LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Clinton Sees ‘a Lot of Insecurity in This Country’

QUESTION: Mr. President, we all (saw) this morning’s story on the (roughly) $50 million the Administration is giving the state of California. Still a lot of people say that that’s just not going to be enough. . . . So I’m just wondering, what can California expect?

CLINTON: California has done very well with this Administration, given the money we had to spend. And one of the things that California and its congressional delegation are going to have to decide is where we go from here with regard to deficit reductions as compared with investment for growth. . . . The budget that I passed through the Congress by the narrowest of margins has clearly lived up to and exceeded the expectations I had for it. We have modestly increased investments and defense conversion, education and training, new technologies, a few other things and substantially reduced the deficit.

If we had adopted that (Penny-Kasich) bill, it would have, in my judgment, had further defense cuts . . . further defense conversion cuts, pretty much ended the prospect of health care reform and undermined our ability to invest more money in California. And yet a number of members of Congress from California voted for it because they thought that’s what . . . the people back home wanted.

We are going to bring this deficit down, we’re going to do it in a strict way, but we got to have some money to invest if we want to create some jobs. If you look at how the state has done, just since I’ve been President, you got 30% of the dollar value of the technology investment project of these partnerships that were announced. The extension of the Red Line project here in L.A. will get $1.3 billion next year, that’s the largest infrastructure project that we’ve funded anywhere. We announced another $15 million today for the Los Angeles Housing Authority. . . . No it’s not enough money to do what needs to be done, but given the amount of money we have at the national level, California is doing very, very well indeed.

I want to spend more money than we did this year on this technology project to help people to convert from the defense to a commercial economy. And whatever extra money that I can get out of the Congress, I will. But the members of the California Congressional delegation need to get a clear signal that if . . . we prohibit ourselves from spending any money to promote new jobs and new technologies, that’s not good.

Q: Some of your aides, and also people outside the Administration, have suggested speeding up defense procurement spending and also easing some bank lending regulations so that it would be better for California generally. Is this a part of your program in 1994?

CLINTON: A state with the incredible infrastructure resources of California----all these high-skilled workers, massive capital investment, production in areas that we know contain the technologies of the 21st Century--ought to be able to be helped a lot by national policies that are not included in direct spending of federal money.

But if you look at what we need to do in California to enable smaller businesses to be able to participate in defense conversion for example, we have to try to alleviate the credit crunch. So we’re going to take a very hard look at that.

If we can get procurement reform, we (may be able ) to increase the volume of sales because we will lower the (unit) cost, and we’ll also be able to push forward, but more quickly, on a lot of the bigger contracts.

Q: After the Brady bill became law, you spoke of the need for other steps to curb gun violence. What kinds of measures would you consider?

CLINTON: Well, I think that the next thing that we ought to do is to pass a crime bill with Sen. Feinstein’s amendment in it. Because if we can get a majority of the Senate in the house to vote on any reasonable version of banning assault weapons, then it seems to me that we will have crossed a significant divide in this debate.

Then I think what we have to do is go to the Congress if we have to and get the authority for the Treasury Department to cover similar weapons that maybe get modified only slightly to get around the statute. I think we need to review the whole federal gun licensing operation. The permits are too inexpensive, they’re indiscriminately issued and they override state and local law.

I thought the appearance your mayor and the mayor-elect of New York . . . the suggestions that they made, made a lot of sense, and that’s sort of the next place I’d start, exploring some of the recommendations they made.

Q: Some kind of national license. . . .

CLINTON: This something that may be ought to be administered at the state or local level like driver’s licenses are, but it’s something we could really take a look at. It makes a lot of sense as sort of a next step because you’ve got a couple hundred million guns out there in this country and you’ve got probably an 80-year supply before they wear out. And I think that there are a lot of things that can be done to mitigate that. I still think that the most important things are properly trained and properly deployed police officers, that’s why the crime bill is so important. Then I think we ought to look at some sort of standards for ownership, just the way every state does with automobiles. I think that that really has some merit.

