President Bill Clinton Speaks at the National Governors Association Conference in Burlington (Vermont)

Before I formally introduce the president I want to present him with a book which was given to me by Vermonter who found this in a antique bookshop in Linden Ville Vermont and what it was doing there I do not know. It is the minutes of the conference of the governors May 13th to 14th under the under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt the first governors conference in 19 0 8. And as I say what it was doing in Lincolnville I do not know Mr. President but I will tell you that I have read this of course when the guy called me up and told me he wanted to give it to you I tried to see if he could give it to me instead. I have read this and I can tell you that no matter how long winded we are my colleagues it does not compare to what is on in the proceedings here Ron. Four hundred and thirty nine pages and I know that the president was the chairman of this organization. I venture under his chairmanship it would not have been 439 pages either. So let me present this to you Mr. President before our formal introduction.

The president was fortunate enough to meet the man who found that book at the airport this morning. President Clinton has been with us many times before. A former colleague he has stood tall for a partnership between the states and the federal government on behalf of all Americans. As president he has repeatedly sought our advice and counsel. He has personally led the fight on issues that mean a great deal to us. By far the most important issue in federalism is sustained national economic growth. The nation is on a path of sustained economic recovery Mr. President and for that we are extremely grateful for your leadership and we thank you. The president has been on our side and Education Goals 2000 emergency disaster assistance welfare and health care waivers which he

has granted more of than any president mandate relief Paperwork Reduction welfare reform regulatory relief and most importantly to me is the theme of this conference. He has made sure that in all these things we take care of children as we change the social systems of America. You're a good friend of state government Mr. President and the governors in particular we deeply appreciate your leadership and your cooperation. Governors look forward to continuing our work together over the coming months on state federal agendas welfare reform Medicaid the budget. Mr. President I'm very very proud to have you in Vermont. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much Governor Dean. And thank you for the gift of of those proceedings. I discovered two things looking through that book very quickly which will be interesting. Perhaps to some of you. One is that the first governors conference and one thing I knew when I didn't the first governors conference was call by President Theodore Roosevelt to bring all the governors together to develop a plan to conserve our nation's resources. It was an environmental Governors Conference. The second thing was that they really set the tone of bipartisanship which has endured through all these years. Something I didn't know I saw that the two special guests at the Governor's Conference were William Jennings Bryan and Andrew Carnegie. So they were spanning the waterfront even then

I really look forward to this but I kind of got my feelings hurt. I understand Senator Dole came in here and told you that my cholesterol was higher than his. I came to Vermont determined to get my cholesterol down with low fat Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia. I do want you to know that my standing heart rate however pulse rate is much lower than Senator Dole. But that's really not his fault. I don't have to deal with Phil Graham every day. I think on matters of health age and political anxiety we have come to a draw. I thank you very much for having me here. I love looking around the table and seeing old friends and new faces

I thank Governor Dean for his leadership for the governor's conference and Governor Thompson. I wish you well and I thank you for the work that we have done together over so many years. I thank all the state officials from Vermont who came out to the airport to say hello and the mayor here of Burlington and I know that your former governor Madeleine Kunin is here the deputy secretary of education she has done a very great job for us and I thank her for that. I want to talk to you today primarily about welfare reform but I'd like to put it in the context of the other things that we are attempting to do in Washington. I see Senator Leahy and Congressman Sanders back there Senator Jeffords may be here I think I'm taking him back to Washington in a couple of hours. I ran for president because I was genuinely concerned about whether our country was ready for the 21st century because of the slow

rate of job growth. Twenty years of stagnant incomes 30 years of social problems. I knew that we were still better than any other country in the world and so many things but we seemed to be coming apart when clearly we've always done better when we went forward together as a nation. I have this vision of what our country will look like 20 or 30 or 40 years from now. I want America to be a high opportunity smart work country not of hard work low wage country. I want America to be a country with strong families and strong communities where people have the ability to make the most of their own lives and families and communities have the ability to solve their own problems where we have good schools and a clean environment and decent health care and safe streets. I think the strategy to achieve that is clear. We have to create more opportunity and demand more responsibility from our people. And we have to do it together. I have concluded having worked at this job now for two and a half years that we cannot achieve the

specific strategies of creating opportunity or providing for more responsibility unless we find a way to do more together. In the last two and a half years as Governor Dean said I have spent most of my time working on trying to make sure we had a sound economic policy to bring the deficit down and increase trade and investment in technology in the search and invest and development and education to open up new educational opportunities and to work with you to achieve standards of excellence with less direction from the national government. We also have tried to put some more specific responsibilities into the problems that benefit the American people. That's what the national service program was all about will help you go to college but you need to serve your country at the grassroots level we reform the college loan program to cut the cost and make the repayment terms better.

