YouTube With President Clinton – Interview

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[Steve Grove - Moderator]
Well, hi, everyone. We’re here in New York today for a very special YouTube interview with President Bill Clinton. My name is Steve Grove, and for the past week or so, people have been submitting and voting on their favorite questions on YouTube for the president. Uh, President Clinton, thank you for joining us today.

[President Clinton - William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III, August 19, 1946)]
Thanks, Steve, I’m glad to be here.

[Steve Grove]
Yeah, we’re excited to get started. You know, I should say we’re doing this on the eve of your Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, where every year you bring together CEOs, non-profits, philanthropists, all to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Source: LYBIO.net And a lot of the questioners that submitted questions today had questions about those challenges and then some current event questions as well. So let’s get started.

[President Clinton]
Sure.

[Steve Grove]
Our first question is from Romaine, who is from Haiti.

[Romaine Vernet]
First of all, my name is Romaine Vernet. I’m from Leogane, Haiti. Well, Haiti has a plethora of issues and problems. As you also know, it has great potential. Trash, sanitation, health, environmental, lack of jobs, and lack of energy production are among the nuisances that plague the island and its people. How can small businesses with a base abroad get funding to grow in Haiti? Thank you for your time and have a great meeting.

[President Clinton]
Thank you, Romaine. Well, first of all, he’s right. There are a lot of challenges and, you know, I’m the co-chair of this international commission to rebuild Haiti. Half the members are Haitian. Half the members are foreign donors and international organizations. And, uh, it’s working very well. But the government money that will be going to Haiti will be used mostly for rubble removal, housing, road building, you know, these big infrastructure projects. He’s hit on a very important problem, which is that there’s– there’s really not a small business loan facility in Haiti. And when small businesses try to borrow money from existing banks, they face astronomical interest rates: 40%, 50%. So, I have been doing quite a bit of work on this, and two people who worked with me around the world, Carlos Slim from Mexico and Frank Giustra from Canada have set up a $20 million facility to make loans to small and medium-sized businesses right now. And I’m gonna try to get more money put into this fund as more loan applications come in. I think it’s really important that the Haitian diaspora participate in this. Source: LYBIO.net And the other thing you should know, Romaine, is that I was pushing long before the earthquake when I was working there for the United Nations for dual citizenship for members of the diaspora. And under

[Steve Grove]
Currently they aren’t allowed to have dual citizenship.

[President Clinton]
They can’t now. But under the Haitian constitution, two successive parliaments have to vote for it. This parliament, the one that’s going out of existence because we’ve got elections coming up, has voted for it.

[Steve Grove]
Oh, okay.

[President Clinton]
So as soon as these elections are held, when the next parliament convenes, it’s gonna be my first priority with them to ask them to vote to grant dual citizenship because there’s an enormous interest among Haitians in the United States and Canada and France and elsewhere in coming back home, investing, participating in the future.

[Steve Grove]
You know, one of the key issues you have focused on at CGI is empowerment of women and girls. And, uh, one of the top voted questions on that issue had to do specifically with child marriage. Let’s–let’s listen.

[Kim]
My name is Kim. I’m with The International Center for Research on Women. And my question for President Clinton is this:

One of the major developmental challenges facing girls is child marriage. Child brides face higher rates of violence, death in childbirth, and they are almost always pulled out of school. The U.S. Congress has legislation pending on child marriage, but despite broad bipartisan support, it isn’t moving this year. With more than 60 million child brides in the world, why do you think this issue continues to slip under the radar of governments and large international development organizations?

[President Clinton]
I don’t know, but it’s been under the radar because I didn’t know about it.

[Steve Grove]
All right.

[President Clinton]
Yeah, but I’ll get a copy of it and review it and, uh, see what it does. It’s a terrible problem. This, let me tell you what we do know. Uh, the longer girls stay in school, the longer they put off marriage and childbearing, and the more likely they are to be financially independent and really fully contributing to the life of their country. Uh, if it’s coercive marriage, it depends on what the facts are, but it can be a violation of international standards and convention on children. Source: LYBIO.net But, I think it’s very important. One of the things we’re doing in Haiti, you know, in Haiti, sometimes as many as half the children aren’t in school. Um, more than 2/3 of those who are in school are in private, mostly church schools, where they have to pay tuition. Sometimes families pay 40% or 50% of their income for tuition. Most of the children who aren’t in school are girls. So one of the goals that we, uh, have seen fully embraced by the Haitian Education Ministry that we want the commission to embrace and fund is their first completely free education system, either with tuition supplements to the church schools or with new, better, uh, public schools with well-trained teachers. Haiti has a system called restavec, which is a—affects girls and boys, where, in effect, children are sold into indentured servitude. Uh, some of them have even been found in the United States, I’m sad to say, for a long period of time. And many times, it’s the choice that was memorialized in the famous movie of the Nazi era in Germany, “Sophie’s Choice,” where the soldier tells her, “Give me one child or I’ll take both.” A lot of these families are selling their children not even for that much money just so they have one fewer mouth to feed and they can send the other kids to school. I think if we ended restavec in Haiti, it would end— I mean, end—if we had universal enrollment in schools, it would end 90% of that problem. But we still have to struggle everywhere against cultural assumptions that women should be — young girls should be treated as property. Including being put up for marriage when they’re 9, or 10, or 11 years old.