I’m going to have the attorney general review, make a recommendation to me. I’m just suggesting that it might be easier to have the national government say you have to have standards in these areas, some training programs or education programs or whatever, and then let the state figure out how to do it.

Dealing with the whole issue of crime and violence is one of the two or three most important issues facing the country today. If we can’t restore the sense of basic physical security to people in their homes and on the streets and their schools and their workplaces, it’s going to be very difficult to have the American people have the proper state of mind to make all the changes we got to make to make to move toward the 21st Century.

There is a lot of insecurity in this country now, and a lot of it is surrounding the whole issue of crime and violence and the attendant breakdown and order in families and communities you see.

I think a lot of it is a frank recognition that successful societies are organized around work and family, and when both break down we have a hell of a hard time making good things happen. We can’t expect this country to be what it ought to be with a problem as severe as this one. Business Week’s cover this week says that it costs us $425 billion a year to endure the level of savagery that we now come to accept as normal.

That is why I am so strong for the crime bill, and why I’m willing with all the other money I want to put into California to go ahead and take the $20 billion or so out of the budget and devote it to this. You also have to have a way of rebuilding family, community and work. These gangs have moved into vacuums. The drugs have moved into a vacuum, the violence has moved into a vacuum. And that’s why I fought hard on this budget for a family preservation plan, why I believe in welfare reform, why I believe we have got to have specific incentives to put jobs back into these inner cities and we have serious responsibilities there.

Q: The attorney general has told Congress that the federal government would try to keep a limit on violence (on television) if the broadcasters don’t act alone. What would you realistically do without infringing on free speech?

CLINTON: An honest answer to that is I don’t know. But I just feel that we ought to challenge the networks, not just the big three but all the people that are dominant on cable today to think about what our collective responsibilities are. I don’t think all movies and violence are bad. I thought “Boyz ‘N the Hood,” for example, was a positive movie because it presented violence in its real light. It wasn’t glorified, it was fairly accurate.

All societies, with any level of affluence anyway, have always have lots of mindless entertainment. I watch mindless entertainment myself sometimes. People with a high level of stress, you know, you just want to forget about it. But if you have large numbers of people who are living with significant idleness, feeling dysfunctional in society, with the breakdown of fundamental institutions, the level of mindless assault on the basic institutes of the society is irresponsible.

And it does no good to say, “Well, it’s freedom of speech and we are not responsible for how people react to it.” We have too much evidence to know that the cumulative impact of television and other communication channels over time with regard to violence of all kinds, we know what it does. And I just think that what we ought to be about is thinking about the challenge that we can voluntarily face. Janet Reno . . . was trying to engage the American producers in entertainment--who are better at that than anybody on earth--in a constructive dialogue about how we can use these same forces to re-create the conditions of civilized behavior.

Most people I know out here really want to do something. That is, my whole theory about any kind of human endeavor is that first of all you ought to challenge people to do the right thing and ask them to be your partner. You start with an outstretched hand, not with a clenched fist.

Most of these folks know they can make a bunch of money without making the fabric of society weaker. And they also know that they might be able to do very well by helping to rebuild this country, that there may be a commercial consequence of this incredible inner yearning the American people have.

The reason American entertainment (producers are) so successful is they’ve always been able to be just a little out in in front (of) the American people but enough in harmony with them to find a widespread acceptance. And I think there’s a good chance that we’ll work together. I’m going to challenge, I’m going to give them a chance to do that.

Q: Many members of Congress have expressed skepticism about the financing of your health care reform plan and are concerned about the reduction in Medicare and Medicaid spending that the program would require. Would you be willing to consider major changes in the plan’s financing, including, if necessary, a broad-based tax increase?

CLINTON: No. All this skepticism about the financing is rooted in the conviction that America must always have the most expensive health care system in the world.

I’m going to show you a little chart here.

