
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994                   TAG: 9402050127
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: DALLAS                                LENGTH: Short

PEROT THROWS WEIGHT AGAINST CLINTON PLAN

Ross Perot on Friday urged a massive grass-roots effort for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced-budget amendment as a way to block President Clinton's health reform plan, which he claimed would only worsen the national condition.

Speaking to United We Stand America, the nascent national political organization he founded, Perot depicted an America ridden by debt.

"Everybody is being programmed day after day to believe that government is going to give you free candy," Perot said. "There is no free candy. Somebody has to pay for it."

He ridiculed claims by supporters of Clinton's reform that new spending would be offset by cost cuts in Medicare and Medicaid along with other savings. "We're dumb but we're not stupid," Perot said.

After pointing out that the federal deficit had grown faster in the past 12 years than in the nation's first 155 years in existence, Perot warned: "The health care program has to be squarely on budget. It [health spending] is 14 percent of our whole domestic product and if we mismanage it we will dig an even deeper hole for our children."

Perot also argued that the federal government's record in health care was reason for misgivings about its ability to reform the current system.

He called the hospitals run by the Veterans Administration "a disgrace to the people who served in the armed forces" and pointed out that the cost of Medicare and Medicaid had exceeded initial estimates by tens of billions of dollars.

by CNB