[Steve Grove]
Right. Let’s move from Haiti for a moment to Iran. And one of the top-voted questions that came in had to do with the three American hikers who are, um, been imprisoned there for over a year. And, of course, just recently, uh, Sarah Shourd, one of the three hikers, was released. But Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer are still there. Uh, this question comes from some friends of Josh.

[Dell Ryan]
Hello, President Clinton. My name is Dell Ryan.

[Rachel Walker]
I’m Rachel Walker.

[Rosie Kirincic]
And I’m Rosie Kirincic. This is our bike shed, something Josh Fattal, who is one of the three hikers unjustly detained in Iran, built and named The Center For Appropriate Transportation. What do you think is the appropriate course of action for freeing these three of their own–inappropriate espionage charges and bringing them home?

[Steve Grove]
You famously intervened, of course, in North Korea last year with the two journalists. What do you think about the situation in Iran?

[President Clinton]
Well, first of all, the young woman who was held has been released. And I think that’s a good sign. The Iranians use them for publicity value. They know that these young people are not in any way involved in espionage. Source: LYBIO.net And I know that, uh, this–this is a question that my wife can more properly handle than me because Hillary worked very hard on this issue. And they won’t stop working just because she’s been released. The two, Josh and the other young man who are there, Shane, they’re clearly innocent of any espionage. And I believe that if we just keep working at it and the United States continues to do everything that was done to get the young woman released, Sarah, I think that eventually they’ll be released. We just have to keep working at it. It’s a—unfortunately, they’re political footballs.

[Steve Grove]
Yeah.

[President Clinton]
There may come a time when the Iranians, if they decide they want to talk to us about all these other issues, will ask for some high level representative of the government to go there and bring them home. But that’s what I did in North Korea, something that’s almost peculiar to their culture and to my relationship with North Korea. I would be a little surprised if they did it that way. But I think they will be released if we just stay on it. Just be relentless. Just never talk about anything with anybody, uh, not only from Iran, but having any influence in Iran without bringing this up. I think, eventually, we’ll get them out.

[Steve Grove]
And with President Ahmadinejad coming to the U.N. this week, uh, it’ll be interesting. This issue will be in the headlines, I think, a lot. We want to get to a global health question ’cause this is also one of the issues that you focus on at CGI a bunch. The next question, it comes from a man named Chris who lives in Australia. And he has a very compelling personal story he wanted to share.

[Chris Bond]
My name is Chris Bond. I’m a 24-year-old Australian from Canberra who has been in the awful and much too popular disease cancer. I was only 19 when I was rushed to the hospital since falling to the floor from stomach pains. Little did I know that day that I had leukemia running through my blood. The doctors told me I needed an urgent operation, to cut me open, and to say good-bye to my family as they only gave me a 50% chance to survive. Source: LYBIO.net I’m still here. But due to complications and infections, within a month, both my legs, my left hand, and my right fingers were amputated. Many people might find the thought of living after something like this too hard, but I’m just lucky to be alive.

[Steve Grove]
Now, Chris’ video is a little long so we contacted him and said “You know, what is your question?” He said “What can be done to improve survival rates of young people with cancer?”

[President Clinton]
Well, first of all, did this happen to him when he was in Australia or somewhere else?

[Steve Grove]
It happened in Australia, I believe.

[President Clinton]
One of the, uh– first of all, first thing that can be done is better early detection and better training of medical personnel throughout a country in how to handle various cancers. The childhood leukemia survival rate has gone through the roof in the last 30 years. Uh, it’s–it’s–it’s one of the most rewarding and encouraging things that’s happened in all the battles against cancer. We find that this sort of problem that he has, uh, still happens every single day in developing countries, in poorer countries. So one of the things that we did over the last year to change CGI is to have networks called action networks around subjects that a lot of our members were interested in who wanted to stay active all year long, wanted to keep looking for answers, wanted to keep looking for partners. Uh, one of them’s on girls and women’s empowerment. And one is on cancer in developing countries. People don’t think about it very much, but there’s an enormous amount of cancer in poor countries. It’s just that you have AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, waterborne diseases slapping you in the face every day and killing these kids.

