THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                         September 29, 1994


                       REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
             AT INTERSTATE BANKING BILL SIGNING CEREMONY


                        U.S. Treasury Building
                           Washington, D.C.



3:05 P.M. EDT


             THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Dick Kovacevich,
for your fine words and your strong support of this endeavor.  Thank
you, Tom Labrecque, for what you said.  Thank you, as always,
Secretary Bentsen, for your remarks and your stellar leadership.  I
thank all the members of Congress for coming and the members of the
House who are out voting; you were all introduced by name in
absentia.  (Laughter.)

             But I do want to say a special word of thanks to
retiring Congressman Steve Neal for his wonderful leadership bill,
and I thank him.  (Applause.)  I thank the senators, those who are
here especially -- Senator Dodd, Senator Sarbanes, Senator Bennett
and, of course, Senator Riegle; we will miss you and we thank you for
this very important part of your legacy.  (Applause.)

             I thank Chairman Greenspan and Mr. Blinder and Chairman
Levitt for coming, and for their role in stabilizing and
strengthening our economy.  I never comment on these things, but I'm
awfully glad this bill is taking effect at a time when banks will
still be able to make loans at reasonable interest rates.  (Laughter
and applause.)

             There are a lot of other people here -- I'll live to
regret -- (laughter) -- a lot of other people here that could be
introduced, but I think I would be remiss if I did not say something
about someone who fought for this issue when he was in Congress and
is now the distinguished Governor of the State of Connecticut, Lowell
Weicher.  We're delighted to see you here, sir.  Thank you for
coming.  (Applause.)  We're delighted to see Sarge and Eunice Shriver
here; thank you for coming.  (Applause.)

             Now, there are two other people I would be personally
remiss if I did not introduce because they had a lot do to with my
interest in this issue.  The thing that sparked my interest in this
issue, first of all, was being governor of a state when banks were
dropping like flies all around the country, and we were determined to
protect ours.  And I began then to seriously think what was
structurally wrong with the financial system in this country.

             There is a gentleman here from my home state who has
been my banker, my advisor, my supporter, and was the last person who
served as my chief of staff as governor of Arkansas.  I'd like to ask
him to stand up -- Mr. Bill Bowen, former chairman of the Commercial
National Bank.  (Applause.)

             And the other person here who stayed up with me half the
night once.  You may think you can't stay up half a night talking
about interstate banking -- (laughter).  You may think it would put
you to sleep even though -- but you have never heard Hugh McColl talk
about it.  Will you please stand up?  Thank you so much.  (Applause.)
I figured if he could be rhapsodic about this at 2:00 a.m., I ought
to be for it, strong for it.  (Laughter.)

             You've already heard how important this legislation is
and what it will do for the banking industry.  I'd like to just take
a few moments to describe to you from my point of view as president
how this fits into our comprehensive economic strategy.  You've
already heard people say it will make us stronger economically; it
will be better for consumers; it will make us more efficient.  It
represents another example of our intent to reinvent government by
making it less regulatory and less overreaching and by shrinking it
where it ought to be shrunk and reshaping it where it ought to be
reshaped.

             The people who are here up on this stage with me
represent the economic team who worked with me to try to develop a
strategy that would put the American people first and enable us to
compete and win in the 21st century, and enable us to stay together
and go forward in spite of all of our differences, to restore
prosperity and to renew the American dream.

             The economic strategy we have crafted, while it may have
critics in every corner from point to point, still should be
recognized for what it is -- a serious attempt by the national
administration to systematically address the problems of the American
economy and the opportunities of the American economy that enable us
to increase our capacity to work together for opportunity for all.

             Secretary Bentsen has been my wise counsel and strong
leader.  Secretary Brown is with President Yeltsin in Seattle today,
probably still trying to make another sale.  (Laughter.)  As all of
you know, he's traveled from South America to South Africa to promote
American businesses and exports, and has been the most active
Commerce Secretary certainly in my lifetime.

