The President's News Conference

The President. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As we approach the end of this congressional session, just before Thanksgiving, it's important that our people know that here in Washington we are finally tackling issues that are central to the lives of all Americans, replacing gridlock and inaction with progress in the pursuit of the common good.

In the last few months, we passed the largest deficit reduction package in history. Interest rates and inflation have remained at historic lows. Millions of Americans have been able to refinance their homes. Investment is up, and more new jobs have come into our economy in the last 10 months than in the previous 4 years. There's been a real effort to improve security for America's working families with the dramatic expansion in the earned-income tax credit, to help working Americans with children who live on modest incomes to do better through tax reductions. We've opened more of our products in high-tech areas to exports. We've passed the family leave law. We've expanded opportunities for people to invest in new businesses in this country. And we've presented a comprehensive plan that will put real health care security within reach of every American. We're working on reinventing our Government to do more with less, and I am proud to say that the Congress is clearly signaling today its determination to move on reforming campaign finance laws. A bill passed the Senate several months ago. Today the House committee is voting out a bill which I believe the House of Representatives will pass.

This is a record of real achievement. But in the next few weeks before we go home, Congress will be challenged to take even greater strides in protecting the personal security of Americans and in creating more opportunities for us to compete and win in the global environment.

The Senate is completing work now on our crime bill, legislation that will fulfill the campaign promise I made to put 100,000 additional police officers on the street, to keep felons behind bars, to take criminals off the street, to provide boot camps and alternative service for first-time youthful offenders, and to remove guns from the hands of people who should not have them. We have a real shot now to pass the Brady bill. After years, 12 years, of heroic activism by Jim and Sarah Brady, Congress is finally determined, I believe, to stand up to the interests against the Brady bill and to take action on crime, which is the number one personal security issue for most Americans.

A week from today, Congress will decide whether to expand exports and jobs by passing the North American Free Trade Agreement. The case for NAFTA could not have been made more forcefully or eloquently than it was by Vice President Gore last night in his debate with Mr. Perot. Last night the Vice President showed that just stating the facts about NAFTA and showing our concern for the interests of working Americans can overcome the fears, the distortions that have been leveled against this agreement. NAFTA means exports; exports means jobs. No wealthy country in the world is growing more jobs without expanding exports.

When the American people hear that case, they showed last night they are willing to listen and willing to join not only millions of other Americans like those the Vice President called by name last night but every living former President, former Secretary of State, Nobel Prizewinning economists, and over 80 percent of the sitting Governors.

The contrast we saw last night was clear. Mr. Perot warned Members of the House of Representatives that they would face awful retaliation if they voted their conscience on NAFTA. The Vice President urged the Members of the House to vote for hope against fear; to vote for the proposition that Americans can compete and win in the global economy; to vote their conscience and tell the constituents back home why they were voting as they were. And if the preliminary results on the debate last night are any indication, the Members of the House of Representatives can trust the American people with the facts and with their own convictions.

This vote comes at a defining moment for our Nation. We have been through a very tough period. For 20 years—20 years—60 percent of the American people have been working harder for the same or less wages. We have had great difficulty in increasing the productivity that is absolutely essential to creating jobs and raising incomes. But we have now done it. This country is now the most productive country in the world across a broad spectrum of manufacturing and service activities in this economy. We can win. And we have to decide, beginning next week, whether we're going to reach out to compete and win or try to withdraw.

I will say again one point I want to make about NAFTA, before I open the floor to questions, that was not emphasized last night simply because it didn't come up as much. This agreement means more jobs, but the real job growth for America will come when two other steps are taken. It will come when all the other Latin democracies and free market economies also join in a great trade group with Mexico, Canada, and the United States. And it will come because once this happens, we will have enormously increased influence in the world community to argue that we ought to adopt a worldwide trade agreement before the end of the year, to get that new GATT agreement. That will influence Asia, it will influence Europe, if the House votes for NAFTA. The stakes for this country, therefore, are quite high. I believe the House will do the right thing.

I want to say, too, that I am grateful that today Congressman Hoagland, Congressman Kreidler, Congressman Dicks, Congressman Valentine, and Senator Nunn announced their support for NAFTA. I think that we will see more coming in the days ahead, and I think by the time we get to vote counting, we'll have enough to win.

