people 
can continuously get education throughout their lifetimes.
	     
	     And fourthly, there is in the crime bill, as well as 
in this education bill I just signed, a safe schools program 
which will provide more funds and other help to schools to try to 
make our children safe in their schools.  There are an awful lot 
of schools in this country today where people aren't safe going 
to and from schools, or aren't even safe in the schools.  And if 
they're not safe there, learning can't occur.
	     
	     One of the goals that I worked real hard for back in 
1989 to get adopted is that every school ought to be safe, 
disciplined, and drug free.  And so we have a program here that 
will enable the schools to do that and will give our troubled 
schools -- our most troubled schools extra help to have the kind 
of security they need and the kind of learning environment they 
need and the kind of alternative dispute mechanisms our kids need 
to learn so that they can avoid violence.
	     
	     So all these things are on the education calendar 
this year.  This should be the most important year for education 
reform in 30 years if all these bills pass, and I think they 
will.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, our next question comes 
from Austin, Texas.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.  I'm Sally Holiday 
with KXAN-TV in Austin, Texas.  And here in the studio with me 
are more than two dozen people who have a wide variety of 
concerns and questions for you.  Our first question comes from 
the chief of our police department, Elizabeth Watson.  And, 
Chief, I believe you have a question about community policing, 
something you're trying to spread here in Austin.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, I have real appreciation and 
optimism about the crime bill and the hope that it provides for 
an unprecedented investment of federal dollars into making the 
streets of America safer.  It is music to my ears to hear the 
President of the United States speak supportively about community 
policing, because I'm a real advocate.  
	     
	     My concern, however, and the concern of many of my 
colleagues is that community policing has become a buzzword, a 
panacea; that there is an oversimplification that 100,000 more 
police is somehow, in and of itself, going to dramatically impact 
the crime problem.  What assurances, if any, might you be able to 
provide that the investment of federal dollars will indeed by 
channeled to those cities in areas of the country that truly 
understand and embrace community policing as evidenced by the 
partnership and empowerment across the board of the citizenry 
that it inevitably entails?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Let me try to explain a little 
behind what the chief's question is.  What she is saying is that 
community policing works if it's properly implemented.  That 
means it's not just enough to let a city hire more police 
officers.  The police officers have to be properly trained, 
properly deployed and connected to the community so that they not 
only catch criminals, they actually work with people to prevent 
crime from occurring in the first place.  We know this can happen 
in Texas -- she's in Austin -- and in the city of Houston, where 
they went to a more aggressive community policing situation, in 
15 months the crime rate dropped 22 percent; and the mayor got 
reelected with 91 percent of the vote and the two things were 
connected, believe me.  
	     
	     You can do something to bring the crime rate down.  
The answer to your question is -- at least if I prevail, the bill 
has not come out in its final form yet -- we will give some of 
this money out based on the size of the problem in cities.  But 
some of the money will have to go -- the money will be tied to a 
commitment to genuine community policing strategies that work.  
In other words, if you give more money to a city and they hire 
all the police to sit behind desks, the crime rate will not go 
down.  That's basically what she's saying.  You've got to know 
that this money is going to be properly spent.  
	     
	     To the extent that we can do it, we are going to 
have standards to make sure that the money will go -- we want to 
give it to all major cities that need it, but we want them to 
agree to implement strategies that work in order to get the 
money.  And I thank you for what you're doing.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  And, Mr. President, on to our third 
city now, Roanoke, for a question from a resident there.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.  I'm here at WSLS 
TV in Roanoke, Virginia.  In our audience tonight in our studio 
are 25 people who also have a wide variety of questions they'd 
like to ask you.  So let's get right to our first one.  With me 
is a health insurance agent from Rural Retreat, Virginia.
	     
	     Q    Yes, Mr. President, my question would be, as a 
health insurance agent, my clients are primarily self-employed 
and small business owners.  I would like to know what's in store 
for people like myself and my colleagues who these folks depend 
on.  When they have any problems with their insurance, they call 
us.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, they would still be able to 
buy their insurance from you because we don't propose to abolish 
private health insurance.  What we want to do is to require 
people who do not have any insurance to buy insurance, with 
employers paying a portion of the premium and employees paying a 
portion of the premium.  We want to make it possible for you to 
offer health insurance to small business people and self-employed 
people at either lower rates or more comprehensive health care 
services for the rates that you're having to charge now, which is 
something, as you know, insurance companies can't do economically 
now if they're insuring people in small pools.  So what we've 
proposed is some insurance reform that will change the nature of 
the economics of the health insurance industry, but leave it 
intact.
	     
	     And let me just basically say what we propose to do.  
>From the point of view of the people buying the health insurance, 
we want to make it possible for small business people and self-
employed people buy insurance at lower rates without inflation at 
35 percent a year, which is what it's been averaging nationwide. 
	     
	     We want to make it illegal for people to have higher 
rates because somebody in their family has been sick, or because 
they're older.  We want to make cutting people off illegal 
because somebody in their family has been sick.  But we don't 
want to bankrupt insurance companies, so we propose to have 
people insured in larger pools, which will mean that smaller 
insurance companies will have to pool together to insure people 
in larger pools.  But that way, it will be economical for the 
insurance industry to insure people, and the people will be free 
of these terrible problems. 
	     
	     Right now in America, 81 million Americans out of 
255 million -- 81 million -- are in families where there is a so-
called "preexisting condition," where somebody in that family has 
been sick, which means either they're paying higher insurance 
costs, they can't get insurance at all, or they can't change the 
job they're in, because if they do, they can't get insurance in 
the next job.
	     
	     These things are not this insurance agent's fault; 
this gentleman who has asked me this question.  He can't help 
that; that's the way the market's organized.  So what we have to 
do is to put people in bigger insurance pools, and protect them 
from those kinds of abuses.  But if they're in bigger pools, then 
the insurance companies, in essence, will be able to still 
provide those services, and they'll still be able to break a 
decent profit.  
	     
	     It will change.  Your business will change, but you 
can still be in business, because I don't propose to take 
insurance out of this, but to change the way it works so that 
everybody can be insured at an affordable price.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  And now we return to home base, Mr. 
President, if I can direct your attention this way.  Kim is 
standing by with our next questioner here in Charlotte.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, obviously tobacco is 
near and dear to the hearts of those in the Carolinas.  This 
gentleman has a question about that cash crop.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.  Initially, I 
wanted to ask you a question about tobacco products, but I also 
realize that North Carolina is considered also as the Bible Belt, 
and I want to ask, since the Supreme Court ruling took prayer out 
of schools, the divorce rate, drug abuse and violence has at 
least doubled.  The following year, President Kennedy was killed. 
What other answer, as a nation who claims "In God we trust," do 
we have against these problems?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I don't think you can make a 
very -- with all respect, I think the Supreme Court decision has 
been carried to the extent that I don't agree with.  I agree with 
the original Supreme Court decision.  Let me tell you what the 
original Supreme Court decision said, and most Southern Baptists, 
which I am agreed with.  The original Supreme Court decision said 
that the state of New York legislature could not write a prayer 
which then had to get delivered in every schoolroom in the state 
of New York every day.  In other words, if the government 
couldn't write a prayer which then everybody who worked for every 
school system was obligated to read in every school every day.  
That's all it said.  That's what it said.
	     