But we toughened dramatically the collection of delinquent college loans so that the taxpayers wouldn't be out of money. We passed the family leave law but we've also tried to strengthen child support enforcement as so many of you have. I want to help people on welfare but I also want to reward people who on their own are off of welfare on modest incomes which is why we have dramatically expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit the program that President Reagan said was the most pro-family pro work initiative undertaken by the United States in the last generation. Now this year families with children with incomes of under $28000 will pay about $3500 less in income tax than they would have as the laws haven't been changed in nineteen ninety three. We also try to change the way the government works it's smaller than it used to be there are 150000 fewer people working for the federal government than there were the day I became president. We have dramatically reduced government regulations in many areas we on the way to reducing the regulatory burden of the Department of Education by 40 percent. The Small Business

Administration by 50 percent. We are reducing this year the time it takes to comply with the EPA rules and regulations by 25 percent and establishing a program in which anybody any small business person who calls the EPA and honestly ask for help in dealing with a problem cannot be fined as a result of any discovery arising from the phone call while the person is trying to meet the requirements of federal law. We have also tried to solve problems that had been ignored. We reformed the pension system in the country to save eight and a half million troubled pensions and stabilize 40 million more. Secretary Cisneros is formed an unbelievable partnership to expand homeownership with no new tax dollars which will get us by the end of this decade to more than two thirds of Americans in their own homes for the first time in the history of the republic. The results of all this are overwhelmingly positive but still somewhat troubling.

On the economic front we have 7 million more jobs one and a half million more small businesses the largest right of small business formation in history 2.4 million new homeowners record stock markets low inflation record profits and yet and a record number of new millionaires which is something to be proud of in this country. People who work their way into becoming millionaires they didn't inherit the money. But still the median income is about where it was two and a half years ago which means most wage earning Americans are still working harder for the same or lower wages and a level of anxiety is quite high on the social front. You see the same things the number of people on food stamps is down the number of people on welfare is now the divorce rate is down. The crime rate is down in almost every major metropolitan area in the country. The rate of serious drug use is down but the rate of random violence among very young people is up. The continuing gnawing sense of insecurity

is up. The rate of casual marijuana smoking among very young people is up. Even the serious drug use goes down. So what we have is a sense in America that we're kind of drifting apart and this future that I visualize it I think all of you share is being rapidly embraced by tens of millions of Americans and achieved with stunning success. But we are still being held back and fulfilling our real destiny as a country because so many people are kind of shut off from that American dream. I am convinced that the American people want us to go forward together. I'm convinced that there really is a common ground out there on most of these issues that seem so divisive when we read about them in the newspaper or see them on the evening news. I think if just ordinary Americans could get in a room like this and sit around a table two thirds of them or more would come to the same answer on most of

these questions and I believe that we cannot bring the country together and move the country forward unless we deal with some issues that we still haven't faced. I've tried to find a way to talk about really controversial issues in a way that would promote a discussion instead of another word combat. I've given talks in the last few days about family and media about affirmative action about the relationship of religion and prayer to schools in the hope that we could have genuine conversations about these things. But I am convinced that almost more than any other issue in American life this welfare issue sort of stands as a symbol of what divides us because most Americans know that there are people who are trapped in a cycle of dependency that takes their tax dollars but doesn't achieve the goals design that they have which is to have people on welfare become successful parents and successful workers and to have parents who can pay pay for their children so the taxpayers don't have to do it.