Thank you.

Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International]?

Foreign Policy Team

Q. Mr. President, U.S. foreign policy endeavors have been less than successful in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia. And on Sunday on "Meet the Press" you seemed to be lukewarm about your foreign policy team. Is Secretary Wharton being made your sacrificial lamb? And are you planning a shakeup of your foreign policy team? I mean, is that the signal?

The President. No to both questions. First of all, I did not mean to be lukewarm. I have always followed a policy as long as I've been a chief executive of not discussing a lot of personnel issues. But I will say again what I said on Sunday. This team has worked hard on a lot of difficult issues. I think they deserve high marks for dealing with the central, large, strategic issues of this time, dealing with the former Soviet Union, working on bringing down the nuclear threat, working on stemming nuclear proliferation, working on peace in the Middle East, working on putting economics at the forefront of our foreign policy.

Secondly, Mr. Wharton is not being made a scapegoat in any way, shape, or form. What he worked on at the State Department, in my judgment, he did a good job on. He worked on reorganization; he worked on the aid programs; he worked on a number of issues that have nothing to do with the controversies which were thorny when I got here and are still thorny today in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. It would be a great mistake for anyone to misinterpret what happened. I think you have to take his remarks on their own terms. But believe me, his departure has nothing to do with scapegoating. I have the highest regard for him. And I am grateful for the service he rendered.

Israel

Q. Mr. President, there's a growing expectation that Israel and Jordan are going to sign a peace treaty when Prime Minister Rabin visits the White House on Friday. Could you tell us what's the likelihood of that? And also on Mr. Rabin, Israeli radio says that he's written you a letter asking you to cut the prison sentence of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard to 10 years. Are you going to do that?

The President. First of all, I am delighted by the reports of progress in the relationships between Israel and Jordan. And as you know, we are talking with both of them. And we've been involved with that. But I don't think anything will happen Friday on that. I would be pleased if it did. But the truth is, we have no reason to believe that anything will be happening Friday.

On the Pollard case, it is true that the Prime Minister has written me about Jonathan Pollard. I have asked the Justice Department to review his case, as I do in every request for executive clemency. I have not received a report from them yet. And I will not make a decision on the Pollard case until I get some sort of indication from them.

Yes, Wolf [Wolf Blitzer, CNN]?

Ross Perot

Q. Mr. President, there are some who suggest that you deliberately wanted to have the Vice President debate Mr. Perot in order to elevate Mr. Perot as a potential threat to Republicans down the road more than Democrats. Did you have those kinds of interests in mind?

The President. I wish I were that Machiavellian. It never occurred to me. I wanted the Vice President to debate Mr. Perot because I believed—and I know that the conventional wisdom around here was that it was a mistake— but first, I want to give credit where credit's due. The Vice President, not the President, the Vice President had the idea that maybe this was the time to have a debate and to do it on Larry King.

My immediate response, however, was very positive, because I believe the American people—first of all, we know they're hungry for debate. They know we have to change, and they're deeply skeptical of people in politics. So the more direct access people have to this issue, one that affects their lives, the more feeling they get for the facts and the arguments as well as for the conviction of the parties involved, I just think it's better. So there was no ulterior motive in that whatever.

Q. Mr. President, the polls indicate that Vice President Gore did do well in the debate last night and that Mr. Perot did not do so well. You clearly believe he was wounded on the issue of NAFTA. Do you think that carries over into his role in politics in general? Does it hurt his standing as a political force in this country in the future?

The President. Well, I don't have any idea. I don't know about that. I will say this: I think there are a lot of people out there who are alienated from the political system for good reasons. One of the greatest frustrations I have as President is that it is often difficult for me to cut through the din of daily events here to keep speaking to those people and to try to keep them involved.

I think that they will feel more supportive of not only this administration but of the American political system, if we can produce sustained economic growth, greater security for people who work hard and play by the rules; if we can produce a genuine effort to fight crime and to deal with the problems of the breakdown of the society and family in many of the troubled areas of our country; and if we can produce political reform, if we can produce campaign finance reform and lobby reform, and if the Congress sometime in the next few weeks passes a law that says they'll live under the laws that they pass and impose on the private sector.