	     Now, it's been carried to such an extent now where 
they say, some people have said you can't have a prayer at a 
graduation exercise.  I personally didn't agree with that.  Why?  
Because if you're praying at a graduation exercise or a sporting 
event, it's a big open air thing, and no one's being coerced.  
I'm just telling you what my personal opinion is.  I can't 
rewrite the Supreme Court decisions.  
	     
	     But I agree that the government should not be in the 
business of requiring people to pray or telling them what prayers 
to pray.  I do not agree that people should not be able to freely 
pray and to acknowledge God.  We have a chaplain in the Congress, 
in the Senate and the House.  So one of the most difficult 
decisions we've always had to face as a people is how we can have 
the freedom of religion without pretending that people have to be 
free from religion.  
	     
	     The Congress has tried to come to grips with this in 
two or three different ways, and is trying to make it clear, for 
example, that school facilities could be made available for 
religious activities on an equal basis, or that people could have 
periods of silent prayer where they're free to pray their own 
prayers.  
	     
	     I think what you're saying has some merit in the 
sense that government programs can never supplant the role that 
has to be played by the family, by the church, by community 
institutions, by people that communicate values to children one 
on one.  So I think what we have to do is to try to find ways, 
continually to find ways in which a society can communicate the 
values that hold people together.
	     
	     And let me just say one thing, I think, that I've 
been advocating for nearly a decade now.  I think that there 
ought to be a set of civic values that everybody can agree with 
that ought to be taught in our schools.  Good citizenship, 
respect for others.  Don't solve your problems violently.  Don't 
cheat and lie and steal.  You know?  Basic things that ought to 
be taught clearly and explicitly in the schools.  Plus, having 
periods where people can do quietly whatever they want to do. 
	     
	     In other words, I think we can work this out in ways 
that recognize that you just can't have a value-free society.  
You can't do it.  You can't hold people together unless we all 
agree on certain rules that make it possible to raise children 
and for us to live in peace together. 
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, I'll go back to this 
gentleman's original question, which did have to do with tobacco.  
This is obviously a large tobacco-growing area.  You have -- your 
administration wants to ban tobaccos or smoking in the workplace; 
and also you have proposed raising taxes on tobacco.  What do you 
say to farmers in this area who say you're trying to put them out 
of business?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, we do not 
propose banning smoking.  The proposed regulation is based on a 
lot of evidence that people exposed to smoke can also contract 
cancer and other health problems.  So what we propose to do is to 
say that if smoking is going to be allowed in the workplace, it 
has to be in separate rooms that are separate ventilate, that are 
properly ventilated, to protect nonsmokers from the benefits of 
secondary smoke.  That what we propose.  And I think that's the 
right regulation.  
	     
	     On the tobacco tax, basically I attempted to put 
this whole health care program together without any new taxes.  
But we have to be able to pay for whatever we do.  We don't want 
to run the government deficit up.  The proposal is that the 
government will pay for the unemployed -- that is, public funds 
will pay for the unemployed, and insurance will pay for the 
employed.  In order to do that, we have to have some revenues.  I 
propose that it come from two sources -- one, from big companies 
that will get the biggest windfall from our changes; and two, 
from the tobacco tax, because tobacco's the only thing that, 
based on the health studies we know, there is no reasonable 
amount you can use it without getting hurt.  So I thought it was 
a fair tax.  
	     
	     I know a lot of wonderful people grow tobacco, and 
it's been good to a lot of farmers.  And, believe me, the people 
that represent you in the Congress are not going to let anything 
be done without some effort to make sure that there is -- that 
the economic implications are considered on the people of North 
Carolina.  But I still think it is a fair and reasonable way to 
deal with the terrible health care problem.  
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  We will 
continue in just a moment with President Clinton and more 
questions.  Stay with us.
	     
			    * * * * *
	     
	     

	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Welcome back to our town hall meeting.  
We're back with President Clinton, and ready for more questions.  
And I'll direct your attention this way, sir, another question 
from Charlotte.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, our next question.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, how 'bout them Razorbacks?  
(Laughter and applause.)
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I was very proud of them.  But it 
was a great game, too.  I almost had a heart attack.  I thought 
you all would have to visit me in the hospital tonight if we had 
lost that game.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     Q    On a more serious note, Mr. President, with 
recent news reports about the First Lady's cattle futures 
earnings, and with all these Whitewater allegations, many of us 
Americans are having a hard time with your credibility.  How can 
you earn back our trust?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  First of all, I've not been accused 
of doing anything wrong.  I'm still waiting for the first 
credible source to come up and say what it is I did wrong.  
(Applause.)
	     
	     Consider this, has any other previous president ever 
had to say, here's what we did 16, 17 years ago.  We lost money 
on one thing, so they attacked us on that.  Then we made money on 
something, they attacked us on that.  We paid our taxes.  You now 
have all my tax bills, going back to 1977.  I agreed to have a 
special counsel look into this just so I could have your trust 
back; but, more important, because the press said that's what 
they wanted so we could go back to work.
	     
	     So the Watergate special counsel, Sam Dash -- the 
man who handled Watergate -- said, Bill Clinton's not like 
previous administrations; they haven't stonewalled, they've given 
up all the information.  Every time there's a subpoena they 
quickly comply.  I've claimed no executive privilege; I've looked 
for no procedural ways to get around this.  I say, you tell me 
what you want to know, I'll give you the information.  I have 
done everything I could to be open and above board.
	     
	     They asked my wife about the commodities trading --
she showed the reporter who asked about it all the trading 
documents we had all these years.  She'd saved all those records; 
she showed them as soon as they asked about them.
	     
	     So no one has accused us of doing anything illegal.  
We were attacked for losing money; we've been attacked for making 
money.  And it was the only money we ever lost or made to amount 
to anything on investments.  And it happened 15 years ago, and 
we've given all this information to the special counsel.  If we 
did anything wrong, he'll find it out.  All I've asked to do is 
let the poor man do his work -- I've given him all the 
information -- and let me be president in 1994, while somebody 
else worries about what happened in 1979.  That's what I've 
asked.  (Applause.)
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, if I may follow --
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Let me just say this -- I was 
elected governor of my state five times.  No one ever -- even my 
roughest enemies, my strongest opponents -- never suggested that 
there was a hint of scandal in my administration, that anything 
-- and no one has accused me of abuse of power in this job, and 
no one will either.  You will not be ashamed of what I do as 
President.  And I tell you, what we need is a little perspective 
here.  I said, okay, let's have this special counsel, and I will 
shovel him all the information I have; I'll answer all the 
questions they want to know.  But I need to go about being 
President, worrying about the problems of the American people in 
1994.  (Applause.)
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, are you one of us middle-class 
people, or are you in with the villainous money-grubbing 
Republicans?  (Laughter.)  I mean, that's where my question came 
from.  I'm sorry.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me say this.  I grew up --
I don't think that all Republicans are villainous.  (Laughter.) 
Sometimes I wonder in Washington, but I don't really think that.
	     
