    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 25, 1994]
    [Pages 1620-1626]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Dinner in New
    York City
    September 25, 1994

        Thank you very much. Congressman Fazio, thank you, first of all, for
    the absolutely wonderful job you have done in the leadership of the
    Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That is very often a
    thankless task. It requires a Member of Congress to travel a long way
    from home, even when he or she may need to be home. And Vic has done it;
    Judy has worked hard; they have been brilliant. And I am very, very
    grateful for what they have done. I'd also like to thank Sumner Redstone
    and Phyllis and all the rest of you who have done your part to make this
    night a success. And I thank all the Members of the Congress who are
    here who are my partners in this effort to change our country and move
    it forward.
        I want to talk a little tonight about why this election is important
    and why we need not simply your contributions but your commitment to
    work and to talk and to reach your friends in the next several weeks.
        Two years ago, I was involved in a campaign for President that
    started almost 3 years ago now. Up until that time, I was living at
    home, doing my job as Governor of my State, serving my fifth term. Our
    economy was finally beginning to grow much more rapidly than the
    Nation's, after a decade of working to turn it around. I was as happy as
    I had ever been, personally and professionally, and I felt immensely
    committed to the work I was doing.
        I left that job and embarked on what a lot of people thought was a
    fool's errand. The incumbent President was then at 70 percent in the
    polls or more. I did it because I did not believe our country was facing
    up to the challenges of the post-cold-war world. I did not believe we
    were doing what we needed to do to move into the 21st century the
    strongest and greatest country in the world, keeping the American dream
    alive for our children. I thought the leadership of the other party was
    taking us in the wrong direction.

    [[Page 1621]]

        I watched for 12 years while we talked about how terrible Government
    spending was and quadrupled the national debt. I watched people talk
    about how they wanted term limits and then be willing to say anything in
    the wide world to get elected so they could keep drawing a Government
    check. I watched people talk about the idea of America and then try to
    divide Americans by race, by region, by religion. I watched people say
    they represented the interests of ordinary Americans and then raise
    taxes on the middle class, lower them on the wealthiest Americans, and
    still not invest in our country, in fact, reduced investment in
    education and training and the things that will enable ordinary
    Americans to compete and win in the global economy.
        And I also believed there needed to be some change in the way both
    parties worked in Washington. I would, like most Americans do, get a lot
    of my news by sitting at home at night and looking at the television
    news or reading the newspaper. And I would often think that the sound
    bites, the clips that came across the airwaves, didn't bear much
    relationship to the world I live in and the people I lived around and
    the concerns that the people I represented had.
        Politics in Washington seemed to me to be unduly negative, unduly
    partisan, and frankly, unduly abstract and divorced from the way people
    are. I thought that we needed a conception of the role of our National
    Government in our lives that was somewhat different than the debate
    often seemed to be. I didn't think that Government could answer all the
    problems or be a savior, but neither did I think Government could sit on
    the sidelines or just sort of enter the game when there were particular
    interests that needed to be protected.
        It seems to me that we ought to learn to believe in our Government
    again as an extension of ourselves, as our partner, that in a world that
    is properly and thankfully dominated by private sector and free markets,
    the Government ought not to do things that others can do as well or
    better. But there are some things the Government has to do to ensure
    opportunity for Americans, to enable Americans to assume personal
    responsibility for their own welfare and that of their families, and to
    rebuild this almost mystical thing we know as the American community.
        We're going into a period of profound change, and the dimensions of
    the future are not fully clear to anybody. But it is obvious to me that
    the success of this country will depend as much as anything else on our
    spirit, on our attitude, on whether we believe we can make change our
    friend and not our enemy, on whether we believe that our diversity is a
    source of strength and unity and not weakness and division, and on
    whether we are willing to have the discipline as well as the courage and
    vision to pay the price of time, because many of the conditions with
    which we must deal did not arise overnight and cannot be erased
    overnight.
        After 12 years in which I thought this country was not led very
    well, because we were divided instead of united and because we weren't
    going forward, we were going backward economically, I thought we could
    change all that. So I ran for President. And I got elected. And I have
    to tell you that if you ask me to evaluate how well we've done in the
    last 20 months, I think we have done an excellent job of moving the
    country forward. But I still haven't figured out how to bring the
    country together given the obstacles to honest, open, clear debate and
    the obstacles of people even getting the information about what is going
    on.
        If on the day I was inaugurated President I had given an Inaugural
    Address that said, 20 months from now, folks, consistent with my
    campaign commitments, we will put our economic house in order; we will
    have cut the deficit by a record amount, over $500 billion, much more
    than it was going to be cut under the previous administration in their
    plans; we would have way over $250 billion in spending cuts; we would
    abolish scores of Government programs outright; we would raise taxes on
    the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans, including virtually everybody
    in this room--thanks for sticking with us--[laughter]--but we would
    lower taxes on more than 10 times as many Americans, 15 million of them
    living in families where people are working and raising children just
    above the poverty line, and we don't want them to give up on work and go
    on welfare, we want them to succeed as workers and parents; that we
    would make 90 percent of the small businesses in this country eligible
    for a tax cut; that we would reduce the Federal bureaucracy to its
    smallest size since John Kennedy was President--the other guys always
    talked about hating the Government, but it got bigger