These are the things that you keep hearing from people who voted in the last election for Mr. Perot. I think what we should focus on, those of us who are here, is addressing the concerns, the hopes, and the fears of those people. And the rest of it will take care of itself. We'll just have to see what happens.

NAFTA

Q. Mr. President, the White House has complained and Mr. Gore has scored some points about Mr. Perot's exaggerations and exaggerations of the anti-NAFTA forces. But last night the Vice President said that 22 out of 23 studies have shown job increases. He cited a figure of 400,000. The Joint Economic Committee, a bipartisan committee of Congress, said that's not true. Doesn't it hurt your arguments for NAFTA when——

The President. What did they say was not true?

Q. Well, they said that the studies were being double counted and that he did not cite the job losses so he wasn't giving a net figure and that actually in the overall size of the economy, that those really are not that significant, or can't be properly counted.

The President. Let me just respond to that on the specific allegations—I have always tried to couch NAFTA as a job winner, a net job winner. That is, I think that the evidence is clear that not just in the long run but in the near run, we'll have more job gains than job losses out of this. There will plainly be some job losses. But the point I have tried to make always is, we have a lot of job losses every year in America we can't prevent. So when we have an opportunity to create more jobs, we are almost morally bound to do it, when we can have a net job gain.

I don't think the Vice President willfully misstated that, because we've had this conversation a long time—many times. But a lot of the extreme claims on both sides ignore the fact that Mexico itself, on its own terms, only comprises 4 to 5 percent of the size of the American economy. The size of the Mexican economy today is about the size of California's economy from the Los Angeles County line, the north line, down to the Mexican border. And therefore, the ability of the Mexicans in the near term to hurt the American economy, or to totally inflate it, is somewhat limited.

As you know, we said that we thought we would gain 200,000 jobs over the next 2 years. Well, last month our economy produced 177,000 jobs. Let me reiterate what I said in my opening remarks. The thing that's important about this is that it makes a statement that we're reaching out to expand trade. It really will; 200,000 jobs is nothing to sneeze at. And almost all of our people believe that the net will be well above 150,000. That is, that's nothing to sneeze at in 2 years, especially since they will be higher paying jobs.

But the important thing is that by showing we can have this relationship with Mexico, we will rapidly be able to move to conclude similar agreements with other market-oriented democracies, with Chile, with Argentina, with a whole range of other countries in Latin America. And this then will give us the psychological leverage—just as for the anti-NAFTA people this has become the repository of all their resentments, for us that are for it it's become the symbol of where we want to go in the world. This will give me enormous leverage when I get on the airplane the day after the NAFTA vote and go out to meet with the General Secretary of the People's Republic of China, when I go out to meet with the Prime Minister of Japan and all the other leaders of Asia, when I try to convince the Europeans that it's time for a worldwide trade agreement.

And nearly everyone who has analyzed what we agreed to about the time of the G-7 on the GATT round, the new trade agreement, concludes that it will add hundreds of thousands of jobs, significant jobs near-term, to the American economy. So I say that, on balance, this is a huge deal for America, but both sides need to be very careful not to make extreme claims. This is a job winner for our country, more jobs with Latin America, even more jobs when we have a new world trade agreement. It all begins with NAFTA.

Q. Mr. President, do you have any regrets about your comments about labor during the Sunday television interview, your comment about the naked pressure that they've exerted on Members of Congress on NAFTA? And what are you going to do to kiss and make up with them?

The President. I sent a little note to Mr. Kirkland the other day and said I hoped my comments Sunday morning didn't ruin his Sunday afternoon. And I told him basically what I said before. I have enormous respect for many of the people who are fighting us on this. I just think they're wrong. But specifically, I don't think a Congressman who has been a friend of the labor movement for 20 years should be told that he or she will get an opponent in the next election or never get any more help on this one vote. I just disagree with that.

If you go back and look at the interview, I was trying to make the point that I thought in the Congress the labor movement was a bigger force in keeping this from passing than the Perot folks were. I didn't mean to hurt their feelings, but I can't retract what I said because I don't think it's right for people to be told, "If you vote your conscience on this vote we're through with you forever, no matter what you've done with us before." I think that's bad and it's not conducive to good government.