	     I believe that it is perfectly legitimate for people 
to invest money and risk it and make it or lose it -- that's the 
free-enterprise system.  What I did criticize about the 1980s --
and I believe I was right -- is that there was too much making 
money by pushing paper around in ways that cost people jobs and 
didn't increase the strength of the American economy; where you 
had people running companies, for example, taking pay raises four 
times as great as their workers got, three times as great as 
their profits went up, throwing people out of work, taking their 
health insurance away and taking the money and running.  That's 
what I didn't like.
	     
	     But I think we have a stock market, we have a 
commodities market, we have a real estate system in America; and 
people have to invest their money and risk it.  And if you invest 
money, sometimes you're going to make it and sometimes you're 
going to lose it, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or an 
Independent.  I think that's good.  What you don't want is an 
abuse of the system in ways that hurt the public interest.  And I 
think that's what we have to guard against.  And I'm trying to 
give us an economy where people will want to invest more money, 
want to put more money at risk in ways that create more jobs for 
middle-class people.
	     
	     I grew up in what you would charitably call a 
middle-class family, at least by Arkansas standards; I don't know 
what that means in other places.  And I had a good education.  A 
guy said to me today, I like you -- you were born without much, 
you got a good education and you overmarried; you're kind of like 
me.  (Laughter.)  That's what a guy said to me in Troy today, so 
that's about the way I feel.  Thank you.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, if I may follow up on 
that, aside from the profit and loss, you pledged with your 
administration an administration that would work hard and play by 
the rules.  There are analysts, however, that feel in terms of 
Mrs. Clinton's investment in the commodities, that that 
investment was not handled by the rules.  In fact, it appears to 
them it was given preferential treatment to protect her from any 
potential loss.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  That's just not true.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  What can you tell us tonight that 
would prove them wrong?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  They must have never gotten a margin 
call in the commodities market because she did; and she was about 
to have a baby, and she got out of it.  I mean, all I can tell 
you is she had plenty of money at risk, and she could have lost 
it.  And she actually did lose some money as well as making 
money.
	     
	     We've given -- she gave all the records to the 
people who asked for it, and they reviewed it.  And it's just not 
true.  It's not true that she didn't.  She got advice to go in it 
from a friend of ours who was quoted extensively in The New York 
Times.  They got into a very good market, and they made some 
money.  A lot of the people who got into it at the same time in 
our area stayed in it too long and lost some money.  She got cold 
feet and got out. That's they only reason she didn't lose the 
money that she made.
	     
	     And I think that's the kind of thing that happens in 
the market every day.  It's just not true.  And we -- the records 
are there.  You can look at the records.  And she paid taxes on 
everything she made.  And it's not true that she didn't have 
anything at risk.  
	     
	     Some of these same people also asserted for weeks 
and weeks and weeks that I didn't lose any money in the 
Whitewater thing.  Now, the man that was head of the IRS for 
years has reviewed all the records, and he said we plainly lost 
money; we plainly paid the taxes we owed.  You look at the taxes 
we paid, the percentage of our income we paid in taxes.  I'm like 
most of you -- I gave my records every year to an accountant; and 
I told them to resolve it out in favor of the government.  I 
never wanted anybody questioning whether I had paid the taxes 
that I owed, because I wasn't in my line of work for the money.  
I wanted to pay what I owed.  And I have paid a significant 
percentage of my income in taxes every year, as I should have.  
And I have never tried to avoid paying what I owed.  
	     
	     So it's just not true that she did anything wrong or 
that I did anything wrong.  And if we did, that's what we've got 
a special counsel for.  And we've given him all the information. 
And everybody that's reviewed it said we haven't behaved like 
previous presidents -- we haven't stonewalled; we haven't backed 
up; haven't done anything.  We've just given him the information.
	     
	     Everybody that's looked at this has said we've been 
very open with this special counsel.  So let him do his job and 
let me be President.  That's what I think we ought to do.  
(Applause.)
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, I'd like to direct your 
attention this way, and we'll go to our next question.  This one 
from Roanoke.
	     
	     Q    Good evening once again, Mr. President, from 
Roanoke, Virginia.  Our next questioner is President of the 
Roanoke Regional Homebuilders Association.  
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, during the past two years.  The 
cost of framing lumber has almost doubled, increasing the cost of 
a modest home by approximately $4,000.  This cost increase has 
eliminated thousands of borderline buyers from the market.  How 
will your forest plan dealing with the Pacific Northwest balance 
the environmental concerns with the issues that are driving up 
the cost of lumber?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first, one of the reasons that 
the cost of lumber has gone up so much is that we had an 
explosion in building.  Because interest rates went down so low, 
the lowest we've had in over 20 years.  And we drove them down 
real low last year with the deficit reduction plan.  And there 
was a big spurt in building, so there was a shortage in lumber, 
so the price of lumber went up.  That's always going to happen.
	     
	     It is true that we've had to cut way back on 
clearing timber in the so-called old growth forests of the 
Pacific Northwest because there wasn't nearly as much timber up 
there as we had thought; and it takes forever and a day to grow 
those trees -- something like 200 years a tree. 
	     
	     So what we've tried to do, sir, I guess, is will 
both help and hurt the situation.  We have adopted a ceiling for 
timber cutting that is lower than the ceilings of the past.  That 
will hurt from your point of view.  What will help is, we have 
moved aggressively to actually start cutting those trees again.  
It's been years -- as you know, it's been years since any trees 
at all have been cut up there because it's all been tied up in 
environmental lawsuits in federal court.  
	     
	     So what we're doing, we just got permission to start 
cutting trees; and we're trying to move so that we can cut the 
trees we can without losing the old growth forests.  Only 10 
percent of the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest is 
still up there.  And I don't think that in good conscience and 
legally we can allow it all to be destroyed.  But we can clear 
more timber now if we can just keep pushing ahead and get these 
things out of the courts and back on the land where they belong. 
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, I'd like to direct your 
attention back to home base here, and Kim is standing by now with 
our next questioner. 
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, this gentleman is here 
with a question on foreign policy.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, in view of the recent downsizing 
of the military and the perception of waffling on using military 
force in the former Yugoslavia, how can we be taken seriously by 
North Korea when we threaten force, if necessary, to seize sites 
not voluntarily open to international inspection?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  First of all, I have to correct your 
premise.  I was very clear all during the campaign of '92 that I 
did not think we should send our ground forces in to get in the 
middle of a civil war in Yugoslavia, but that I would support 
using American forces as part of a NATO force if there could be a 
peace agreement, and that I would make our air power available to 
support the United Nations mission there.
	     