I am convinced that unless we do this and until we do it there will still be a sort of wage that will be very hard to get out of the Spirit and the life of America. There is here maybe more than on any other issue that we're dealing with it's controversial a huge common ground in America maybe not in Washington yet but out in the country. There is a common ground not so very long ago there were liberals who opposed requiring all people on welfare to go to work. But now almost nobody does. And as far as I know every Democrat in both houses of Congress has signed on to one version of a bill or another that would do exactly that. Not so long ago there were conservatives who thought the government shouldn't spend money on childcare to give welfare mothers a chance to go to work. But now nearly everybody recognizes that the single most significant failure of the

Welfare Reform Act of 88 which I work very hard on and which I missed was that we when we decided we couldn't find it all we should have put more money into childcare even if it meant less money and job training because there were states that had programs for that and that you can't expect someone to leave their children and go to work if they have to worry about the safety of the children or if they'll actually fall behind economically for doing it because they don't have childcare. We now have a broad consensus on that. When Governor Thompson and Governor Dean and others came to the White House the Welfare Reform Conference in January I was very moved at the broad consensus that while we needed more state flexibility in one area we had to have more national action and that was on standards for child support enforcement for the simple reason that over a third of all delinquent child support cases are multistate cases. And there is no practical way to resolve that in the absence of having some national standards.

If everybody who could pay their child support and who is under an order to do it that we could lift a hundred thousand people off the welfare rolls tomorrow that is still our greatest short term opportunity. And we all need to do what we can to seize it. There's also a pretty good consensus on what we shouldn't do. I think most Americans believe that while we should promote work and we should fight premature and certainly fight out of wedlock pregnancy it is a mistake to deny people benefits children benefits because their parents are under age and unmarried. Just for example. And I think most Americans are concerned that the long term trend in America that's now about 10 years long for dramatic decline in the abortion rate might turn around and go up again at least among some classes of people if we pass that kind of rule everywhere in the country. So I think there is a common ground to be had on welfare reform. I propose

a welfare reform bill in 1994 which I thought achieve the objectives we all needed. I thought it would do what the states need to do. I thought it would save time limits. It would have requirements for responsible behavior for young people requiring them to stay at home and stay in school. It would have supported the efforts of states through greater investments in child care and would have given much greater flexibility. It didn't pass in the state of the Union this year I asked the new Congress to join me in passing a welfare reform bill still hasn't passed because unfortunately in 1995 there have been ideological and political end fights that have stalled progress on welfare reform and it prevented the majority particularly in the Senate from taking a position on it. Some of the people on the extreme right wing of the Republican majority have held this issue hostage because they want to force the states to implement requirements that would deny benefits to young unmarried mothers and their children.

But I believe it's better to require young people to stay at home stay in school and turn their lives around because the objective is to make good workers good parents good citizens and successful children. That's what we're all trying to do. So I'm against giving the states more mandates and less money whether the mandates come from the right or the left. I'm also opposed to the efforts in Congress now to cut childcare because I say again the biggest mistake we made in the Welfare Reform Act of 88 was not doing more in childcare we would have had far greater success if we had invested more money then in childcare for people on welfare. Now I believe that it would be a mistake if we cut childcare and do all this other stuff we could have more latchkey children we could have more neglected children. And that there are all kinds of new studies coming out again saying that the worst thing in the world we can do is not to take the first four years of a child's life and make sure that those years are spent in personal

contact with caring adults where children can develop the kind of capacities they need. So this is a very big issue. If your objective for welfare reform is independence work good parenting and successful children. Now you know I believe all this that's why we work so hard to grant all these waivers more in two and a half years. And in the past 12 years combined. But I also have to tell you that I'm opposed to welfare reform that is really just a mask for congressional budget cutting which would send you a check with no incentives are requirements on states to maintain your own funding support for poor children and childcare and work. And I do believe honestly that there is a danger that some states will get involved in a race to the bottom but not as some as implied because I don't have confidence in you. Not because I think you want to do that not because I think you would do it in any way if you could avoid it but because I

have been a governor for 12 years and all different kinds of time and I know what kind of decisions you are about to face if the range of alternatives I see coming toward you develop. I know with the big cuts now being talked about in Congress in Medicaid and other health and human services areas in education and the environment that you will have a lot of pressure in the first legislative session after this budget comes down and I know that somewhere down the road in the next few years we'll have another recession again and it's all right to have a fund set aside for the high growth states. I like that it's a good idea. But what happens when we're not all growing like we are now. We were last year. What happens next time a recession comes down. How would you deal with the interplay in your own legislature if you just get a block grant for welfare with no requirement to do anything on your