Q. We seem to be heading for one of those cliffhangers next week in the House, kind of high political drama that Washington enjoys. I can't imagine, though, sir, that perhaps you enjoy it quite as much. And I wonder as you look back on this if you feel that this issue could perhaps have been managed differently, perhaps an earlier start that would have enabled you to make what you seem to feel is a very strong case a bit more easily?

The President. I think the only way we could have started earlier is if we'd been able to conclude the side agreements sooner; because keep in mind, first of all, I ran for this job with a commitment to support NAFTA if I could get the right side agreements. This thing was dead in the water in January when I became President. It was gone. There was no support among the Democrats in the House. There were Republicans who thought they weren't going to be able to vote for it. Yes, the opposition then got geared up and made a lot of charges against it. But the only thing we had to hold out was the promise that we could conclude side agreements that would improve the environmental issues and that would deal with the labor issues and that would give us some leverage for people to move forward. If we had been able to conclude those agreements more quickly, then we could have started the campaign more quickly.

Q. You don't think these side agreements added credence to the idea that it was a flawed agreement and perhaps hurt politically?

The President. No, I don't think so. But I don't know. Anybody can always second-guess. But what I always tried to say about NAFTA was that the concept was sound and that we needed an agreement with Mexico. One of the things we haven't talked about very much is it means a lot to the United States to have a neighbor with 90 million people that is moving toward democracy, that is moving toward an open economy, and that is moving toward greater friendship with us. I mean, this is a big deal. If you want cooperation in the immigration problem, the drug problem, this means a lot to us.

I always felt that we would get there, but in dealing with at least the people in our party, we had to be able to have something to show that would indicate we were making progress in these areas. So that's all I can say. We may be able to be second-guessed, but the thing simply wasn't ready, and I didn't have anything to argue with.

Q. Mr. President, a moment ago you stated that your leverage would be increased in Seattle if you get a NAFTA victory. Could you come at it from the other side? If you have a NAFTA defeat on Wednesday, would that in any way diminish your prestige in Seattle or your ability to conduct foreign policy?

The President. I don't think it would diminish my ability to conduct foreign policy except in the economic area. I think it would limit my ability to argue that the Asians should open their markets more. And after all, our trade problem, in terms of open markets—if you look at it, where is our trade deficit: $49 billion with Japan, $19 billion with China, $9 billion with Taiwan. We have a $5.4 billion trade surplus with Mexico. So I think my ability to argue that case forcefully that "You ought to open your markets; look at what we're doing," will be undermined. And I think, more importantly, my ability to argue that the Asians and the Europeans should join with me and push hard, hard to get a world trade agreement through the GATT round by the end of the year will be more limited. There's no question about it.

Look, the anxieties that we have here, the same thing is going on in Japan, where they're not generating jobs and they've got staggering income. Same thing in Europe; it's been years since the European economy as a whole has generated new jobs. So in each of these great power centers of the world there are these debates every day just like the one that went on last night between the Vice President and Mr. Perot. They're debating it: Are they going to be more open or more closed? Which way are they going to go? And so I think that my ability to tip the scales in that debate in the right direction for history and for the American people will be limited significantly in the short run if we lose NAFTA. It will not be good for the United States.

Anticrime Efforts

Q. Mr. President, beyond signing a crime bill, if and when one hits your desk, what else can you do? What else will you do about crime and violence?

The President. Well, I think that there's a lot more we have to do. I think the administration has got to examine everything we can do to try to put together an approach that will challenge every community in this country and every organization in this country and every individual in this country to make a contribution with us in restoring the conditions in which civilized life can go on.

I think that the crime bill is very important. I don't want to minimize that. I know some disagree that it is. It really will make a difference if you put another 100,000 police out there. We're losing the ratio of police to crime. We have been for 30 years. This is an important issue. It matters whether we get these police out there, if they're properly trained and properly deployed in community policing.

But we have to rebuild families and communities in this country. We've got to take more responsibility for these little kids before they grow up and start shooting each other. We have to find ways to offer hope and to reconnect people. When children start shooting children the way they're doing now, and little kids go around planning their own funerals, what that means is that there are a whole lot of people, millions of people in this country, who literally are not even playing by the same set of rules that all the rest of us take for granted. And we have learned in this country to accept many things that are unacceptable. And I think the President has a pulpit, Teddy Roosevelt's bully pulpit, that I have to use and work hard on and try to live by, to try to help rebuild the conditions of family and community and education and opportunity.