	     The United States took the lead in getting NATO to 
agree to do that last August, and as you know, the United States 
and NATO flights shot some planes down in Yugoslavia recently.  
And nearly everybody I know, sir, believes that it was the 
leadership -- the aggressive leadership of the United States 
which led to the cease-fire around Sarajevo, which helped to get 
the agreement between the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatians, and 
which has made the progress that we've made.  So I don't believe 
that we have been vacillating at all.  There were some planes 
that are shot down in the former Yugoslavia as the result of the 
strength that we showed there, as we did in Iraq.  When I 
received concrete evidence that there was an assassination 
attempt on former President Bush, we took military action there.
	     
	     Now, the question is:  What should we do with North 
Korea?  This is a very serious thing.  North Korea has said they 
want a nonnuclear Korean Peninsula.  North Korea has said they 
want to get along with South Korea.  It is the most isolated 
regime in the world today.  Nobody wants them to develop nuclear 
weapons.  Not China, their old ally.  China doesn't want to 
become a nuclear power.  Japan doesn't want to become a nuclear 
power because they don't want to have to think about developing 
nuclear weapons.  South Korea certainly doesn't.
	     
	     Seoul, South Korea, by far the biggest city in South 
Korea, is very close to the North Korean border.  The question, 
sir, is:  What is the proper way to try to get North Korea to 
comply?  And what we have done is to try to work very closely 
first with the South Koreans.  Whatever we do, we have to do in 
partnership with them, and with the Japanese and the Chinese, 
pushing firmly, firmly, firmly, to get the inspections.  We've 
got one inspection.  They didn't do everything they promised to 
do, and so now we've got the United Nations to make a very strong 
statement that they have to do it.  If they don't do it, we'll 
continue to go forward.  
	     
	     But this is a very delicate thing.  It's easy to 
talk about and difficult to do.  North Korea and South Korea are 
right there together, their armies are facing each other.  Seoul 

is a very big city on the border of North Korea.  And we've got 
to work closely with the South Koreans and the others, and we're 
going to be very, very firm about it.  But if I say we're going 
to do something, we're going to do it.  I'm not going to threaten 
something that we're not prepared to do.  I think what we should 
do is say less and do more in international politics.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, several months ago, in 
November of last year, you said that we will not allow North 
Korea to have -- to build a nuclear weapon.  We now believe that 
there are at least two nuclear weapons and possibly a third.  
What are -- when you say we will not allow them to build it, what 
are you willing to do to stop them?  And what are you willing to 
do now that we believe they have them?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, the intelligence community 
believes now something they did not believe at that time, which 
is that they may have a rudimentary nuclear weapon which may or 
may not even be deliverable, but which may be a bomb in a literal 
sense.  That may or may not have happened.  You've seen that in 
the press.
	     
	     We have to see what our options are.  There are --
one of the things we can do is to continue to put economic 
pressure on North Korea.  But if we do it through the United 
Nations we have to carry along with us the South Koreans.  After 
all, the South Koreans have the biggest stake.  We have the next 
biggest stake because we have 40,000 soldiers in Korea.  The next 
biggest stake is in the Japanese who are right there handy.  And 
we have a lot of options short of the military option to continue 
to make it a very painful decision for the North Koreans to do.  
So we have not ruled out any of our options and we will continue 
to press.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Specifically, what are those options?  
Economic options don't seem to --
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, there's all kinds of economic 
-- well, no, we haven't imposed economic sanctions yet.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  No, we haven't imposed economic 
sanctions, but most analysts say that economic sanctions won't 
help.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  They may or may not.  Economic 
sanctions have done a lot of damage in the places where they've 
been imposed.  They just don't have immediate results.  
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Except North Korea is a different 
situation.  It's incredibly isolated, it's very self-sufficient.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  It's not very -- actually, it 
depends on how you define self-sufficiency.  It's not doing -- 
they're not doing very well.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  No, they're not doing well, but 
they're still self-sufficient and they're not doing well.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that's right.  So if they do 
even worse, then they'll have to pay a price for their 
irresponsible conduct.
	     
	     The thing I said to the North Koreans through formal 
and informal channels is what are they getting for this.  They 
get nothing for this.  They literally are getting nothing.  All 
they're doing is becoming more and more isolated.  They're making 
themselves poorer.  They're making themselves more alienated.  
Even the Chinese don't agree with what they're doing.  
	     
	     China now is doing ten times as much business with 
South Korea as North Korea.  So what we have to do is to try to 
find a way to reach them, get them to come to their senses, keep 

the commitments they've made.  But it's very easy to talk tough 
here.  You have to think about what the consequences are.  I am 
determined to keep putting the pressure on, but I do not believe 
it serves any useful purpose to inflame the situation with 
rhetoric.  That's what the North Koreans have done; it's a big 
mistake.  
	     
	     We are sending Patriot missiles there.  We can 
resume our military exercises there.  We can impose stiffer 
economic sanctions.  We have a lot of options there that we can 
still explore.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  And I'll 
direct your attention once again to the monitor.  We go to 
Austin, Texas, for the next question.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, we'd like to go back to a point 
you raised a little earlier about the economy.  Austin is in the 
midst of a building boom of sorts, not because of any natural 
disaster, but because there are so many people who are just 
trying to move into central Texas.
	     
	     This gentleman has been in the area since about 
1987.  He is a money manager and he has a question about interest 
rates.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, in 1993 when interest rates were 
declining, your administration took credit for that.  But now 
both long and short-term rates are higher than when you took 
office.  Will your administration now take responsibility for 
higher rates?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Why do you think they went up?
	     
	     Q    Well, I'm asking you.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I'm asking you.  You asked me to 
take responsibility, so I ask you why.  They plainly went down 
after we declared our deficit reduction package.  That's why they 
went down.  They have gone up, I think, for two reasons -- maybe 
three.  
	     
	     One is we had seven percent economic growth in the 
last quarter of last year.  That's the most economic growth we 
have had in 10 years.  Second -- we had 458,000 new jobs coming 
to this economy in the month of March alone.  That's the most new 
jobs we've had in any given month in over six years.  When you 
have that kind of growth, some people are going to think that 
inflation is coming back in the economy, and interest rates will 
go up.
	     
	     Secondly, I think there was an overreaction to what 
the Federal Serve did.  The Federal Reserve raised short-term 
interest rates in the hope that they would send a signal that 
they were going to fight inflation and that long-term rates would 
stabilize.  Instead of that, the market overreacted to it.
	     
	     The third thing that happened is most everybody in 
America thought the stock market was somewhat overvalued.  When 
people pulled their money out of the stock market, if they put 
their money into other securities, that will tend to raise long-
term rates.
	     
	     I think those are the reasons they've gone up.  The 
issue is, are we going to continue to have economic growth or 
not?  I think we are.  And if you ask me to take responsibility 
because interest rates went up where we had seven percent growth 
in the last three months of last year, and 458,000 new jobs in 
March, I'll be glad to take responsibility for that if that's 
what you want.  That's what I call a high-class problem.
	     