This is, this is roughly, this is roughly what the budget looks like. Here is zero, the flat line is zero, this is zero. This is defense, below zero, right? Defense cuts. This is all domestic spending, flat. This is interest on the debt, it will go up some just because the debt is bigger. These are retirements, cost of living and social security, military retirement, civilian retirement. These are new revenues, growing at about 8%. This is health care cost.

Medicaid is growing by more than three times the rate of inflation this year. And Medicaid and Medicare together over a five-year period are being financed at three times the rate of inflation. All our budget does is to take them from three times the rate of inflation to twice the rate of inflation. I think that those that are skeptical about the financing by and large are skeptical because they think that health care costs are out of control and that we can’t fix what’s bad about the system without hurting what’s good. And the government basically is incapable of imposing any discipline on itself. But I want to emphasize, we’re not cutting Medicaid or Medicare. We’re taking it from three times the rate of inflation in its growth down to twice the rate of inflation.

I don’t know how much (the Los Angeles Times is) paying, a percent of payroll for your health care policy. I don’t know, but I bet it’s at least, between employees and employers together, I bet it’s at least 10% of payroll. And probably much more. OK. Why should I impose a tax on you to pay for the uninsured? You’re already paying for the uninsured.

We should not impose a new tax increase on the American people until we have disciplined ourselves to show the same amount of fixing that we know can be done by just looking at the German system or the Australian system or anybody else’s system. It doesn’t have to be single payer. So I will not support a broad-based tax until we have shown some discipline in fixing the system we’ve got.

Q: House Way and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski said last week that health care financing might not be considered by Congress until 1995. Could you agree to that?

CLINTON: I think we ought to adopt the program for universal coverage in ’94. We don’t require under our program anybody to have it all finished, the states to have it all finished, until the first of ’97. We ought to act in ’94 for benefits and universal coverage. He’s very smart. And he has worked miracles with that committee, even with his own political difficulties. So he may have some theory in his mind about how we can do this. I just haven’t talked to him about it.

Q: Russian leaders have increasingly asserted a right to what looks like a “sphere of influence” authority over the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. For example, intelligence officials said Russia would oppose NATO membership for Poland, Hungary and Czech/Slovak republics and a defense official said his troops were not going to withdraw from Latvia soon. Are you worried about this trend?

CLINTON: It is not terribly troubling at this point. We’ve had pretty good military-to-military cooperation with them. We wanted to offer the Eastern European countries a chance to be part of the partnership for peace, but not real membership because we knew they would react adversely to that. And I think a lot of these folks are just sort of feeling their way through. I also think frankly they feel somewhat insecure about events along their border. A good test will be whether they go ahead and complete their withdrawal from Latvia and Estonia on a reasonable schedule. I believe they will. On the balance I’m not unduly alarmed right now.

Q: Have you offered to meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad during your European trip in January? Have you asked Assad for any actions before such a meeting as a demonstration of his willingness to make real peace?

CLINTON: If we do talk, that’ll be part of what we talk about. But the real concern that I have had over the last few months, and certainly since the signing of the accord on September 13th with PLO, is that Assad not do anything to undermine the process of the Israeli-PLO accord. Assad obviously has a big influence on what happens with the radical groups in Lebanon and could really make it much more difficult for this part of the process. I would like for him to make some gestures to the Israeli public as well as the political leaders and we’ll talk more about that. What, if anything, Assad might be willing to do, I’ve just got to sit and visit with him and talk it through.

Q: Looking back at the policies that have been followed in Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti, what do you think went wrong? What could be done differently?

CLINTON: Well, with Somalia, the only thing I would have done differently is when we handed off the leadership of the mission to the United Nations, I would have either not let the United States become in effect the sole police officer trying to arrest Aidid and others suspected of being involved in the killing of the Pakistani soldiers. Or I would have made absolutely sure that the people in Aidid’s faction were participating in ongoing discussions and they knew we were not trying to run the other faction out of Somalia’s political future.

That was the central error there, and it took a lot of doing and some undoing to get the political process back on track.