And I'll just say one last thing about that. What a lot of these folks that are in such desperate trouble need is a unique combination of both structure and order and discipline on the one hand and genuine caring on the other. It is impossible to structure life in a society like ours where there is no family or at least no supervising, caring adult on the one hand, and on the other hand where there is no work. If you go generation after generation after generation and people don't get to work—you think about your lives, think about what you're going to do today, what you did this morning when you got up, what you'll do tonight when you go home. If you think about the extent to which work organizes life in America and reinforces our values, our rules, and the way we relate to one another and the way we raise our children, and then you imagine what it must be like where there is no work—I know the budget is tight. I know there are all kinds of tough problems. I know that people with private capital, even with our empowerment zones, may not want to invest in inner cities and decimated rural areas, but I'm telling you, we have to deal with family, community, education, and you have to have work; there has to be work there.

Q. Mr. President, on the issue of crime, could you explain a little bit more about how the White House, how your administration is going to accomplish some of those things?

The President. Yes. First of all, the Attorney General and Secretary Cisneros and a number of other people are now working in our administration on how we can develop a comprehensive approach to the whole issue of violence in our society and how we can merge that with what we want to do in terms of community empowerment and how it will fit with all the things that we are now doing. And I think what you will see from us over the next several months is a sustained, organized, disciplined approach so that we don't just respond to the horror we all feel when a little kid gets shot after being picked up off the street, like happened here last weekend, or when these children plan their funerals. I want to put this right at the center of what we're doing.

I have spent years going to neighborhoods and talking to people and dealing with issues that most politicians in National Government have not talked a lot about. I care a great deal about this. There is a lot of knowledge in this town about it. Senator Moynihan wrote a very powerful article just a couple of weeks ago on how we have defined deviancy down. I think there's an enormous bipartisan willingness to face this. What I think I have to do is to mobilize every person in my Government to do what can be done to address these problems. And you will see that coming out after the Congress goes home and in my address to the people next year when the Congress begins.

Q. Mr. President, you mentioned Senator Moynihan. He's proposed a Federal tax on bullets that would make certain kind of bullets, particularly cop-killer bullets, prohibitively expensive. Do you support the general idea of an ammunition tax? And would you like to see it to be part of the financing for your health care package, as Senator Moynihan has proposed?

The President. Well, Senator Moynihan has been very candid in saying that what he really wants to do is to try to use this to deal with the problem of gun violence in America. I think the health care plan that I put forward will finance itself in the way that we have, and I think we should proceed with that. I think that this idea of his, however, deserves a lot of consideration.

But one of the things that I question in my own mind is if some of these bullets are being manufactured solely for the purpose of having a devastating effect on someone's body if they hit someone's body, whether we ought not just to get rid of those bullets. Because if you look at the money that can be raised as a practical matter, in the context of this Federal budget or the health care budget, it's limited. I agree with the Treasury Secretary. Secretary Bentsen stated our position. We think the Senator has given us an interesting idea. We're looking at it. We're seeing what the objectives are. But some of that ammunition, it would seem to me, there might be a consensus that we ought not to make it at all in this country.

New Jersey Election

Q. Mr. President, it turns out that your friend Jim Florio in New Jersey may have lost the election by a narrow margin because of an approach dreamed up by the Republican strategists which depressed the black voter turnout. What do you think about that tactic?

The President. First, I think we should all acknowledge that people have died in this country, given their lives to give other Americans, especially African-Americans, the right to vote. And this allegation, if it is true—and I say if it is true—I don't know what the facts are, but if it is true, then it was terribly wrong for anyone to give money to anybody else not to vote or to depress voter turnout. And it was terribly wrong for anyone to accept that money to render that nonservice to this country.

NAFTA

Q. Can you give us a count right now of how many votes you have in the House on NAFTA?

The President. No, because it's changing every day. But we're getting a lot closer. I honestly believe we're going to win it now, and that's not just political puff. I think we'll make it. I'll be surprised if we don't win now.

Q. [Inaudible]—what is going to happen to Latin America if NAFTA is not passed. What would be the impact in the United States, not in you but in the people of the United States if NAFTA is not approved?