	     I do think that the markets are overreacting to what 
the Federal Reserve did.  And I hope that they'll settle down.  I 
hope the stock market will settle down; I hope the interest rates 
will go back down.  But we still did the right thing, sir, to 
keep trying to bring the interest rate -- the deficit down.  And 
I still think we've got to pass this budget that will eliminate 
115 programs, cut 200 and something others, and give us three 
years of deficit reduction for the first time since Harry Truman.  
I think we ought to do that.  I think it's good economics.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Back to Charlotte now, Mr. President.  
And we have our next question from a young lady; Kim is standing 
by with her.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, I have 11-year-old girl 
and she has a question on crime.
	     
	     Q    How do you think you could help improve the 
crime -- I mean help stop the growing crime rate in our country?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I think we have to do a lot of 
things.  I think first of all, really serious criminals who 
continue to repeat their crimes endangering people should be put 
away for longer periods.  That young girl, Polly Klaas, who was 
kidnapped and killed about your age, by a person who had done 
something like that before.  A relatively small number of the 
criminals in this country are repeat offenders and truly 
dangerous.  Those people can be identified with some accuracy, 
and they ought to be subject to our three strikes and you're out 
law.
	     
	     The second thing I think we need to do is to have 
what the police chief in Austin said -- we have to have police 
that are on the street working with folks like you, making it 
safe for people to go to school, safe for children to be in 
school, and reducing the crime rate.  The third thing we ought to 
do is to begin to take these dangerous weapons out of the hands 
of these young gang members and other people who do not have them 
for sporting or hunting purposes.  
	     
	     And the fourth thing we need to do is to begin to 
teach young people, when they're your age and younger, nonviolent 
ways of dealing with their frustration and their anger and their 
differences.  You've got kids just up and shooting each other 
today.  The Mayor of Baltimore told me a heartwrenching story 
about an 18-year-old young man on Halloween day last October, who 
was taking two little kids down the street and was shot dead by a 
13-year-old who was just dared to do it by another teenager. 

	     These kids have got to be reached.  We've got to 
reach these kids so they don't do that, before they become 
terrible problems.  That's what I think we have to do.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you.  As you make your way back 
over here, Mr. President, we'll get ready for our next question, 
which will come to you from Bristol, Tennessee.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, I'm here with this gentleman, 
and he has a question about the national debt.
	     
	     Q    My question has to do with the national debt 
and the deficit that seems to be climbing and increasing all the 
time.  I know you referred to this in your opening remarks.  But 
we're concerned about Social Security and about who has to pay 
this debt and inflation that might have some bearings upon it.
	     
	     My questions are, should we really be concerned?  
And what is being done in a substantial way to deal with this?  
And when will this be resolved and no longer be a problem?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Let me say first with regard to 
Social Security.  Right now the Social Security tax brings in 

more money than is necessary to pay out in Social Security every 
year.  And Social Security should be stable for quite a long 
while now.  I don't think you have to worry about that.
	     
	     Secondly, does the deficit matter?  Yes, it does.  
It matters when we have to take 15 cents of every dollar you pay 
in taxes to pay in interest on the debt.  That's money we can't 
spend on education or health care or jobs or something else.  And 
it can weaken our economy, because we have to borrow money 
sometimes from overseas.  
	     
	     Now, if we keep going, right now, the real way to 
look at the deficit is, what is the percentage of our deficit as 
a percentage of our national income?  If you look at it that way 
and compare it to all the other major economies of the world, our 
deficit now -- we've gotten it low enough so that it's smaller as 
a percentage of our national income than any of the countries we 
compete with, major economies, except one -- except Japan.  And 
if we keep going, we'll get it down below that.  We have to keep 
driving it down.  
	     
	     The only way to get it to zero is to go back to the 
very first question I was asked -- the only way to get it to 
zero, because we're cutting defense all we can; and that 
gentleman made -- I don't think we can cut it anymore.  And I'm 
very concerned.  I don't want the Congress to cut defense anymore 
than is in our plan in this budget session.  We're cutting 
defense already.  We're cutting domestic spending that's 
discretionary for the first time since 1969.  The only thing 
that's going up in this budget is that health care costs are 
still going up at two and three times the rate of inflation.  So 
the only way we can get the deficit down to zero now is to bring 
health care costs in line with inflation.  And that's what I'm 
trying hard to do.  And I hope we can do that.  
	     
	     But as long as the deficit is going down instead of 
up, which it is now, it will be a smaller and smaller percentage 
of our income, and our economy will be stronger.  And I think you 
can be confident that we're going in the right direction.  And 
that's the important thing.  We're going in the right direction, 
not the wrong direction.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN: Over here now, Mr. President, our next 
question from Charlotte.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, I don't mean any disrespect, 
because I'm an avid sports fan.  But I'm also concerned about 
frivolous spending in government.  I would really like to ask 
what did it cost the taxpayers for you to attend the games?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I really -- I don't know.  But one 
of the reasons I scheduled this, and I put this health care thing 
together here was because we had already planned for me to be out 
all week long doing this.  And I had been to North Carolina to do 
an event like this.  So we decided that it would add no extra, 
except whatever it cost to prepare me to go in and out of that 
arena.  And that's mostly because of the security.
	     
	     But I would say to you what you have to decide is 
whether you think the President should either give up the Secret 
Service or should, for example, never throw out the first ball on 
opening day of baseball season.  Because one of the things that's 
happened, particularly since President Reagan was shot back in 
1981, is that the security surrounding the President and 
especially since the violence has gone up in our country, has 
increased greatly.  And it does, it costs too much money, and 
it's too disruptive to take the President around.  I mean, to me 
it's really a troubling thing coming as I do from kind of 
ordinary surroundings in a little state where it was then --where 
my lifestyle was very informal. 
	     

	     But I think what the American people have to decide 
is whether they want the President to stay home in the White 
House all the time.  If you want the President to go out and have 
a -- be either a normal citizen and contacting other citizens or 
do things the President normally does, like throwing out the 
first ball in baseball season, then you have to be willing to say 
that that's an ordinary part of the cost of being President.
	     
	     Now, when I do go out for political events, for 
example -- if I go speak to a fundraiser for somebody, they have 
to pay the cost of my going there.  So if I do something 
political, that's -- or any president; the same was true for 
President Bush and President Reagan -- then that you don't bear 
that cost, that is covered.  But if we do something that is not 
political, you do bear the cost, even if it's what you might call 
-- what you said, frivolous.  I mean, if I go on vacation, the 
Secret Service goes with me.  So I pay for the cost of my 
personal expense on vacation, but you pay the cost of all the 
presidential apparatus being there.  That's something that has 
always been true and is now more costly, especially since the 
attempt on President Reagans' life.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  We --
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I don't blame you, I didn't think 
it's disrespectful.  It bothers me, too.  (Laughter.)
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  We'll let you relax for a few moments.  
We'll take a break and come back with more questions for 
President Clinton.  (Applause.)
	     
				  * * * * * 

	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Welcome back to our live town all 
meeting with President Clinton.  Questions continue now from 
Charlotte, Bristol, Austin and Roanoke.  And our next question 
from Charlotte, Mr. President.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, I have with me a gentleman with 
a question on health care.
	     