             Secretary Reich has been tireless in his advocacy for a
skilled work force, and for changing our whole unemployment system
into a reemployment system.  Alice Rivlin and before her, Leon
Panetta, have played a central role in shaping tough and responsible
budgets and in giving us three years of declining deficits for the
first time since Mr. Truman was the President of the United States.

             Ambassador Kantor has given us more leadership on trade
in the last 20 months than in any comparable period in the last 35
years.  Erskine Bowles is not here, but the acting administrator of
SBA is here, Sandra Pulley; and let me say, among other things, they
have proved that if you put people in charge of the Small Business
Administration whose job it is or has been in the past to create and
expand small businesses, it makes a remarkable difference.  The
agency is less political but more effective than it has ever been.
One of the things they did was to take the small business loan form,
which was that thick, and cut it to one page and give you a decision
in three days, yes or no; which is something that interstate banking
will probably make possible for every bank in America to do --
(laughter) -- before you know it.

             I want to thank Laura Tyson, the Chair of our Council of
Economic Advisors, who has done so much to help us analyze the
economy and strategize long-term.  But most important of all, I want
to thank the most self-effacing, but talented person I've ever had
the privilege to work with in the area of the economy, Bob Rubin, for
coordinating this entire team.  And I'd like for him to stand up,
because he never gets any recognition.  (Applause.)

             Our strategy was pretty simple:  Get our fiscal house in
order; bring the deficit down; do it and find a way to invest more in
the skills of our people, the technologies of the future; defense
conversion; expand trade; open markets; be more aggressive in
appropriate ways in having a partnership outside our borders between
the United States government and our economic interests; and work to
find ways to make the government more efficient.

             We have committed ourselves to that.  And among other
things, the budget we are about to adopt -- we're in the process of
adopting now -- combined with the budget last year, represent only
the first time in 17 years when a president's had two budgets in a
row adopted by Congress substantially intact.  They will give us
three years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since
the Truman presidency.  But also somewhat less known, they will over
this six-year period, because we adopt five-year budgets, reduce the
size of the federal government by 270,000 to its smallest size since
Mr. Kennedy was President.  All of that money is being given to the
American people in their own communities to fight crime.  That's how
the crime bill was funded.

             This is a remarkable change.  We have already reduced
the size of the federal government in 20 months by more than 70,000
people.  And so I thank all of them for that.

             The result of these comprehensive efforts and our
discipline coordination with other aspects of the public and private
sector is that our economy is healthy and growing, inflation is
moderate, trade is expanding, the deficit is dropping, and the
government is shrinking.  There have been 4.3 million new jobs.  And
in contrast to the pattern of the '80s when much of the job growth in
times that were slow was in state and local government, 93 percent of
the new jobs for the last 20 months have been in the private sector.

             According to a recent annual survey by International
Economists, America has now been ranked the most productive economy
in the world for the first time in nine years. We've also had eight
months in a row of manufacturing job growth, something others had all
but given up on for the first time in ten years.

             Our challenge now is to keep moving in the right
direction, to keep creating new partnerships between business,
government and citizens.  And this legislation is a good step in that
direction.

             Under this law, as you've already heard, banks will be
able to operate in more states with less trouble.  We wipe away
obsolete government-created restrictions, something I'm determined to
do in many other areas.  And you'd be amazed how many areas these
exist in.

             Just for example, in the last year and a half, we have
given 17 states permission to try new ways to move people from
welfare to work.  In every case, we had to wipe away federal
restrictions to allow states to do things that nearly 100 percent of
the American people without regard to race or income want done to
find a way to put people in the work force and take them off the
dole.  So we are working hard.

             We know we can save billions of dollars if we do that.
Some estimates suggest the efficiencies in this bill alone in
reducing paperwork  and regulation will save this industry about $1
billion a year.

             We know this bill is good for consumers for reason that
have already been stated.  I wish I had thought of Tom's line myself
-- it's easier for a New York bank to expand in Kuala Lumpur than
Jersey City.  So, since he's already said that, I won't give you what
they wrote for me, which is longer, and not nearly as graphic.
(Laughter.)