own. And the people representing the good folks in nursing homes show up and the people representing the teachers show up and the people representing the colleges and universities show up and the people representing the cities and counties who lost money they used to get for environmental investments show up. I don't know what your experience is but my experience is that the poor children's lobby is a poor match for most of those forces in most state legislatures in the country not because anybody wants to do the wrong thing but because those people are deserving too and they will have a very strong case to make. They will have a very strong case to make. So I believe we ought to have a continuing partnership not for the federal government to tell you how to do welfare reform but because any money we wind up saving through today's neglect will cost us a ton more and tomorrow's consequences. And this partnership permits you to say at least as a first

line of defense we must do this for the poor children of our state. I also believe there is a better way to deal with this. And I'd like to say today I come to you with essentially two messages one of what I hope we will all do with Congress and one what we can that we can do without regard to Congress first. We do need to pass a welfare reform bill that demands work and responsibilities and gives you the tools you need to succeed tough Child Support Enforcement time limits and work requirements childcare requiring young mothers to live at home and stay in school. And greater states flexibility the work plan proposed by Senators Basho Breaux and Mikulski and the current welfare system as we know it and replaces it with a work based system. I will say again the biggest shortcoming I believe of the bill that I helped write the Family Support Act of 1988 on your behalf or your predecessors was that we did not do enough in the childcare area.

The work first bill gives states the resources to provide child care for people who go to work and stay there. It rewards states for moving people from welfare to work not simply for cutting people off welfare rolls. It is in that sense real welfare reform. I know a lot of you think it has too many prescriptions and I want to give you the maximum amount of flexibility but it certainly is a good place to start to work on bipartisan efforts to solve this problem. And I will say again to get the job done. We got to have a bipartisan effort to do it. I want to compliment Senator Dole for what he said here today. I made a personal plea to Senator Dole not very long ago to try to find a way to make a break from those who were trying to hold the Republican conference in the Senate hostage on this welfare reform issue so that we can work together. And today if I understand his remarks and I've tried to read the best account of them I can. He proposed getting rid of ideological strings and requirements on states and giving states

more say in their programs. And that is a very good start for us to work together. Some of you may agree with him instead of me on that. But as I understand it he also proposes a flat block grant with no requirement for States maintaining their present level of effort or no maintenance of effort requirement of any kinds. As I said maybe it's just because I have been a governor. I think this is a very bad idea. I don't think we should do this because this program after all is called Aid to Families with Dependent Children is not aid to states with terrible budget problems created by Congress. And I think but while we have differences. Senator Dole speech today given what's going going on out there offers real hope that the Congress can go beyond partisan and ideological

bickering and pass a strong bipartisan welfare reform bill. The American people have waited for it long enough. We ought to do it. I am ready to go to work on it. And I consider this a very positive opening step I hope again I will say that you will consider the great strengths of the Dashiell Breau Mikulski bill which I also believe is a very positive open to opening step and shows you where the entire Democratic caucus in the Senate is. They presently all support that. My second message to you is we don't have to wait for Congress to go a long way toward ending welfare as we know it. We can build on what we've already done already. You are and we are collecting child support at record levels earlier this year I signed an executive order to crack down on federal employee delinquency and child support. And it is beginning to be felt already in the last two and a half years our administration has approved waivers for 29 states to reform welfare. Your way the first experiment we approved was for Governor Dean to make it clear that welfare in

Vermont would become a second chance not a way of life. Governor Thompson aggressive efforts in Wisconsin which had been widely noted send the same strong message. Now we can and we should do more and we shouldn't just wait around for the congressional process to work its way through. We can do more based on what states already know will work to promote work and to protect children. Therefore today I am directing the secretary of Health and Human Services to approve reforms for any state on a fast track then incorporate one or more of the following five strategies. First requiring people on welfare to work and providing adequate childcare to permit them to do it. Delaware recently got UN approval to do this. So have several other states. Why not all 50 second limiting welfare to a set number of years and cutting people off. If they turned down jobs. Florida got approval to limit welfare provided job for those who can't find one and cut off those who refuse to work. So did 14

other states. Why not all 50 third requiring fathers to play child support or go to work to pay off what they owe. Michigan got approval to do this sauted 13 other states taxpayers should not pay what father's owe and can pay. Why not all 50 states for requiring under-age mothers to live at home and stay in school. Teen motherhood should not lead to premature independence unless the home is a destructive and dangerous environment. The baby should not bring the right and the money to leave school stop working set up a new household and lengthen the period of dependence instead of shortening it. Vermont got approval to stop doing this so did 5 other states why not all 50. And finally permitting States to pay the cash value of welfare and food stamps to private employers as wage subsidies when they hire people to leave welfare and go to work. Oregon just got approval to do this.