	     Q    Thank you Mr. President, and thank you to the 
embassy for giving me this opportunity, and I thank God for 
allowing me to be here today.  
	     
	     Mr. President, I'm a temporary worker and have 
applied for a job in a number of places.  The reply always comes, 
you're not qualified for a job.  I applied for a temporary 
agency.  Within a day I was called and sent to work with another 
company to which I had previously applied and I was not accepted.  
And this time, working as a temporary agent, I do not have any 
kind of benefits, no insurance; and I'm working so hard making 
too little.  I want to ask, is the Labor Department aware of the 
agony that the temporary workers are going through in this 
country?  If they do, what are they doing about it?
	     
	     My second question is, working so hard without any 
insurance, in your health care plan, what benefits would that 
apply to the temporary worker working so hard without any 
insurance at all?  Thank you.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  First of all, I think a 
lot of you probably know this, but one of the reasons for the 
explosion of temporary workers in America may be that the 
employers don't have to pay for the benefits.  That may be one of 
the reasons it happened.  (Applause.)
	     
	     Under our plan, here's how it would work.  If a 
temporary worker worked 10 hours a week or more, the employer 
would have to pay a portion of the health insurance premium for 
the employee and the employee would have to pay a portion, and 
then we'd have a pool -- a government-funded pool -- that would 
pay the rest.  Because it isn't fair to make the employer pay the 
whole thing, for example, if the temporary worker's only working 
20 hours a week, or 15 to 10; they would pay a portion.  Then if 
it was 30 or more, the employer would just have to cover the 
temporary worker as long as the worker worked for the employer as 
if the employee were a regular employee.   So you would be 
covered as a temporary worker always.  And I think that's very 
important.
	     
	     Let me just make one related point.  I have spent a 
lot of the last 12 years of my life trying to figure out how to 
help people who are on welfare get off of welfare and go to work.  
We just made a big change in the tax laws in America, cutting 
income taxes for almost 17 percent of the American people who 
work for very modest wages and are just above the poverty line 
because we want to make sure that people always have an incentive 
to work.  
	     
	     The next big problem is making sure people have 
health care.  A center here -- right here in Charlotte, North 
Carolina -- just reported in the last couple of days that having 
interviewed welfare recipients in Tennessee and North Carolina, 
83 percent of them said they would take a minimum wage job and 
leave welfare if they had health coverage for their children.  So 
I'm just supporting what this gentleman's saying.  That's why 
it's very important.  Our plan would cover that for you.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  Our next 
question, once again, is from Roanoke.
	     
	     Q    And it is related to the previous questioner's 
question tonight.  But from a different perspective.  I'm here 
with a small business owner who's concerned with the rising cost 
of health care insurance under the new health care reform plan.
	     
	     Q    What I would like to express as a small 
business person -- we have 70 employees, I'm a GM dealer -- and 
our present health cost is $39,000 a year.  We computed the 
health costs on the new proposals that you have where we would 
pay 80 percent of all the employees and all their dependents.  
And, using the same insurance cost under that new proposal, our 
cost would be $184,000 a year, or a $144,000 a year increase. 
	     
	     My question to you, sir, is:  Will the government 
help small businesspeople subsidize this cost, and if they will, 
what percent will it be?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, is 8 percent of 
payroll -- is that what 8 percent of payroll is for you?
	     
	     Q    Question?  What was that?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Would 8 percent of payroll be 
$180,000?
	     
	     Q    Eighty percent -- eighty percent is your 
proposal, sir.  
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I know.  But there is a ceiling of -
- even for the most prosperous businesses, no one can pay more 
than 7.9 percent of payroll.  For small businesses that are 
eligible for a discount, it can go down as low as 3.5 percent of 
payroll.  That's the maximum in a sliding scale.  
	     
	     Let me ask you a question.  We don't want to take 
everybody else's time on this.  I would appreciate it if you 
would actually write to me personally and send me this 
information.  The short answer to your question is, no employer 
can pay more than 7.9 percent of payroll under our plan.  Today, 
on average, American employers pay between 8 percent and 9.5 
percent of payroll to health care.  Small businesses with low 
average wages are eligible for discounts that will take the 

payroll costs down as far as 3.5 percent of payroll.  I would not 
favor a small business mandate unless we can provide a discount 
to small businesses because there are too many that can't afford 
it.
	     
	     I will say this, though, since you talk about the 
car dealership.  I grew up in the car business, and I had a car 
dealer from Arkansas and his family staying with me the other 
night, and he pointed out he provided health insurance for 20 
years, as you have, and his is right at 8 percent a payroll, and 
he said none of his competitors had done it, but he'd put three 
competitors out of business even though he had to pay it because 
he never lost any employees.  So it's hard for me to believe that 
your payroll costs would be that great with only 70 employees, 
and that's why I'd like to ask you to write. 
	     
	     There's a ceiling of 7.9 percent for all businesses.  
Small businesses depending on their size and their wage are 
eligible for discounts that could go down to a low of 3.5 
percent.  That's how it would work.  
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, our next question from 
here in Charlotte, and Kim has the next questioner for you.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, we have a woman here, 
she's a student.  
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, my question concerns the high 
unemployment and lack of higher education for the immigrant 
Hispanic community.  Certain areas, like Southern California, 
have been affected to the point of considering anti-immigration 
measures.  I hope the federal government can take steps to 
educate and train Hispanic immigrants so that states will not be 
forced to take such drastic measures.  Can you tell me your ideas 
on this issue?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I do think we should do more on 
education and training.  But I also have to tell you, I think we 
should do more to keep people who are not legal immigrants out of 
the country if we can.
	     
	     Now, we're a democracy with a vast border, so our 
ability to keep all illegal immigrants out is somewhat limited.  
But we have laws in this country that I think ought to be -- I 
had encouraged immigration.  I believe in immigration, but I 
think people should come here legally.
	     
	     And, you know, there are people that have been 
waiting years to get in this country and who won't violate the 
laws, and people who come against the law get around that and get 
ahead of the ones that have been waiting years to come in.  I 
don't think that's fair.  So we're trying to stiffen the borders.
	     
	     Now, when people are here, I think more of them 
should go to college.  And I think more American citizens should 
be able to go to college.  What we've done there is to try to 
lower the interest rates on college loans, stretch out the 
repayments, and permit more young people to earn money against 
college by doing community service.  Those are the three things 
we're doing to try to get more education and training for kids 
that otherwise couldn't afford it who are legally in this country 
-- whether they're citizens or legal immigrants.  
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  And we go next to, Mr. President, to 
Austin, Texas.  And I believe they have a student there with a 
question for you.
	     