[Steve Grove]
I think 70% of all cancer cases are in developing countries. Source: LYBIO.net

[President Clinton]
Yes. So we know what we have to do. We have to make sure that the medical personnel that are there are trained, and where we can’t cover a whole country, you’ve got to at least get some aggressive preliminary diagnosis capacity out there in the more rural areas so you can move people to centers of care in a timely fashion so that you can avoid the worst consequences of the cancer.

[Steve Grove]
Right. Well, the next question is a bit on the lighter side, but it gets at an issue that you were all too familiar with during your presidency.

[Man]
Hey there, Bill. Barack here with a question for you. With Republican obstructionism at an all-time high…

[Background Men]
No! No! No! No!

[Man]
It’s, uh, well, it’s getting next to impossible to get needed reform passed or vacant government positions filled.

[Background Men]
No!

[Man] Source: LYBIO.net
So my question for you is…

[Background Women]
No!

[Man]
Do you think that the senate should get rid of the filibuster?

[Background Men]
No!

[Steve Grove]
We like to have fun you YouTube, but the question’s legitimate – what do you think about the filibuster?

[President Clinton]
I think it has outlived its usefulness. You know, it was– it’s not in the constitution. Source: LYBIO.net There is enough guarantee of minority representation by the fact that every state has two senators. So let’s say Wyoming…

[Steve Grove]
Mm-hmm.

[President Clinton]
Or let’s take a democratic state – Rhode Island. They have as many votes in the senate as California, Texas, New York, Florida. And I think about how much money it costs us. We had 55 democratic senators when I was trying to pass health care. The only reason we didn’t pass it is we didn’t have 60. We’d have had 60, we would have passed it. And I think there are– you can– the idea behind the filibuster is that complicated issues should be– and deeply controversial ones– should be debated for longer periods of time. One of the senators, I’m thinking maybe it was Senator Harkin, said that he favored a phase-out of the filibuster. That, you know, the first time you’d have to get 60 votes. And then, if you had two or three more weeks of debate, it would drop to 58. If you had a couple more, it would drop to 56. But eventually you’d get down to majority rule. Source: LYBIO.net Because what happens is you wind up, “A,” either never getting a vote, or “B,” making everybody a dictator. Make every individual senator a dictator. You remember all that stuff that was put into the health care bill. And thanks to people like you highlighting it, most of the special pleading elements were taken back out. But there’s a reason that happened. The filibuster rule. Everybody became a dictator.

[Steve Grove]
Right.

[President Clinton]
Everybody could say, “Well, I’ll vote for it if you do this or that or the other thing.” And it’s anti-democratic. So if they want to make sure we have plenty of time to debate it, and that there’s every effort made to achieve a bipartisan solution, and that all the complexities are explored, maybe the best thing to do is to keep it for the first go-round, and then let a couple of weeks lower the number, and then lower the number, and lower the number. But as it is, I think it’s a very bad thing. It also puts enormous pressure on any president coming in wanting to change things… to try to get everything jammed into the budget. Because the budget is the only thing not subject to the filibuster.

[Steve Grove]
Mm-hmm.

[President Clinton]
And I remember Senator Byrd changed his position on this shortly before he died. But Senator Byrd supported health care reform when I was president, but strongly opposed it being put into the budget. And there was something in the Senate, still is, called the “Byrd Rule,” which says that non-germane areas cannot be dealt with in the budget, even if they cost money. Source: LYBIO.net So when he said it didn’t belong in the budget, it wasn’t going into the budget. Especially since he had credibility since he was gonna vote for health care reform. Then he–when he changed his position in this legislative session, it gave the president a little more leverage.

[Steve Grove]
Right.

[President Clinton]
Even though, in fairness, the White House didn’t want to look like it was pulling a fast one by putting it into the budget. So we wound up getting 60 votes. But it was– you know, we would have never had a budget in 1993 if we had the filibuster rule. It only passed by one vote.

[Steve Grove]
Yeah. I think a lot of people, like this question on YouTube, are frustrated by the politics.

[President Clinton]
They should be, they should be. And we should be prepared to live with it, people in my party, when we lose. The American people, when they vote, they ought to have a chance to have their majority manifest. And if the majority goes too far, then they’ll vote against ‘em the next time. Source: LYBIO.net But I think this filibuster has done a lot of damage. It was never– it’s been used more, probably, in the last… It was used more under me than ever before. And now it’s been used at least as much against President Obama.

[Steve Grove]
Yeah. Let’s move on to the developing world again and…

[President Clinton]
Good questions, but…

[laughter]

[Steve Grove]
This question is from Ali in India, who writes: “I’m a college student in India. “I had an offer to read physics at Oxford “which I did not take up because I couldn’t afford “the fees. “How can we, one, make quality education “affordable for all “and, two, improve quality of education in developing countries?”

