From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:jcma@REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU Tue Apr 27 23:06:24 1993 Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 15:39-0400 From: The White House <75300.3115@compuserve.com> Subject: President's Remarks to National Realators Association To: Clinton-Speeches-Distribution@campaign92.org THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release April 27, 1993 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO NATIONAL REALTORS ASSOCIATION Sheraton Washington Hotel Washington, D.C. 11:52 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. And thank you, President Bill. (Laughter.) I'm glad to be on your coattails today. (Laughter.) I'm glad to see all of you in a good humor, enthusiastic and, I hope, feeling very good about your country. I'm glad to have you here today in our Nation's Capital. I saw some people from my home state out there in the crowd as I wondered around. I see them back there. You know, in politics, you don't have a lot of job security. And therefore, I've been a good customer for several realtors over the years. (Laughter.) Even though I now live in America's finest public housing -- (laughter) -- I actually was a customer on several occasions. I want to thank you at the outset for the support this organization has given to the economic program I have put before the Congress, and to our efforts to put the American people back to work. I'm proud to be here with people who are on the front lines of America's real economy, who understand the need for fundamental change in the way we promote growth and increase profits and generate jobs. I believe we have begun to make those fundamental changes, but I think we can only see the job through if we have the help of you and millions of people like you who live in the economy beyond the Beltway -- where people are not guaranteed jobs and have an uncertain future. I had an interesting encounter here just a couple of days ago. I was out on my morning run, and is often the case, I just saw some people along the Mall out there -- I was running up toward the Capitol the end of last week, and this young man asked if he could jog along with me. And he was visiting the Nation's Capital, and I asked him what he did for a living. And he said, "I'm in the real estate business in Texas." And he said, I'm just telling you," he said, "I'm out there seeing it." He said, "It's just amazing how hard people work just to keep their heads above the water. And we need jobs and education in this country. We need to do something to make these cities safe. And we've got to turn these things around." And he said, "I just want you to know that." He said, "I have more awareness of it than I ever did since I've been in the real estate business, because I really see people and how they have to live and the struggles they endure. And I understand that about the work that you do. And I thank you for the support you've given to the efforts that we've made." In the first three months of this administration, we have fundamentally changed the direction taken by a national government over the previous decade. I've tried to overcome inertia, ideology and indifference. I've tried to reach out a hand of partnership and to restore energy and experimentation to this government. Everybody knows we're living in a new and unchartered time. There is a global economy coming together in ways that are good and bad, opening all kinds of new opportunities for us, but also affecting us -- when there is a recession in Japan and recession in Germany and a recession in the rest of Europe, it affects the United States. We are trying to figure out now how we should chart our course in the future. But we do know some things about what works and what doesn't, and what has always worked in the American free enterprise system. The changes we have to make won't be easy. It hasn't been so far. It's not going to be easy in the future. But we have to do these things. One of the things that we know is the worst thing we can do in many cases is to stay on the path that we were on. I submitted to the Congress a blueprint of a budget plan designed to change the policies of debt and disinvestment and decline; to bring a new spirit of investment and growth and thrift to the government. Both Houses of Congress agreed to the budget plan in record time. A plan that will reduce the national deficit by over $500 billion in the next five years. These votes are important because they're votes of confidence, and they illustrate that this town has finally gotten serious about cutting the deficit. That's one of the reasons we saw a big upturn in the stock market at the same time interest rates were hitting record lows. As you know better than anyone, these things can bring enormous long-term benefits to the economy. Just look at this chart that I brought with me -- I only brought one, but I wanted to show this one. (Laughter.) My staff, they started letting me take charts around again. You know, I used to carry them all and I used to get criticized for putting people to sleep with numbers and statistics and everything. So I quit for a while. But I just couldn't stand it anymore, I had to bring one. (Laughter.) This chart shows what has happened to 30-year fixed rate mortgages with a 20-percent downpayment since the election. Look at this. (Applause.) Six months prior to the election the average rate was 8.2 percent. Right after the election we announced that we were going to seriously work to bring this deficit down, and we began intense meetings in Little Rock with people who were part of our administration and people from around the country. We had the National Economic Summit. From Election Day to February 17th, the day on which I END12:28 P.M. EDT