The President. Well, if it's not passed, we'll lose a lot of opportunities to sell our products. We will not do one single thing to discourage people from moving to Mexico to set up plants to get low wages to sell back in here. We will depress the environmental and labor costs more than they otherwise would be depressed in Mexico, which will make it harder for us to compete. It'll be bad for America if we do it.

Haiti and Bosnia

Q. Mr. President, so far you haven't talked about Haiti and Bosnia. The situation in those two countries seems to have gotten worse in the year since you've been elected. Right now, what can you tell us you're doing to reverse the situation in the short term, or do you fear that this is going to go on all winter long in Bosnia as well as in Haiti?

The President. Well, the problem or the conditions in Bosnia at least seem to be that none of the parties now, including the government, at least at the moment we speak, based on what I knew this morning, are of a mind to make peace on any terms that the others will accept, because there are different military results being achieved on the ground there in different places in ways that make all the parties feel that they shouldn't agree now. Under those conditions, all we can do is to try to make sure that we minimize the human loss coming on for this winter, that we try to get the United Nations to agree to let the NATO position that the United States put together on the availability of air power in the event that Sarajevo is seriously shelled be an actual live option and not just something on the books, and that we make sure our humanitarian program works.

I will say this—I want to emphasize this— the airlift to Bosnia, which this Nation has spearheaded, has now gone on longer than the Berlin airlift. And it's one of the most comprehensive humanitarian aid efforts in history. And we'll have to keep doing it.

In Haiti, I'd like to say a word or two about that. First of all, it's important that the people of Haiti understand that the people who brought this embargo on were Mr. Francois and General Cedras, because they didn't go through with the Governors Island Agreement.

Now, I believe that Mr. Malval and President Aristide are willing to talk in good faith and try to reach an accommodation that would enable us to get back on the path to democracy and to implementing that agreement. I grieve for the people of Haiti. We feed almost 700,000 people a day in Haiti. We participate actively, the United States does. I don't want anybody else to be hurt down there. But I think it's very important that the people of Haiti understand that the people that brought this embargo on them were Francois and Cedras in breaking the agreement that was agreed to by all parties there. And we have to try to reach another agreement so that the country can go back to normal.

NAFTA

Q. The financial community has been worried about Mexico's policy of gradually devaluing the peso and saying that this would underscore the low-wage environment there. What would you foresee under a NAFTA pact that was approved as far as the relationship between the dollar and the peso? And would we end up finding the Federal Reserve having to support the peso because of our tighter economic relationship?

The President. Actually, I would think that— I want to be careful how I say this because I don't want anything I say now to have an impact in the Mexican financial markets today, but I believe that you have to just say that the peso would become stronger if NAFTA passes because it would strengthen the Mexican economy. And normally, when you've got a strong economy that's growing, the value of the currency will rise.

Khanh Pham

Let me say, I know we've got—no, no, no, I'm sorry. I want to introduce someone before we go, because I think I would be remiss, here at a press conference with all of you, not to do this. I'd like to ask Khanh Pham to stand. Would you stand up?

I want to tell you a little bit about this young woman. She's here today with a program that puts role models and young people together. And she said that her role model was Dee Dee Myers, so she wanted to come here and be here. But let me tell you about her. Maybe she should be our role model.

When she was 2 1/2 years old, she was cradled in her 5-year-old brother's arms as her mother made a desperate run for freedom from Vietnam. They forced their way onto an overcrowded small wooden boat after giving away their life savings for those spots. They endured heavy seas, were separated on the boat for a period of time. They watched people die before being picked up by a U.S. naval ship, the U.S.S. Warden.

After coming here, because of language barriers, her mother could only get jobs in manual labor. She also baked Vietnamese pastries to sell. She held two or three jobs at a time. Sometimes she didn't have enough money to wash the clothes so the family would have to wash them in their tub, while Khanh and her brother would try to teach their mother English.

A couple of years ago, she missed several months of school while she single handedly worked with all the agencies and authorities here to get her two sisters back from Vietnam into the United States. Finally, they were reunited a year and a half ago, and they now live with Khanh and her mother. She is 17, a senior at Reston High School in Virginia. She holds an office with her student government, and she's a student representative elected to the board of governors, a city office in Reston.

And as I said, she's spending the day here today. She's interested in being in the press today, but one day she hopes to be America's Ambassador to Vietnam.

Thank you for coming here.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.