	     Q    We do have a question from a student.  Austin, 
of course, is the home to the University of Texas, where there 
are some 50,000 college students alone, plus there are several 
other colleges and universities in the central Texas area.  This 
gentleman is a senior majoring in economics at UT.  And he is 

also the student body president.  His question is of concern to 
virtually every college student in American, I would guess.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.  Basically in my 
tenure I've observed that the two major concerns outside of 
academics that students have -- one is how I pay my bills while 
I'm in school; and, two, how will I pay them when I graduate; or 
more specifically, will I be able to find a job.  In light of 
legislation, such as, as you said, the national service act and 
the current economic situation with health care, all these 
pulling on the economy, what other things, what other roles do 
you think the federal government should play in helping students 
out with this particular dilemma?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first, let's talk about how 
you pay your bills when you're in school.  My goal was when I 
became President to make sure that money was never a reason young 
people did not go to college.  We know that the unemployment rate 
in American for high school dropouts in 11.5 percent; the 
unemployment rate for college graduates is 3.5 percent.  With all 
the jobs problems it's much lower.
	     
	     So we are redoing the student loans so that the 
interest rates are lower and the repayment terms are better, and 
you can get the money you need while you go to college.  There 
are also, year after next, will be 100,000 positions in America 
in community service so people can earn credit against their 
college -- you can get the money to go to college while working 
in their communities. 
	     
	     Now, when you get out, if you can get a job -- and 
I'll come back to that in a minute -- under our plan, you can pay 
these college loans off as a percentage of your income no matter 
how much money you borrow.  
	     
	     So the last thing I have to do is try to create more 
jobs.  And I'll go back to what I said opening the program.  In 
the last 14 months, our economy has produced 2.3 million new 
jobs.  In the previous four years, the economy produced only a 
million new jobs in the private sector.  So we're trying to make 
8 million in this four-year period, as opposed to about a million 
in the last four-year period.  If we make it, there will be more 
jobs for young people.  That's what we have to do.  And so far 
we're on track.  We're on track to make that 8 million.  And 
we've got to keep doing it.  
	     
	     That's all I can tell you.  There's nothing else I 
can do except to keep trying to create more jobs and help the 
private sector create more jobs.  
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  And back, now, Mr. President, to 
Charlotte for our next question.  Kim with the next questioner.
	     
	     Q    Due to the rising teen pregnancy, do you plan 
to increase the amount of sex education given in schools?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:   I think we should.  It is largely a 
decision to be made at the local school district level.  But I 
have worked on this problem for a long time; when I was a 
governor I worked on it.  And I can tell you what I've seen from 
my own experience works -- what I believe works.
	     
	     I believe if you have programs in the schools, which 
are supported by community leaders -- including religious leaders 
-- which do two things:  number one, tell young people that the 
only completely safe way to avoid teen pregnancy is to abstain 
from sex -- (applause) --; but that also, here is how your body 
works, here's what causes this, here's how families are built, 
here's how it all works, and here's what you should do to protect 
yourself so that you do not get in a position where you have an 
unwanted, premature pregnancy.  I think those kind of clinics 
work.  I know they do; I have seen them work -- if they are 

supported by the community.  And I could give you example after 
example where it's happened.
	     
	     I personally believe it is a great mistake to 
pretend that this problem doesn't exist, and to say that somebody 
else is going to handle it.  This goes back to what this 
gentleman said.  If we don't deal with it, I don't know where it 
will be dealt with.  Now, I know a lot of religious leaders think 
that if you discuss this in schools, you'll be encouraging 
children to have sexual relations prematurely.  I personally 
don't believe that because of the evidence.  I think it's better 
to tell kids the truth, tell them they ought not to do it; tell 
them if they do do it, here are the consequences and here's how 
to deal with it.  That's what I think; I think we should be very 
up front.
	     
	     But it only works -- I have seen this issue tear 
communities apart -- it only works if you bring the community 
people, including the leaders of the community of faith, in on 
the front end and honestly and frankly discuss this.  I saw a 
community in my state where a Methodist minister sat on a 
committee that voted to give the nurse in the health clinic the 
authority to distribute condoms.  I saw another community which 
voted against doing it.  Both communities had a decline in teen 
pregnancy because they agreed on the values that would be 
pressed, and they tried to get these kids to save their own lives 
and their future.
	     
	     So I think we can push it at the national level, but 
there has to be a belief at the local level that your life and 
your generation's life is worth fighting for.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, I'll direct your 
attention, once again, to the monitor.  And our next question 
comes to you from Bristol.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, a gentleman here has a question 
about Whitewater and integrity.
	     
	     Q    Mr. President, given the fact that during your 
campaign you supported a middle-class tax cut that you did not 
support after your election; that you criticized the former 
administration as to its handling of Bosnia, Haiti and China, but 
rhetoric aside, your administration has pretty much continued 
with those same policies.  And those are just two examples, a 
more recent example being conflicting statements made -- or 
advancing credulous statements made -- regarding tax returns 
formerly filed by you and your wife.  Given all of that,  why 
should we believe you as to Whitewater allegations, or as to 
statements made or positions taken by you as President?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, let's go through 
each one of those issues.  If you take the Whitewater issue, you 
don't have to take my word for anything.  Look at my tax returns.  
When's the last president that went back 17 years before he 
became president and gave his tax returns up?  Just look at them, 
don't take my word for it.
	     
	     A former commissioner of the IRS said that all the 
Republican attacks on me saying that I owed more taxes and that I 
made money instead of lost money on Whitewater were flat wrong.  
I have been the subject, sir, of false charges.  People saying 
things about me that are not true don't make my credibility an 
issue.  They make their credibility an issue, not mine.  
	     
	     Secondly, we do have a different position on Bosnia, 
a different positon on Haiti and a different position on China.  
We have not solved the Bosnian process, but I would remind you 
that because of the leadership of this administration, we have 
got an agreement now with the Europeans that we worked with.  
There is a safe zone around Sarajevo; there's an agreement 

between the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatians; we are making 
progress in Bosnia.  
	     
	     We have a significantly different policy in China 
that a lot of people disagree with.  But it's clearly different 
from the policy of the previous administration.  
	     
	     On Haiti, our policy in Haiti is different.  Our 
policy on return of the Haitians is the same because I became 
convinced, after I became President, that hundreds and hundreds 
of Haitians were going to die trying to come to the shores of 
this country unless we set up a system that would allow them to 
apply for refugee status in Haiti before they came here.  And we 
have set up a system that did not exist when I became President 
to allow the Haitians to apply for refugee status in Haiti before 
they came here.  So I just disagree with that.
	     
	     On the middle-class tax cut, let me just point out 
to you, sir, that after the election, the deficit by the previous 
administration was revised upward by more than $50 billion in the 
next year.  I didn't do that; I didn't have control of those 
figures.  
	     
	     So here's what I had to do.  Do I go through with a 
whole middle-class tax cut and let the deficit balloon and have 
interest rates higher and weaken this economy?  Or do I tell the 
American people the truth -- which is what I did -- the deficit 
is bigger than I thought it was going to be, so I can't go the 
whole way -- I'm going to give 17 percent of the working people 
in this country an income tax cut, which you never heard about 
last year.  
	     