So did Ohio and Mississippi Arizona and Virginia can do it as well. Why not all 50 states. This so-called privatizing of welfare reform helps businesses to create jobs saves taxpayers money moves people from welfare to work and recognizes that in the real world of this deficit we're not going to be able to have a lot of public service jobs to people who can't go to work when their time limits run out. I think this has real promise. So I say to you today if you pass laws like these or come up with plans like these that require people on welfare to work that cut off benefits after a time certain for those who won't work that make teen mothers stay at home and stay in school. That make parents on take child support or go to work to earn the money to do it or that use welfare benefits as a wage supplement for private employers who give jobs to people on welfare. If you do that you sign them you send them to me and we will approve them within 30 days.

Then we will have real welfare reform even as Congress considers. To further support your actions I am directing the Office of Management and Budget to approve a change in federal regulations so that states can impose tougher sanctions on people who refuse to work. Right now when a state reduces someone's welfare check for failing to hold up their end of the bargain the person's food stamp benefit goes up. So it turns out not to be much of a sanction. We're going to change that. If your welfare check goes down for refusal to work your food stamp payment won't go up any more Finally as another downpayment on our commitment to our partnership with you on welfare reform today our administration has reached agreement on welfare reform experiments for West Virginia Utah Texas and California. Massachusetts has a sweeping proposal on which agreement has been reached on every issue but one as I understand it we're getting much closer there. West Virginia's proposal helps two parent families

go to work. Utah provides greater work incentives but tougher sanctions for those who turned down work. California has adopted the New Jersey system of the family cap. Texas has a very interesting proposal to require parents on welfare to prove that their children have been immunized to continue to draw the benefits. And I would I would say just in response to this this will now obviously bring us to 32 states and I think soon to be 33 states with these kinds of experiments. We also are announcing food stamp experiments today as applied for by Delaware and Virginia. All of these are designed to promote work and responsibility without being stifled by Washington. One size fits all rules. But I think we need to accelerate this process. I don't like the so-called mother media aspect of the waiver system either. That's why I say if you act in these five areas under the law you have to file an application for an

experiment but it will be approved within 30 days. And I want to identify other areas like this this Texas immunisation idea is very important. We have lower immunization rates than any advanced country in the world. We are moving hard as a national level to make sure that that the vaccines are affordable. Texas was the first state to use national service workers Americorp volunteers in the summer of 93 to immunize over 100000 children and since then they've immunized another 50000. But if you were to require it of people on public assistance it would have a big impact on getting those numbers up. I believe so as we began to get more information about this and other things we will be issuing other reforms that if you just ask for them you can say yes within 30 days. This is very important. Now let me be clear. Congress still does need to pass national legislation. Why. Because I don't think you ought to have to file for permission every time you do something that we

already know is work and that other states are doing because we do need national child support standards. Time limits work requirements and protections for children. And we do need more national support for child care. I hope these efforts that I'm announcing today will spur the Congress to act but we don't have to wait for them. And we shouldn't we can do much more if every state did the five things that I mentioned here today. Every state we would change welfare fundamentally and for the better. And we ought to begin it. And we shouldn't wait for Congress to pass a law. There is common ground on welfare. We want something that's good for children that's good for the welfare recipients that good for the taxpayers and that's good for America. We have got to grow the middle class and shrink the underclass in this country. We cannot permit this country to split apart. We cannot permit these contracts

which are developing to continue we have to change it. You will not recognize this country in another generation if we have 50 years instead of 20 years in which half of the middle class never gets a raise. And most of the poor people are young folks and they're little kids. We have to change it and we can do it. But we have to remember what we're trying to do. We're trying to make people on welfare really successful as workers and parents and most important. We're trying to make sure this new generation of children does better. A few months ago I was down in Dallas visiting one of our Americorp projects and I saw two pictures that illustrate why I think this issue is so important. One what I was walking with a young woman who was my tour guide on this project. She was a teen mother had a child out of wedlock thought she had done the wrong thing went back and got her

