Car loan nevada refinance

July 29, 1993

The President. It's nice to hear your voice. I want to thank all of you for participating in this radio press conference or town hall meeting or whatever we want to call it. I'm glad to have the chance to talk with you.

Let me just say very briefly by way of summary, the Senate and the House are meeting today, trying to agree on a final version of the economic program which could then be presented for a vote next week. Obviously, I'm trying to secure passage of the program. I believe it is very important. I want to emphasize, if I might, some of the major features.

First, this is the largest program for deficit reduction in the history of the country, $500 billion. Of every $10 of deficit reduction, half of it is in spending cuts, very significant ones in nondefense as well as in defense, including 150,000-person reduction in the Federal work force and big cuts across the board in many other programs.

Second thing I want to say is that of the $5 in new revenues, about 80 percent of them come from the top 5 percent of the American work force. There are no income tax increases on couples with incomes below $180,000 a year.

Third thing I want to say is that in addition to reducing the deficit and imposing a fair tax burden, this program does an awful lot to promote job growth. It holds families with incomes of under $30,000 a year harmless. It doubles the expensing provision of small business and makes over 90 percent of the small businesses in America eligible for a tax reduction if they invest more in their businesses. It has a very innovative capital gains tax for investment in small new companies that are capitalized at $50 million a year or less, which should benefit a fast-growing State like Nevada. It has any number of other very important things that could help the technology jobs in your State, including an extension of the research and development tax credit, as well as real initiatives to revive homebuilding and real estate which is why the National Home Builders and the National Realtors, two groups not normally associated with Democratic Party initiatives, have endorsed this program.

Yesterday we had almost 70 business executives from all over the country, including 4 big energy company executives, about half of them Republican and of course the other half Democratic, endorsing the program and saying it was important because we had a 20-year low in interest rates, and we had to restore certainty to the economy, keep these interest rates down because we're bringing the deficit down, and get on with other business. We've got a health care issue to deal with, a crime bill to deal with, welfare reform to deal with, all these things that have to be done but can't be done until we first pass the economic plan.

With that, I'll be glad to take as many questions as we can.

Economic Program

Q, Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing us this opportunity. Why have you had such a tough time selling your economic plan to not only Congress but to the American public?

The President. I think until the last couple of weeks, the opposition did a better job than we did because they had a simpler job of selling it. We had some overtures to the Republicans, and especially in the Senate, before I even unveiled this program about whether there was a possibility of a real bipartisan effort to deal with this deficit. And we were basically told that if we were going to have any taxes on upper income people, they weren't interested. And they basically wanted to take it all out of Medicare and other things that we think there's a limit to how much you can cut. And we've cut Medicare as much or more than they have in the past but not as much as they wanted.

So when you've got a program of spending cuts, tax increases that are overwhelmingly on the wealthy with an enormous number of economic incentives to grow, you'd think it would be quite popular. In fact, it is when people know the details of it. But what happened is, you had everybody from the Republican Senators to a lot of the House Members to Rush Limbaugh just trying to convince the American people that there were no spending cuts, no deficit reduction, and no taxes on anybody but the middle class. None of that was true. But it's a lot easier to bad-mouth something like that and just scream "taxes" than it is to deal with the specifics.

Let me just give you one example. Just in the last couple of weeks, it's been very impressive to me that the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper that's not editorially on my side often, that their news columns have repeatedly shown how most small businesses benefit from this program, but most of them didn't know. Their communications job, those that are against us, was simpler than ours, and we've only begun to do what we should in the last couple of weeks.

But the more people know about this, the more likely they are to support it. The details of the plan are friendly to support; it's all this rhetoric that's hurt us so bad.

Taxes

Q. Mr. President, I am here, and on behalf of our audience in northern Nevada, I would like to thank you for this opportunity. We've had quite a lot of interest at our station today particularly in the subject of the cost of your economic program to our people here in northern Nevada. Mr. President, the deficit is something that most people cannot reach out and touch or feel, and yet taxes, whether we're talking income taxes, a gas tax, a value-added tax, those are very real to our people here in northern Nevada. Is there too much emphasis in your program on reducing the deficit through taxes and not enough on cutting the burden to the American people?

The President. Well, let's talk about that. I think from the day I made it clear that we were going to bring down the deficit and then the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, a Republican, Alan Greenspan, came out and supported it, long-term interest rates began to drop. When the House passed my bill, they dropped some more. When the Senate passed my bill, they dropped some more.

So here's why average people should be for bringing the deficit down. Number one, that's the way to keep long-term interest rates down. That means you can refinance your home or your business loan or take out a car loan, a consumer loan, or a college loan at lower interest rates. Millions and millions of Americans have refinanced their homes just in the last 5 or 6 months with these lower interest rates that are a direct result of our serious attempt to bring the deficit down. And if we pass the program, the interest rates will stay down until the economy really, really starts to boom again. That's good news.

Here's another reason ordinary people should be for bringing the deficit down. We are spending more and more of taxpayers' money just to pay interest on the debt. In 1980 our debt was $1 trillion. By 1992 our debt was $4 trillion. Today every Nevadan puts 15 cents of every tax dollar to the Federal Government just to pay interest on the debt. That means middle class people are paying interest payments to upper income bond holders who hold that money, instead of using the money to educate their children or to build roads or otherwise develop the economy of Nevada.

The third thing I would say is that this deficit has clearly made our economy weaker. It is one reason we cannot grow jobs and increase incomes. Now, Nevada has been the fastest growing State in the country for new jobs for the last 6 or 7 years. But even that cannot go on forever.

Finally, let me say, let's talk about what this burden really is. Keep in mind that half of this deficit reduction is coming from spending cuts. Of the taxes which will be paid, basically, for a family of four with an income of $50,000 or $60,000 or what we're talking about today, the costs will be no more--and this is the outside--than $50 a year, or less than a dollar a week. For a family with income of under $30,000, they'll be held harmless. And the income tax increases only trigger on people whose taxes were lowered in the 1980's while middle class taxes went up, families in the upper 6 percent of the income earners. So I think it is a fair and balanced program.

Q. Thank you, Mr. President.

Q. Good afternoon, thank you.

The President. Thanks.

Senator Richard Bryan

Q. Are you speaking to residents of the Silver State today mainly at an attempt to change Senator Richard Bryan's opposition to your deficit reduction plan?

The President. Yes, but not only that, also to point out why Senator Reid and Congressman Bilbray voted for it. They've all been good friends of mine. And Senator Bryan has some very legitimate concerns which I've tried to address, and I think when this conference report comes out, that is, the final form comes out, the bill will be more to his liking.