	     On April 15th, 1.2 percent get an income tax 
increase, 17 percent almost -- 16.6 percent -- get an income tax 
cut.  And I still believe there ought to be a family tax credit 
for the rest of middle-class America.  But I have a four-year 
term, sir, not a one-year term.  I haven't' abandoned it;  I 
can't get everything done in one year.  I'm doing the very best I 
can and, by the way, the independent analysis last year said that 
we got more done in the first year of our presidency than anybody 
in the last 30 years.  So I haven't given up on that commitment; 
I just can't get it done. 
	     
	     I think I have done a remarkable job of doing what I 
said I would do -- (applause) -- and I think you ought to trust 
me.  (Applause.)
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Mr. President, we're back to home base 
for our next question.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  You ought to be free to disagree 
with me, but disagreeing with me is different from trust.  We 
ought not to mix our apples and oranges here.
	     
	     MS. HINDREW:  Mr. President, a gentleman has a 
question for you on crime.
	     
	     Q    Good evening, Mr. President.  There are over 
2800 convicted criminals on death row.  Last year only 30 were 
put to death.  The federal government, in your crime bill, has a 
rule of three strikes and you're out, which makes a sentence for 
certain crimes like -- certain crimes with life without parole 
after three offenses.  
	     
	     Crime becomes more violent, and punishment 
continually provides more liberties, with ridiculous appeals and 
paroles.  What can we do to put the laws in favor of the citizens 
instead of the criminal?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  First, I believe as I said, that 
three strikes you're out laws will help.  You just passed one 
here in North Carolina, too.  Keep in mind, most criminal law, 

folks, is state law carried out by local prosecutors and local 
police forces.  That's why I think the most -- what I can do is 
to help to change the environment -- more police, deal with the 
assault weapons, give the local folks the resources they need to 
fight crime and to help kids before they get in trouble.
	     
	     I also support capital punishment, and since 1981 
have been on record, at least since then, in trying to accelerate 
the appeals process.  I think it is wrong to have appeals 
processes that take six, seven, eight, nine years.  And there are 
things that can be done to accelerate that, which we are debating 
in the Congress as well now.  
	     
	     But I think it's important -- what you need is 
certainty and clarity of punishment.  We need a clean, 
meaningful, credible three strikes and you're out law.  We don't 
want to put the kitchen sink in there.  Take the serious violent 
offenses and put them there.  And then the states that have these 
laws should enforce the laws, whatever they are.  That's what I 
believe.  
	     
	     We had a capital punishment law in Arkansas when I 
was governor, and I carried it out.  But it is not the sole 
answer, believe me.  What you've got to do, I think, is to reduce 
the crime rate and -- you heard the police chief in Austin --most 
law enforcement people I know think that putting more police on 
the street in the proper way and connecting them to the community 
again will do more to lower crime than anything else we can do.  
But I do agree with you on the appeals, too. 
	     
	     Q     Mr. President, while we're here, we have a 
gentleman.  And do you have a question?
	     
	     Q    Yes.  Mr. President, first of all, I want to 
try to assure you that thousands of us who have worked hard to 
get you in the White House to do the job we sent you there to do, 
that we are behind you and we have not abandoned you.  
(Applause.)
	     
	     The second thing I'd like for you to do is, if you 
can, to give us some specifics as to what we as average Americans 
can do to get -- to help you do the job that we sent you there to 
do?  What are some specifics that we can help you do on the local 
scene?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Let me just give you a few real 
quickly.  First of all, you can tell your member of Congress, 
whether you're a Republican or Democrat, or whether they're 
Republicans or Democrats:  pass the crime bill, deal with the 
health care crisis, and don't let anything divert us from the 
major business of the country.  Let's pass the budget, keep the 
deficit coming down, pass the crime bill, deal with the health 
care crisis, deal with welfare reform, act to reign in some of 
the excessive lobbying activities.  In other words, do the 
country's business.
	     
	     Then, here in every community -- believe me, I mean, 
I used to live in a community, I didn't always have this job 
where I go back to what the lady said, "travel around with the 
big retinue" -- if you really want to help my agenda, what can be 
done in your community to help people walk the streets and fight 
crime -- what can be done in your community to put males like 
you, one on one, in touch with these young men before they get in 
trouble or when they're on the edge of being in trouble, to help 
them rescue their lives.  
	     
	     I met a man today who works in a program like this, 
who introduced me to a 17-year-old boy who was orphaned, living 
alone in his house at 17, but still in school, obeying the law, 
graduating from high school, looking forward to a better life.  
Citizens have got to get involved in saving these children one on 
one.  The most important thing you could do is to figure -- in my 

judgment, to help carry out my agenda -- is figure out whether in 
your community everything has been done to make the streets safe, 
the schools safe, the kids have a better future, recreational 
opportunities for kids -- the kinds of things that make 
communities strong and bridge racial and income divides that are 
tearing this country apart.  That's what I think we have to do. 
	     
	     If you want to help my agenda, make your community 
strong, and America will work.  Personal volunteer time, 
committing to that kind of thing.  That will work.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  In the 
couple of minutes we have remaining, we'd like to have you, if 
you will, please reflect on what you've heard here tonight.  
Ninety minutes worth of questions that's gone very fast and 
you've answered a variety of questions.  What will you take back 
to Washington with you from tonight?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  A deeply rewarding sense that the 
American people love this country and that most people in this 
country get up every day and go to work and do the very best they 
can with their jobs and with their families and with their 
communities.  And they want me and they want those of us who live 
in Washington not to become diverted from their business.  We 
have some serious problems, but don't forget, folks, we also have 
some great strengths in this country.  
	     
	     We've still got the strongest economy in the world, 
we've still got the most flexible economy with the greatest 
chance to make the changes we need to make to go into the 21st 
century as the greatest country in the world.  And the only thing 
that could divert us, the only thing that can defeat us is 
ourselves.  And I also think, frankly, I've been reassured that I 
think you all have a pretty realistic idea about what it is that 
I have to do and what it is that you have to do.  We've all got 
jobs to do.  Some things have to be done with the President and 
the Congress.  Some things have to be done by the private sector 
and community leaders.  Some things have to be done by the state 
and local government.  
	     
	     And I try always to think about how I can be a 
leader with a voice for all the people and still be very up front 
with the American people about what I have to do and what you all 
have to do.  Because these are things we have to do together.  
The government cannot solve all the problems of the country.  But 
together we can solve the problems of the country, and together 
we can move ahead.
	     
	     I always come away with this -- I come away here so 
much more energized an optimistic because I think people are real 
realistic and yet hopeful out here.  I don't think the American 
people are as cynical as sometimes people in public life think 
they are.  I think you all still believe in yourselves and your 
potential and your country.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Congress is coming back from its 
break.  And I'll just ask you just in a few seconds, have you 
heard anything here tonight that will change your agenda when you 
go back to Washington?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  No, but I'm going to tell them --
near as I can tell, people sure wanted to pass that crime bill 
and not fool around with it; do it right away.  That's where 
we're going to start.
	     
	     MR. DONOVAN:  Thank you very much, Mr. President.  
(Applause.)

			       END8:58 P.M. EDT

