Bill Clinton: “I do believe this year, at the end of the year when Congress has to pass the budget, I still think we have quite a good…”

“I do believe this year, at the end of the year when Congress has to pass the budget, I still think we have quite a good chance to pass our health care initiative--I mean our child care initiative, which would provide more tax credits and more direct subsidies for people with modest incomes to afford quality child care. And one of the things--there must be a child care center very close to this market with all these people down here. If there's not, that's something that ought to be looked at. But when you get a certain number of employees in the market and then people near here, you may be able to quite economically establish something for the neighborhood if there's not. But if we pass this program, people like the people who would get a job working for you will have access to a lot more financial help to pay for that child care. On the health care side, I really believe the only places that I know that have been really, really successful at this are people that have offered pool coverage to small businesses so, in effect, both the employers and the employees can buy health care at the same cost, more or less, per person that some of these large employers can. I don't think there is presently available another alternative to that, and so I think it's--except for when some States allow people who make relatively low incomes to buy into the Medicare/Medicaid program for--you know, they pay something but not the full range. Those are the only two options that I'm aware of. But if there's not such a pooled arrangement here in this area, that's the next thing you ought to try to get the empowerment zone to organize. They can't do it until they have a certain number of employees, because it doesn't work economically. But once you cross a certain threshold with a certain profile for the employees, and a lot of them are young restaurant workers and healthy--you know, for example, you can do this and make the economics work. So that's something I think the empowerment zone can do. Mr. Aderhold, do you want to say something there? [Mr. John E. Aderhold, chairman, Aderhold Properties, Inc., pointed out that the community did have a day care center, but that it operated on a small scale and needed to be expanded.]”