GED and was in the Americorp program because she wanted to work in this poor community to help them and earn money to go to college. But the second person I met was the real reason we all would be working for welfare reform. I met a young woman who was very well-spoken. She told me she had just graduated from a university in the southeast but she was working on this anyway even though she really didn't have to go on to college anymore. And I said why are you doing this. She said because I was born into a family of a welfare mother. But I had a chance to get a good education. I got a college degree and I want these young people to come out like I did now. That's the kind of citizen we want in this country. Those are the kind of people that will turn these disturbing trends away. Those are the kind of people that would label us to come together and go forward into the future. We owe them that. And we can do it. You and I can do it now. Congress can do it this year and every one of us ought to do our part.

Thank you and God bless you. It's. Time. Everybody talks about everybody talks about the cuts and the programs. I mean that's the make sure that the word in Rhode Island by contrast

with the fact of the matter is there are no cuts. It's a slower growth rate. I mean everything that you know I heard this morning from from Senator Dole and from when you listen to Senator Domenici yesterday and you talk with that a Catholic this morning you know it's the it's the rate of growth that's in controversy not the other thing. As a governor the one thing that the president seems to be saying was you know the former governor and you found this out recently there are an awful lot of interest groups like commands and demands on your budget. I just found that raising children. You know children don't vote. They don't have a strong lobbyist at the State House or in most state houses and throwing around their cigarette. I think among I think among all people there is more interest in protecting children and assisting you know those individuals off of welfare and out of the dependence which has

not worked and they really don't need you know the lobbies up there as much as these other people who want to protect their right you know their entitlements which they to a great extent are not deserving of you know no one wants to hurt children. No one wants to walk on the other hand no one wants to say to a child your mother has been on welfare for umpteen years and we're going to say that that's going to be your way of life. You want to get them off but you're not for the teen cut off hand and my nodding off on the two mothers like we're going on now about what we're going to do is go around the state and with a series of public hearings and Christy Ferguson is going to leave that to that effort. We have a cabinet people will be meeting on a regular basis with my policy people and we're moving towards coming up with a policy. So I wouldn't want to say as governor at this point that I favor this that or the other thing I want to go through the process see how much

consensus we should get. That if I disagree with anything or I want to add something then I think that's my my responsibility as governor. Well you know it's harder to state necessarily guarantee guaranteed money. And when you look at education the vast percentage of expenditures on education by the state in the local communities and we've been through the tough times and we've been able to do the funding. The issue isn't the funding so much for education as it is is the reform for education reform hasn't come along at the funding you know has been there. So I think I think the better approach is to look at the policy. You know just as just as much as the funding situation. And you know it's just not going to abandon you know programs that work and that help people. You know when you have the ups and downs you do what the

governors historically have done what is necessary. And when you have to cut you you hopefully cutting those areas that is the least worthy. So you're saying you trusted to do the right thing. Well he just said that the states came up with programs and in reforming welfare that the United States government never came up with and say that they are working so well he'll allow waivers in 30 days on those particular issues so the experimentation now and now he apparently is against barring welfare from unwed mothers. Well you know maybe two or three states I want to go along with that. And what happens if six or seven years that proves more productive than the other side of the coin that's the experimentation that's the way we do that all the time. You're saying that this fall they're going to kick off this this hearing outrage. We should we should get a position of some of the meetings going here. What will the public get a chance. I'm not sure the exact schedule I have to find out how

they're doing internal. But there was there was a yeah there was there was a program put forth to me that I think some of them started in August but I can't tell you that we'll keep to that timetable depending on how we're doing internally. So it was fair to say. It. Right now. And. Where would your position be. My position would be that if we can save money from the bureaucracy in Washington we can put that into expanding coverage for people who could actually raise the amount of coverage that we extend would you be committed to doing it. I'm sure that we we should take the money that we save from the bureaucracy in Washington and use it to expand the coverage of the particular women and children in New Hampshire. I think I'd be a great idea. Would you be by chance be a task force or a committee or two for discussing that. As you mentioned it really is going to take some looking at. Yes. I work with the coalition state folks who are recipients of care givers. A broad based coalition that would

