THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT CLINTON ON HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

APPROVAL OF BILL FOR LABOR, HHS, EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS

I proposed a reasonable plan to balance the budget while investing more in education and training. Republicans want to balance the budget through cuts that hurt working families while providing a huge tax cut that goes largely to people who don't need it. They are cutting deeply into Medicare and Medicaid, and they are cutting the very education and training programs that our working families need.

Nowhere are the differences between my approach and theirs more clear than the extreme bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee today. That measure slashes critical resources for education, training, and jobs for our people. If Congress sends me this bill in its present form, I will have to veto it.

I want to invest in our people, not turn back the clock on them. There has always been a strong bipartisan consensus for investment in quality education, training, health, and worker protections. These harsh, partisan, and unwise cuts undermine that consensus as well as the future income and living standards of working families and their children.

In addition, I believe abortion should be safe, legal and rare. But this bill effectively ends the family planning program that Republicans and Democrats have long agreed is needed to help prevent the need for abortion. Furthermore, it changes existing law to allow States to deny poor women access to abortions under Medicaid even if they are victims of rape or incest. That is wrong.

I once again urge the Congress to begin the work of making common sense corrections in this and other appropriations bills. I will not allow our people to be sacrificed for the sake of political ideology.