

	     


                           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