be very interested in talking about it. I hope I'm not getting Bruce Vladik in trouble. But when Mr. Vladik who runs the health care finance corporation. When he came to New Hampshire I talked to him about just that I said if we can get proposals that will free us up from the bureaucracy and the paperwork getting every pay plan approved in Washington will take that money to expand coverage for women and children. And he was very excited about it. Know what about persons with disabilities. With the focus right now on long term care is provided by Medicaid not Medicare. Right. It's the only services it seems to me that the most intractable problem that we have in the States at the moment. Is long term care and that is the issue that I think will be worked with the federal government for the foreseeable future. Well I hope that we get the answers. I'd like to thank you. Last time you were in a barn. That's right. So I was you looked hotter than I was. I had just from the battleship Maine or whatever it was or at least I was outside of the gas tax and to the president's approach is positive and I think that's good.

I think we're going to establish a dialogue. The Republican plan goes even farther. The differences are the things the president would grant waivers which is a very positive step. The whole plan is to give block grants to the state so you don't have to keep going to Washington for these waivers. That's even better. The concern is well what if the governors spend the money for things that they're not allocated to now. And I think that would be irresponsible and I don't think we should do that. Is there any guarantee that there's a fair process with hard times like he's not a governor for two years. I know what you are through. And so you are not the most powerful lobby in the state is there any guarantee that governors I think ought to be reelected in states where there are significant special interests. The governors are going to have to do the right thing and I trust the governors to do the right thing because I think they're closer to the citizens and the voters than I do federal bureaucrats who are not elected. You know over some of the power over Medicaid and Medicare in your state over to some of your people. Do you feel you're going to turn over more power to them to let them be more flexible. Yes I don't want to impose mandates on my own workers that I'm asking to be freed up from from Washington. So the least I can do is to say if you want to manage state government

more like a business I'm going to give you the opportunity to do that. And so far the federal government's been very impressed with what we're doing in New Hampshire for talking about cutting block grants a little bit. Other than the regular money to they currently give you. How much would you feel would be too much of a cut for you except block grants. It's interesting we were talking today about the possibility of losing 2 to 5 percent. I think we can always operate on the 2 to 5 percent margin and I don't think we'd have to worry about that. The concern is that the strings we don't want to impose strings we don't want them from the conservative right any more than we want them from the liberal left. We just don't want the strings we want to be able to run our own programs. Mark Shields is warm. Ladies and Gentlemen good morning to all right. You are traveling with another registered sex offenders in Ocean County. You hear about that. I'm still trying to get the information on that you just mentioned I haven't. So you don't have you never actually know. I don't know. I don't have the information. This is actually the president's approach compared to Senator Dole. He

still leaves in place with your ocracy that's currently there and you still have to go through the waiver process just the way it is now. While there are five areas that move more quickly on to put everything in place and it still waivers Well it's the same. We really don't. Support that the bill or the don't approach. Is. Just one. Stay within 30 days I think that's extraordinary.

I was unprepared for it. And now I can understand why see it with a development like this you don't want to get it leaked ahead of time. I think it is an extraordinary development and welfare reform I think is extraordinarily good news for the American people because it means we will have welfare reform this year whether Congress can get together or not. So I want to thank you very much for coming to participate in this and I'd be happy to take questions because I think there's a political timing is always. Subject to what's going on in the Senate. I think this is a critical juncture in the welfare debate as I view this is the president essentially rescuing a an important bill an important piece of his election campaign promises made in 1992 from what is essentially a gridlocked Senate. I think it's a very smart thing for him to do is play to you and perhaps it doesn't hurt to go Republican. I don't think we care what our place in the U.S. Senate. I care about what are the places the American people what this means is we're going to be

able to do welfare reform on a state by state basis. I think is remarkable. That means there are thirty two states including Vermont that have welfare waivers you can bet that over the next three or four weeks the agency of human services in Vermont is going to go through all those 31 waivers and see if there are things that we ought to be doing here. And we we know we can get that done in 30 days. We still need as the president said federal legislation but this is a remarkable development. So many Republican governors are still saying their hands are tied it won't work. No strings attached to this. I think the president just totally bypassed that argument. What he just said he wasn't going to attach strings. He said you just said you can do anything that these 32 states have done and we'll give you a waiver in 30 days. That doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. It's still a process though. Well I mean if you're if you're if they're complaining about 30 days I think that's pretty unreasonable.

