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THE WHITE HOUSE

                      Office of the Press Secretary
                      (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                  February 13, 1998

                             PRESS BRIEFING
                             BY JOE LOCKHART

                            The Marriott Hotel
                        Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2:07 P.M. EST

MR. LOCKHART: On the radio address, I think we're going to have the material within a couple minutes. We'll pass it out. And Elena will, sometime in the near future, be ready to answer any questions that you have on that.

I don't really have anything, except for the week ahead, so I can do that or answer any questions.

Q Are we going to get the radio address today?

MR. LOCKHART: We should -- yes, we actually probably should, because I think he's going to record it about 4:45 p.m., before he goes to the dinner. So we should have it sometime before you get on the plane to go back.

Q Can we have a still when he does the radio?

MR. LOCKHART: They're taking one and I think it will be released. It may not be released until tomorrow morning out of the Press Office.

Q But there will be a still?

MR. LOCKHART: Yes. I'm told there is one, yes. Okay, the week ahead. The President and the First Lady will spend the weekend at Camp David, returning to Washington sometime on Monday. Tuesday, February 17th, the President will congratulate the 1997 World Series Champion Florida Marlins in the East Room at the White House. That's at 4:30 p.m. I would expect there to be another event that day, but we'll let you know once that's set and on the schedule.

Wednesday, the President and the First Lady will do a children's health care event. The site is not determined yet, but it will be somewhere in town but off campus. That evening the President will attend a fundraiser for Representative Jim Moran, Congressman from Virginia. That will be in Washington, D.C. There will be print pool coverage. Later that evening the President will attend a DNC dinner at another would Washington private residence, and again print pool coverage.

Thursday, February 19th, the President will do an environmental event in Baltimore, around noontime, and then attend a DNC Business Council luncheon at the Harbour Court Hotel. There will be press buses to Baltimore and returning after the event. The pool will travel with him, he will helo. Heloing back, he will helo to Andrews and fly to Newark and attend a DNC dinner Thursday evening. There will not be a press plane for that, so we'll just be taking a pool with us. We'll be going and just doing the one event and coming back.

Q Can you just say why? I mean, why did you not even give the press the option of going up there?

MR. LOCKHART: Well, given the amount of people I see here today when we were giving a speech, I don't know that it would be economical. But, Larry, why don't you take it up with Amy if you think that there ought to be a press plane.

Q I'm just saying you should have given the option and then said there weren't --

MR. LOCKHART: Larry, I'm reading off the sheet I was given. Why don't you take it up with Amy? Anyway, he returns. And Friday morning he'll have another health care event -- I think on the Health Care Bill of Rights. Saturday, he will do the radio address live.

Q Does the Wednesday children's health care event have anything to do with tobacco?

MR. LOCKHART: I don't have any more detail than what I have here. I can look into that.

Q Why the sudden rush of fundraising events, Joe?

MR. LOCKHART: I think as I told you about a month ago, we were planning to do about two days a month for the next couple months. It just so happens that this is where it has fallen. These fundraisers have been scheduled for six to eight weeks. Generally, in talking to the fundraisers, the closer you get to an election, you need to do less events to raise money, because into an election year there's more people interested, there's more people -- the events generally do better as far as raising money, so you have to do less of them.

We did a series of events at the end of last year to help the DNC pay down its debt. It being an off-election year, we ended up having to do a higher multiple events in order to raise the money. I think for the next couple months, we'll be doing two, maybe three days per month where we do one or two fundraisers on those days. So it just happens that in February they fall in this block.

Q Joe, there were stories in the past few weeks that actually Democratic fundraising had been -- had seen a surge in --

MR. LOCKHART: Yes, I think the DNC reports that, especially in the small-donation, direct-mail fundraising, there has been a surge. January was the best month they had since one of the months just before the election.

Q Does that tail into the events themselves at all? Do you see any effect on the events themselves?

MR. LOCKHART: I don't know. I think these events will be successful, but since they've been in the works for six to eight weeks, I'm not going to draw any direct correlation between the success of these events and any other events.

Q The Secretary of State and I think the Defense Secretary and maybe another member of the Cabinet are going out, we understand, on speeches next week to try to inform the American people why it may be necessary to bomb Iraq. Does the President plan any such campaign or to take part in it or to address the American people in that area?

MR. LOCKHART: I wouldn't rule out the President having remarks or an event that allows him to make remarks on that subject next week, but I don't know where it will fit into the week.

Q Tuesday TBA?

MR. LOCKHART: I don't know where it's going to fit into the week. Okay, thanks.

END 2:17 P.M. EST