THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
                     (Independence, Missouri)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                          July 30, 1994


                     REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
           AT HEALTH SECURITY EXPRESS NATIONAL KICK-OFF


                        Truman Courthouse
                       Independence Square
                      Independence, Missouri



1:40 P.M. CDT


             THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Governor Carnahan.  Thank
you, Mr. Vice President, and Tipper and Hillary.  And, ladies and
gentlemen, thank you all for coming.  And let me especially thank
those two fine women -- mother and daughter --  that stood up
here and spoke for the nearly 40 million Americans who deserve
health care.  (Applause.)

             I have to tell you, a lot of things have been said
here today -- maybe everything that needs to be said has been
said.  But I would like to offer one mildly dissenting view.  I
believe that most of the people here who disagree with me today
about national health reform do admire Harry Truman.  They
probably think he ought to be on Mt. Rushmore.  And it must be
surprising to them to know that they had the same arguments that
are being made against us made against him 50 years ago.  That is
always the case when you try to change things, and why it's so
important to use the presidency to fight to help the ordinary
American to live a better life.  (Applause.)

             You've already heard it.  You've heard it in what
the other people have said.  Harry Truman had to say, no, this is
not socialized medicine, this is private insurance;  no, this is
not a government takeover, we're preserving the choice and the
private medical system; no, we're not going to waste more money
covering everybody, we'll actually save money.

             And what did they say?  Harry Truman's a radical
liberal.  He's for socialized medicine.  He's for big government.
He's going to take this country down.

             Well, the truth is Harry Truman had Independence,
Missouri values.  He had this old-fashioned notion that we value
work and family and faith.  And people who work hard and play by
the rules ought to help one another when they need it, ought to
join together to help themselves and to help their children have
a better life.

             And that is really what is at stake here.  All this
screaming and yelling, what's really hurting America today is
that we're shouting too much and listening too little and
speaking in respectful tone too little.  (Applause.)

             Two years ago, on Labor Day when we all came here to
kick-off our general election campaign, what a wet day it was.
Do you remember how wet it was?  And we stood here in the rain
because we believed we were on a mission to restore the American
Dream.  We were tired of the screaming, yelling, anti-government
crowd that told us one thing and did another; that exploded the
deficit, reduced investment in the American people, drove our
economy into the ground.  We were tired of seeing our country
come apart and be divided by this rhetoric of hatred and division
when we need to be coming together, to pull together for the 21st
century.  (Applause.)

             And we knew that at the end of the Cold War we had a
great test before us:  Would we move into the next century with
confidence, hope, united, so that we can compete and win, and
every one of our children can live up to the fullest of their
God-given abilities; or would we give into the same old dark
fears and divisions that have been dredged up over and over and
over again in this country's history?

             My fellow Americans, that is the real truth of what
your President, Harry Truman, had to face.  At the end of World
War II, when he was the victor in the war, 80 percent of the
people thought he was just great.  But then a new world had to be
created.  And the question was would the President just tell
people what they wanted to hear, or would he set about creating
that new world?

             And what did we get?  The G.I. Bill, a way to
educate our families; a way to build houses; a way to build the
middle class, bringing down the deficit; stabilizing the economy;
rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan; rebuilding Japan;
standing up against Soviet expansionism so we could eventually
win the Cold War.  That's what he did.  And every step along the
way the American people were subject to the most vicious and
brutal attacks.  Why?  Because when people leave one era, when
everybody can look at the future through the same set of glasses,
and they have to pick up another set of glasses to figure out how
to understand things, we are always vulnerable.

             You think about your own life.  Every time you've
been asked to change you may have a mixture of hope and fear.
And the real test every time is are your fears gong to overtake
you and are you going to give in, or are you going to live by
your hopes and your courage and charge forward and grow and
become better?  That is the test for the United States today.
(Applause.)