Is they started by saying the president said 30 days. Believe me I'm taking him at his word. Now this doesn't mean we don't need welfare reform and the president said that obviously welfare reform would be a good thing and there are some things that ought to be done at the national level. But this is this is the way the reason I think this is so important because it essentially says in the Congress if you can't get out of gridlock we're going to have some form of welfare reform anyway and it's going to be extraordinarily substantial. Well if what the president said is national time limit benefits I think that could probably be left to the states. I can't think of a whole lot else. This doesn't address the funding problem and funding it if you won't let them take advantage of these extensions that you suggested. Well the president did talk about child care and I think we've made some progress at this meeting discussing child care on an informal basis. I think there's wide recognition at this meeting that we

need to do something about funding child care. And clearly you could wreck welfare reform by not funding child care. That was the big problem with the House bill. I think Senator Dole has recognized that and I think that when a bill if a bill does come out of the Senate it will be more moderate and more reasonable than the House bill. But with these things that the president chose today allow you to allow other states still provide welfare in your own way with less money or what level of funding. I mean this is the problem of less funding for you or reduced funding in. The key to welfare funding is not actual AFC payments. It is child care and job training. If you attack child care payments and job training payments then welfare reform is in trouble no matter what kind of welfare reform it is. If you simply are cutting and AFC we can have an argument about whether we think that's a good thing or not. But the fact of the matter is it is moving people off welfare. That is important in this debate and that has to do with child care and job training funding. And I think the Senate is probably a better place

to get money for that than the house was. I thought Senator Dole speech was constructive and amusing in it and it lacked some kind of sometime biting edge that he occasionally has. I didn't see that there at all. I thought it was a good speech. I thought it was for the most part conciliatory. I thought it was constructive. So was there some of your colleagues say he was basically right. I mean I think Block Grants have obviously been a problem between Democrats and Republicans because of that fear block grants in general whether it's on Medicaid or on welfare are fearsome States because when there is a problem the federal government no longer has any responsibility in that. And that means that block grants are a terrible threat to the state's taxpayers ones. Do you agree.

We know that Senator Dole was as opposed to abortion is not in favor of choice and obviously some of us disagree with him but certainly just restated his position. We have had a frank and open discussion of our differences are the differences among governors are probably not as broad as they are among the different factions of Congress. I believe that what's going on in Congress is going to make it very difficult if not impossible for us to come to an agreement here. Senator Dole is putting his reform proposal forth on Friday the Democrats are putting their proposal for forth on Thursday it's highly unlikely that either the Republicans or the Democrats are going to come together with an agreement that would undermine their sides on Capitol Hill. But I do think there is an understanding among some Democrats and Republicans that a compromise can probably be reached over the next few months

the Democrats are hearing now. It's a bipartisan conference the rules are set ups and it's bipartisan. I think that's one of the lessons that we've learned this year we had certainly was a rough and tumble year unlike the usual civility in the NBA. And I think Tommy and I have joked before that the Democrats had to get used to not being in power and my return was well the Republicans had to be used to it had to get used to being in power. This is not an organization where one party runs over the other no matter who has the majority or minority. And I think we've now adjusted to the new roles. Governor Thomas will be taking on the leadership but it requires two thirds majority to do most everything and therefore it requires negotiation. And that was the same when Governor Campbell was the Republican chair and only had 18 governors at that time. Well Senator Dole President Clinton mentioned joking way as a senator to health and age as a physician. To all. Absolutely not.

No I totally discount the age. I believe that health is the important issue and no reason to believe it's healthy. I think your argument is the governor's going to continue to spend time on welfare reform the next day or the next day or as soon as this is over because we're going to acting governors or you guys talk about are you going to focus more on Medicaid or are we going to talk about both for. Mothers. In the present. You want to be where you are. You require young people live at home and to stay in school. Isn't that a federal mandate.