[President Clinton]
I think there are two answers to that. First of all, that’s a problem here too. That is, America is — has a good policy on accepting students from overseas. But there’s almost no financial aid available to students from other countries who come here through public sources. So I think there probably should be some sort of international facility. You wouldn’t have to fund it a great deal of money, but that offers– you know, has a few million dollars a year that’s been given out to deserving, bright young people from developing countries that don’t come from wealthy families that are admitted to universities in developed countries. Source: LYBIO.net Because his story—I could have gotten several questions like that from students who have been accepted to American universities. The second thing is I think we should really make an effort to create more adequate systems of higher education in developing countries. Maybe not every country has to have a big system of higher education, but there ought to be one adequate system close by in every region. For example, maybe not every country in West Africa has to have one, but if you’re gonna concentrate let’s say in the biggest—- in Nigeria, then there ought to be a system to provide funding for people from Benin and Sierra Leone and Senegal and other places. You know, Senegal has a good system. They could go there. I think it’s really important, and there’s been— the president of Tanzania is trying to develop a university system there, which will do this. In order to do it, amidst all the other competing demands, developed countries are gonna have to help them, because, if you look at it, most– a good model would be what’s going on in the Middle East. Qatar has five or six. Georgetown, my alma mater, has a college of international economics there. Texas A&M has a college of agriculture and engineering. The Cornell Weill Medical Center where I had my– a lot of my treatment in New York… they have— I mean, they’re not– they and Columbia were associated, but Cornell Weill alone went and built a medical school. Then you’ve got a whole different model in the U.A.E. where NYU is creating basically an NYU campus of comprehensive education in the U.A.E. What all those things have in common, they can pay to have it there. Saudi Arabia, under the sponsorship of the king, has just built the first coeducational university in the country. In a remote area they created a whole community for a coeducational university. Source: LYBIO.net There are now more women than men in colleges in Saudi Arabia. But the developed countries can afford that. Haiti, interestingly enough, because of the involvement of religious institutions was one of the few really low-income countries that had a pretty decent network of higher education before the earthquake. So all we have to do there is to rebuild it and try to improve it as we rebuild. But you really got to– you’ve got to have some way, I think, of doing that. There ought to be probably an international conference which sets up a strategy for all the developing countries within the big countries and then regionally where there a lot of small countries clumped together to make sure that every child in the world who is gifted and motivated and works hard and has some chance
to get a college education.

[Steve Grove]
We’re gonna end with a video question, Mr. President. And this is from Anthony in San Diego.

[Anthony]
Hi, President Clinton. My name’s Anthony. I wanted to know what your opinion is on the mosque at Ground Zero.

[President Clinton]
Well, first of all, I have a.. almost radical view on the First Amendment. I believe that people should be free to practice their faith. What the Muslim group wants to do is to build a community center near Ground Zero. And it’s clearly a decision for the city of New York to make. The mayor supports it, and they’ve gotten the requisite approvals, so I think they ought to be able to do it. Source: LYBIO.net I think we should be sensitive to the fact that a lot of Americans are still really hurting over what happened at Ground Zero and that we still have security threats in the world, and that the biggest threat, in my view, remains Al-Qaeda and their affiliates, who are– they’re Muslim, and they purport to speak in the name of religion. They purport to be doing their religious duty. I think much, maybe even most of the controversy of this decision could have been avoided and perhaps still can be if the people who want to build the center were to simply say, “We are dedicating “this center to all the Muslims who were killed on 9/11.” I haven’t heard anybody talk about that, but we’ve all forgotten there were a lot of Muslims killed on 9/11. And if they were to do that, they would be sending several important signals. They would be saying, “Not all Muslims are terrorists. “Most of us are far from it. “We died too. We share your pain. “We’re not insensitive to it. “And we recognize that the Muslims who killed them were murderers.” I mean, then it seems to me that a lot of the objections that have been raised against it would just wipe away if they just said, “We are dedicating this Muslim— “this Islamic center to the memory of the people who were killed on 9/11 who share our faith.” And they can give you the names and tell you how many there were, and I think it would surprise most Americans. I think most Americans may still not know that there was a substantial number of Muslims killed on 9/11.

[Steve Grove]
That might be true. President Clinton, we’re out of time. I wish we had had more, but really appreciate you answering these questions, and we’d love to do it again some time. Source: LYBIO.net

[President Clinton]
I’d like it. Thank you.

[Steve Grove]
Thanks. Yeah.

[President Clinton]
Thanks, Steve.

YouTube Interview With President Clinton. We have to make sure that the medical personnel that are there are trained, and where we can’t cover a whole country, you’ve got to at least get some aggressive preliminary diagnosis capacity out there in the more rural areas so you can move people to centers of care in a timely fashion so that you can avoid the worst consequences of the cancer. Complete Full Script, Dialogue, Remarks, Saying, Quotes, Words And Text By YouTube With President Clinton – Interview.