             This health care fight is far from the first one in
which we have been engaged.  When I became   President I told the
American people I was tired of hearing people say they were
conservative and they hated government and they didn't like the
deficit, and presiding over the biggest deficits in history, and
I would do something about it.  (Applause.)  And we passed,
against the solid opposition of every member of the other party
in the United States Congress, an economic program.  And what did
it do -- $255 billion worth of spending cuts; tax cuts for 15
million working Americans, including 295,000 Missouri families; a
tax increase for the wealthiest 1.5 percent of our people; a
reduction in the federal work force, something the conservatives
say they want -- a reduction in the federal work force of
250,000.

             And what did we produce?  Three years of deficit
reduction for the first time since Harry Truman was the President
of the United States.  (Applause.)  And 3.8 million new jobs,
more than in the previous four years put together by far.
(Applause.)  And a 1.5-percent drop in the unemployment rate, and
the largest number of new business starts since World War II.

             They said we would wreck the economy.  Instead we
brought it back, because we wouldn't give into this hatred and
rhetoric of division and destruction, and we moved forward.
(Applause.)

             And then we moved on to try to make sure all of you
could compete and win in this global economy, expanding trade
against opposition; providing for lifetime training, more for
Head Start; world-class standards for our public schools for the
first time; apprenticeship programs for our young people who do
not go to four-year colleges, but need more training; and a
reduction in interest rates and better repayment terms for
student loans, so that 20 million Americans are immediately
eligible for lower interest on their student loans.  (Applause.)

             My fellow Americans, this is not about hot air and
hot signs.  This is about what we talked about here in the rain,
what Al Gore and I wrote about in Putting People First, and most
of all, it's about what counts in your life as you move forward
with your families and your hopes.  And we are going to continue
doing that.

             Just look at the last week in America.  What a great
week America had.  Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel.
Now, with our strong help, Israel and Jordan have agreed to end
the state of war between them and to work for peace and to make
us more secure.  (Applause.)

             Harry Truman set up a system that enabled us to win
the Cold War.  Now, after the Cold War, after much hard work by
the United States, Russia has announced that by the end of
August, for the first time since Harry Truman was President,
there will be no Russian soldiers in Central and Eastern Europe,
making the world more secure.  (Applause.)

             After six years of tough talk and anti-crime
rhetoric by previous administrations, at long last -- at long
last, this week the House and the Senate agreed to send the
toughest, smartest, crime bill in the history of the United
States to a vote on the floor of the United States Congress this
coming week.  (Applause.)

             And, as has been said, your Majority Leader Dick
Gephardt and the Speaker of the House have, for the first time in
American history, voted out a bill to the floor of the Congress
that would provide for affordable health care for all of the
American people.  It has been a good week for the United States.
(Applause.)

             But the only way we can go forward is if we go
beyond the slogans to the facts; go beyond all the posturing to
the people.  Look at this crime bill, folks.  Children are five
times more likely to be the victims of violent crime.  Violent
crime has gone up by 300 percent in the last 30 years, the police
forces by only 10 percent.  This crime bill will add 100,000
police to our streets.  It will make three strikes and you're out
the law of the land.  It will take the assault weapons out of the
hands of the gangs that make them better armed than the police
forces.  It will make handgun possession and ownership by
juveniles illegal unless they're under the supervision of an
adult.  It will make our schools safer.  And it ought to pass
next week, not because of all the rhetoric against it, but
because our families deserve a better, and a safer, and a more
secure future.  (Applause.)

             But if we had to wait six long years for a crime
bill, isn't 60 years way too long to wait for all the American
people to have health care security?  That's how long we've been
waiting.  President Roosevelt wanted it.  President Truman
proposed it three times.  Seven presidents of both parties have
tried to achieve it.

             Let me ask you something -- and I want you to listen
to this; it's so ironic -- what is the real big fight here?  The
big fight is whether employers and employees should be asked to
purchase private health insurance, and whether the government
saying to the American people "you must purchase private health
insurance" is either socialized medicine, somehow unethical or
bad for the economy.  That's what all this boils down to, whether
it would be better to keep on doing what we're doing.