             I also want to thank the Congress for working on this
bill in a bipartisan spirit.  You know, I get very frustrated, as all
of you know, that it takes so long do to big things around here.  I
went back and read The Federalist Papers the other night I was so
frustrated by it.  And then, lo and behold, some of our brilliant
framers organized this government to slow things down.  Even they
couldn't be right about everything, but -- (laughter) -- anyway, we
took our time on this bill.

             And there are so many things that we've been able to do
in the last year and half that were just sort of hanging around for
six, seven or eight years.  But when the bill did pass, when we had
the confluence of forces and energy and vision to pass it, it passed
with overwhelming bipartisan support which should increase the
confidence of the American people that this is a good thing for our
country, and that it will help all of us to do better.

             Let us all acknowledge that this work is far from over.
You've already heard the previous speaker say there was more to be
done in the banking area, even though we have had a very good year
and a half with trade.  And, NAFTA, by the way, is having a very
positive effect on our economy.  We've had a 19-percent increase in
exports to Mexico, a 600-percent increase in the exports of
automobiles and trucks to Mexico since NAFTA passed.  Jobs are up to
both Canada and Mexico because exports are up.  Still, the really
important thing to do is to pass the GATT.

             I am going in November to Indonesia to meet with the
leaders of the big Asian economies.  I will then go back to Florida
in December to have all the leaders of the democratic governments in
the Caribbean and Latin America there at the Summit of the Americas
that Mr. McLarty, who is here, is coordinating for us.  We need to be
able to continue to be the leader in opening up the global economy to
efficiency and to competition and to expansion.

             This is not a zero-sum game, this economy.  But the only
way it can not be that is to keep pushing back the limits of the
possible.  And the only way you can do that is to have global
economic growth.  So we will keep hoping and working for GATT.  I
think we need to create it and pass it as quickly as we can.  The
American people will be a winner there.

             All of you know that every serious economic study of the
GATT has estimated that it will create hundreds of thousands of high-
paying American jobs over the next decade, and ultimately add between
$100 billion and $200 billion to our GDP every single year.  It will
cut foreign tariffs by a third.  It will provide a global tax cut of
$744 billion.  So I hope that the bipartisan support the GATT has
will result in the same thing that happened with the banking bill --
that we will pass it and pass it in a prompt way.

             Yesterday the House Ways and Means Committee approved
the GATT by a vote of 35 to 3.  This morning the Senate Finance
Committee approved it by a vote of 19 to zero.  The fact is, these
folks have figured out that this is good for our economy, good for
our country, good for our global leadership to continue to be
pointing the way for other countries to keep them looking upward and
outward and reaching out to each other instead of drawing inward and
giving in to the difficult pressures that all of us face.

             I want Congress to pass the GATT this year.  If it
passes the House but not the Senate, I'll urge the Senate to return
after the election recess and pass it then.  We have come too far on
this journey, making our government more efficient, our economy more
productive and working together to back off now.

             You know, this week I've had the honor to represent you
at the U.N. and to meet with President Yeltsin here in Washington and
to watch as our courageous soldiers are working to bring democracy
back to Haiti in a peaceful fashion.  I am reminded that the world,
with all of its difficulties, has never really had greater
opportunities, and that our very existence now is not threatened as
it once was because of the progress we have made in trying to learn
to live together.

             People everywhere who yearn for political freedom and
for economic opportunity are having more chances to realize both than
ever before.  We have a chance to help them.  Sometimes we are called
upon to help them in definite and specific ways as we were early in
the process of Russian reform or as we have been in Haiti.  But I
always believe that the most powerful way we help is by setting the
right example.

             We have set a good example today.  Passing the GATT is
setting a good example -- reaching out to the rest of the world,
being unafraid to compete and determined to contact people and to
work with them and to keep doing what we do better is the best way to
set that kind of example.   To me, that's what this bill represents,
and I'm honored to be here to sign it today.

             Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

             We don't have enough room on the dais for every member
of Congress who's here, but I would like to ask at least Mr. Neal to
come up here.  He and Senator Riegle should be in this picture.  It
may get them so many write-in votes they won't be able to retire.
(Applause.)

             (The bill is signed.)

                                 END3:24 P.M. EDT