    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 27, 1994]
    [Pages 1639-1641]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1639]]

    Remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Reception
    September 27, 1994

        Thank you, Congressman Serrano, and to all my colleagues up here on
    the stage, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and to Secretary
    Babbitt, Secretary and Mrs. Cisneros, Secretary and Mrs. Pena. I know
    the Attorney General is coming. I haven't seen her here, but I think
    she's here somewhere. And I thank her and all of them for serving our
    Cabinet and our country so well. To Rita Elizondo, and all the others
    who work at the Institute, and to all of you, first, let me thank you
    for receiving me so well, and thank you for letting me come early and
    leave early. You know I have a date with President Yeltsin tonight.
    [Laughter] And I don't want to stiff him, so I'm going to have to leave
    here in just a moment. I do want to--I wish I could take the mariachis
    back with me to entertain him. [Laughter]
        I want to say a special word of thanks to a couple of people here:
    First, to Congressman Ron de Lugo who's retiring after two decades
    representing the Virgin Islands. We will miss him very much. And
    thanks--next I would like to say a special word of thanks to the chief
    deputy whip, Congressman Bill Richardson, for his wonderful efforts in
    Haiti, to help us make peace and restore democracy in Haiti.
        Congressman Serrano went over some of the accomplishments of this
    administration, but I want to do it again to ask you to do something for
    all of these Members who are up here, because they have worked very
    hard--very, very hard--to make this country work again. And our biggest
    problem--the thing you laughed about there, about not getting credit--I
    don't really care who gets the credit, as long as the country is going
    forward. But when the congressional elections come up, the people who
    are getting credit for moving the country forward need to be rewarded,
    so the voters don't wind up inadvertently voting for the very things
    they are against.
        And that's what I want you to think about. If someone had told you
    20 months ago that in 20 months we would see the biggest deficit
    reduction passed in history; the biggest spending cuts in history;
    scores of Government programs eliminated outright; the smallest Federal
    bureaucracy since Kennedy was President; 3 years of deficit reduction in
    a row for the first time since Truman was President; and still more
    money being spent to put 200,000 more kids in Head Start, to immunize
    all the children in America under the age of 2 by 1996; for education
    and training for people who are unemployed, for young people who want to
    go into good jobs when they get out of high school, but don't want to go
    on to college--you need apprenticeships; that we would reform the
    student loan program and make 20 million Americans eligible for student
    loans at lower interest rates, lower fees, and longer repayment terms;
    and that these things would produce 4.3 million new jobs, a 1.5 percent
    decline in the Hispanic unemployment rate, you'd say that was pretty
    good, wouldn't you?
        We are moving this country in the right direction. The guys that
    voted against us said if we did this, it would wreck the economy. They
    were wrong; we were right; the American people should know it. It's
    important, and you need to make a commitment not simply to support these
    folks here with the Institute and with your presence at this dinner but
    with your voice and your heart and your spirit and getting people out to
    vote between now and November 8th. They were wrong; we were right.
        They should be rewarded because we are moving this country in the
    right direction. Since NAFTA was ratified, we have increased exports to
    Mexico by 19 percent, 3 times as much as our exports are going up
    elsewhere. Automobile and truck exports are up 600 percent. We've got
    folks in those auto factories working overtime for the first time in
    more than 10 years. And I might say, that's why I hope we can pass the
    GATT agreement before we leave, because that will bring another 300,000
    to 500,000 jobs into this economy. We had 8 months in a row this year
    where manufacturing employment increased for the first time in 10 years.
    And for the first time in 9 years, the annual vote of the panel of
    international economists, the United States was voted the most
    productive economy in the entire world. We're moving in the right
    direction. They need to be rewarded for it, these people in Congress who
    have made it possible.