             Well, let me ask you to consider this.  Number one,
in 1971, President Richard Nixon and the ranking member of the
Senate Finance Committee today, the Republican Senator from
Oregon, Bob Packwood, proposed that all employers pay for half of
the health insurance costs of all their employees, and that we do
it.  If it was such a hot idea in 1971, why are the members of
the other party running against it today as if it had the plague?
It was a good idea then, and it's a good idea today.  (Applause.)

             As you know, I just returned from Germany where I
saw the flags of the Berlin Brigade cased because they're coming
home, having won the Cold War.  And I met with hundreds and
hundreds of our Armed Services family.  All of them have health
care in the military.  And do you know, the only thing they
wanted to talk to me about was health care.  "Mr. President,"
they said, "When we come home to serve our country out of uniform
we want to know that our children are going to be covered by
medical insurance.  I hope you can pass health care this year."
(Applause.)

             It would be different, my fellow Americans, if we
didn't have personal experience.  Look at the State of Hawaii.
In Hawaii everything is more expensive than it is here on the
American mainland, except one thing:  health care.  Because for
20 years in Hawaii, employers and employees have been required to
purchase health insurance so that everybody is covered.  And
guess what?  Small business insurance premiums are 30 percent
lower, $400 a year lower for small business people in Hawaii than
they are in the United States on the average.  We know this
works; why are we running away from it?  Why don't we run toward
it and embrace it and take care of people like that fine young
women that spoke to you here today?  (Applause.)

             And what happens when we try these half measures?
Insurance rates go up and coverage goes down.  Do you know that
one of the things I just wish -- it's not much I wish for from
those who shout and scream, instead of talk and listen and
exchange, but I do wish they had some burden to prove that what
they're for works.

             This is the only country in the world with an
advanced economy where we're going backward in health care.  Ten
years ago 88 percent of our people were covered; today 83 percent
of our people are covered.  Five years ago there were five
million Americans who had health insurance then who don't have it
today.  Five million Americans have lost their health insurance
for good just in the last five years, and over 80 percent of them
are middle-class working people.  This is a broken system and we
ought to fix it without delay.  (Applause.)

             Folks, 60 years ago this fight started.  Fifty years
ago Truman tried it three times and failed.  Twenty-nine years
ago, halfway between the beginning and now, President Johnson
came to this city to sign Medicare into law and to give Harry and
Bess Truman Medicare cards one and two.  I'll bet there are a lot
of people in this audience whose parents have been helped by
Medicare.  (Applause.)  I bet there are a lot of people in this
audience whose family budgets would have been severely strained
if it hadn't been for Medicare.

             If you have ever dealt with Medicare you know that
it's the furthest thing in the world from socialized medicine.
Senior citizens pick their doctors and the doctors make the
decision.  And yet, the arguments we're hearing today against
this plan are the same arguments the same crowd made against
Medicare 29 years ago, just like they did against Harry Truman 50
years ago and FDR 60 years ago.

             Let's do better.  Let's finish Harry Truman's fight.
We're halfway home and we can go all the way.  (Applause.)  And
let me say this.  I want to be as good as my word to say we
should talk about people, not slogans.  In this beloved state of
yours there are 700,000 Missourians without health care.  There
are 175,000 children without health care.  But there are millions
who could lose their health care.  They're an injury, a sickness,
a job loss, a job change away from losing it.  I believe we can
do better.

             I was raised in a home with a mother who was widowed
when I was born.  Who left me with my grandparents to learn to be
a nurse.  (Applause.)  I grew up around hospitals and I buried my
mother earlier this year, after a long and brave battle with
cancer for which, thank God, she received magnificent care
because she had health insurance.  How can we in good conscience
say, when we know every other country's done it -- when we know
Hawaii has done it and saved money doing it and made people more
healthy -- how can we say America is not up to it?  How can we
give in to those who would play to our fear and our fears of the
future instead of going forward?  Harry Truman would say the buck
stops here, the buck stops in Congress and the buck stops with
you.

             Let's push it over the finish line this year.
(Applause.)

             Thank you and God bless you all.  (Applause.)

                               END1:58 P.M. CDT