On Bosnia. . . . What I don’t know is whether there is anything else I could have done to see our original policy prevail. I think we would have had a peace agreement by now if the Serbs in particular, but the Croats too, had really thought that the United Nations would lift the arms embargo. Because you see what’s happening now, this would have happened months and months ago.

What’s happened is somehow or another the government forces have gotten some more weapons, and they’ve started to make some military gains again, at least against the Croats. They’re hanging tough, and they’re even preparing to face the winter trying to get a better deal. So I think our original policy was right.

And what I could do if I could start all over again, I think, is I would not have sent Warren Christopher to Europe without knowing that the (Europeans) would go along with this. Otherwise, I think what we’ve done is about all we could have done there. We’ve had the longest humanitarian airlift in history. We’ve gotten NATO involved there. We have enforced the no-fly zone. We got tough on the sanctions on Serbia. And that has had a sound impact on the war in Bosnia.

On Haiti, the Governor’s Island accord . . . was a real breakthrough but the problem was that (neither side) wanted the United States or U.N. to go in on a date certain to enforce the agreement. Neither side wanted that because of their historical aversion to foreign intervention.

So I don’t know that we had a lot of other options. I will say this, if we hadn’t tried to do it, the whole thing might have come apart earlier. If you have any other ideas about what I could do there I would be glad to have them.

Q: Do you see a need as President to take a more direct hand in shaping a national consensus on our international role? Are you going to devote more time to that?

CLINTON: First, I believe I’ve devoted a lot more time to foreign policy than most people seem to think I have. Most of our folks are bewildered by the character and implication that the Administration doesn’t spend a lot of time on foreign policy. I believe by the end of the year I will have met with more foreign leaders than my predecessors did in their first year. I’m not positive of that but I’m pretty sure. I think what I will have to do is to devote more time . . .to trying to make a clearer case to when I think it is appropriate to commit American troops, and to have people understand that there are no risk-free commitments of American troops. I think one of the reasons that Americans tend to be more isolationists now is that . . . they’re not entirely wrong to think our primary foreign policy problem is fixing the American economy. Because we can’t be strong abroad unless we’re strong at home.

Q: How do you think the media has treated you?

CLINTON: I think the media coverage by and large has gotten much more balanced and fair in the last five months, six months. I think that early on in my term in Washington it became a big thing to say, well, we’re making sure that this guy is the first guy in history to never get a honeymoon. And there was sort of a presumption of wrongdoing. You know, when I was out here and they made that totally bogus story about me delaying air flights and getting a $200 haircut, neither of which is true. The hair cut was under $200, took 10 minutes and didn’t delay any air flights. And Dee Dee (Myers) tried to tell them until she was blue in the face and they didn’t care. They wanted to write the story.

I’m prepared to take my share of responsibility. I think the relationship generally with the press has been fair and balanced in the last several months. It hasn’t all been favorable, but I consider it to be basically fair and balanced for several months now on a good reasonably even feeling. The thing I like about The Times is I think you really go out of your way to analyze problems and then try to work through the specific things that might be done about them, which I think is very very helpful.

Q: Do you think you can meet the Dec. 15 deadline for completion of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)?

CLINTON: Gosh I hope so. Keep in mind if we make a deal with Europe, we then have to take it to Prime Minister Hosokawa (of Japan). I had a great talk with him in Seattle about this, and I did not believe Japan will stand in the way of the GATT agreement.

I think if we get an agreement, I think Japan will be willing to take one or two pretty tough decisions to let it go forward.

I think we can get there, but my point is that we need a week anyway after America and Europe make a deal, take it to Japan and take it to everybody else.

At the Top of His List

President Clinton sketched the chart below to emphasize runaway growth in health care spending. He listed other major spending programs as well. At the top, and rising, is health care. At the bottom, and declining, is defense spending.

Health care

Revenue growth

Retirement*

Interest (on debt)

Domestic spending

Defense

* Social Security and other government retirement plans.