    [[Page 1640]]

        Because of the Hispanic Caucus, we're closer to reenacting the
    Elementary and Secondary Education Act to help give educationally
    disadvantaged children a better chance. Congressman Becerra worked
    especially hard on that.
        In addition to passing, in this economic plan, a tax cut for 15
    million working families with children, who are working and hovering
    just above the poverty line--who are disproportionally Hispanic, I might
    add--we cut their taxes. We raised tax rates on the top 1.2 percent of
    Americans, cut taxes for 15 million working families so they wouldn't
    fall into poverty while they were working, so they could succeed as
    parents and workers, so they wouldn't choose welfare over work. We did
    it; they all voted against it. You ought to reward the people who did it
    and not the reverse.
        We also passed the motor voter bill after several years of gridlock,
    the Brady bill and the family and medical leave bill after 7 years of
    gridlock, the crime bill after 6 years of gridlock. We're about to
    announce the communities, sometime this year, who won the empowerment
    zone competition, the enterprise community competition. We have more
    coming forward.
        Last week I signed the community development banking bill, which
    will put $4.8 billion into poor communities, urban and rural, in this
    country so poor people can borrow money to put themselves in business in
    ways that will make a profit. This has been proven to work in other
    countries. It is wrong that America has not done it before, but we're
    going to bring free enterprise to the inner city and the isolated rural
    areas of America and prove that poor people want to work as well, and
    they can and will and will succeed. And I want to say a special word of
    thanks to Chairman Gonzalez and Nydia Velazquez, Luis Gutierrez, and
    Lucille Roybal-Allard for their leadership on this community development
    initiative; it was very important.
        This administration has also kept its commitment to look more like
    America. With 302 Hispanic-American appointments, we have now appointed
    more than twice the number of Hispanic-Americans as my predecessor and,
    even better than that, of all those that went before. And I might add,
    in the area of Federal judges, we have appointed twice the number of
    Hispanic-Americans appointed by the last three Presidents, Democratic
    and Republican, combined, and I am proud of that.
        One other thing I want to mention, because some of you were there,
    but one of the greatest honors I have had as President was the
    opportunity that I was able to take to give the Medal of Freedom to
    Cesar Chavez. I only wish he had been there to receive it in person.
        Let me close with this. I had the opportunity to have a great
    meeting, when I spoke to the United Nations yesterday, with President
    Salinas. And he said to me, ``Mr. President,'' he said, ``I follow
    American politics very closely, and we've had a wonderful partnership.''
    And he said, ``I understand many things about America, but I do not
    understand how, with your economy booming, with so much progress being
    made, with all these bills flying through Congress, most Americans say
    when they're polled they think the country is going in the wrong
    direction.'' I said, ``Well, you just have to live here to understand
    that.'' [Laughter]
        But you think about it. Every one of you works in some working
    group; maybe it's a big one, maybe it's a small one. How well could you
    do at your job if every day two-thirds of the people who showed up to
    work with you were convinced nothing good was going to happen and, when
    something good did happen, denied that it did? [Laughter] That is the
    environment you ask these people to come to work every day in. You ask
    them to take brave decisions, vote for change, stand up to interest
    groups, push the country forward, when they know that there's better
    than a 50 percent chance that the people they're fighting for may not
    even get the message. That is what elections are for.
        The fact is that against enormous odds from interest groups and
    enormous political odds and relentless opposition, the people on this
    stage with me have been responsible for an economic revival, for
    seriously addressing many of the greatest social problems facing this
    country. The deficit is down; the economy is up; jobs are up; trade is
    up. We have seriously addressed the crime problem. The American people
    are going to be more secure. We have done things for children, too long
    deferred, on immunizations, Head Start, the family leave policy, the
    policy of giving a tax break to working families on low incomes. We are
    moving the country forward and pulling it together. What remains is to
    get the message of the record of the last 20 months to the voters in the
    next 5 weeks.

    [[Page 1641]]

        You can do it; they need it. I will be out there doing my part. But
    if you liked what has happened before, you must ratify it by getting
    your friends and neighbors to say, ``We are not going to be fooled, we
    are not going to be divided, and we are certainly not going back to the
    old policies of the past which wrecked the economy and divided this
    country. We're going forward together.''
        Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:46 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to Rita Elizondo, executive director,
    Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. A tape was not available for
    verification of the content of these remarks.