    [[Page 1622]]

    under them--we made it smaller; and that we would have 3 years of
    deficit reduction in a row for the first time since President Truman was
    in office, if I had told you that 20 months ago, you'd say, ``There's
    another one of those politicians making promises that he can't keep.''
    But that is exactly what we have done. That is the record of this
    administration and this Congress.
        If I had said, in 20 months we will have more expansion of world
    trade than at any time in the last 35 years; the Federal Government will
    get back on the side of American business and American workers in trying
    to compete and win in the global marketplace; we'll have a strategy for
    aerospace, a strategy for shipbuilding, a strategy for automobiles, a
    strategy for high tech; we will take $30 billion off the list of things
    we can't sell overseas and start selling them; we will sell in
    California everything from rice to apples in Japan for the very first
    time; we will pass NAFTA and trade will increase to Mexico 17 percent in
    one year alone, we'll actually be adding autoworkers in America because
    of our expansion of trade with our neighbor to the south; if I had told
    you all that, you'd say, ``Well, that sounds good, but you can't do
    it.'' But that is in fact the record of this administration, and that is
    what has been done.
        And the result has been--if I had told you this, you'd have really
    thought I was nuts: 4.3 million new jobs in 20 months, over 90 percent
    of them in the private sector in contrast with the record of the
    previous decade; 8 months of manufacturing job growth in a row for the
    first time in 10 years; and for the first time in 9 years America was
    voted in the Annual Review of International Economists as the most
    productive economy in the world, the number one economy in the world,
    for the first time in 9 years. That is the record of the last 20 months
    that this Congress has helped this administration to make, working with
    the American people.
        If I had said that in 20 months we will pass more education and
    training reform legislation than in any comparable period in the last 20
    years--200,000 more young people in Head Start; the Goals 2000 bill
    which establishes national standards for the performance of our schools
    and promotes grassroots reforms to achieve them; a national program to
    help every State have a system for moving the kids who don't go to
    college into high-wage jobs with extra training and apprenticeships; a
    dramatic reform of the student loan program which has made 20 million
    Americans eligible to refinance their college loans at lower fees, lower
    interest rates, and longer repayment terms; 100,000 young Americans over
    3 years in national service solving the problems of America at home and
    earning money against their college education--if I had told you that,
    you might not have believed it, but that is the record of this Congress.
    That's exactly what they've done in just 20 months, and the American
    people need to know it. And when they do, they will reward them for
    having done it.
        Now, if I had said, while we weren't doing those other things, we
    broke 7 years of gridlock and passed the family and medical leave law so
    people can have a little time off from work when their kids are born or
    when their parents are sick without losing their jobs; 7 years of
    gridlock and passed the Brady bill; 6 years of gridlock and passed a
    crime bill that had, almost to the specifics, everything I recommended
    in the campaign of 1992: 100,000 more police on the street--there are
    only 550,000 of them there today--100,000 more police on the street,
    100,000 more prison cells for violent criminals, prevention programs to
    give kids something to say yes to, drug treatment, drug education
    programs, alternative punishments for first offenders like drug courts
    and boot camps; if I had told you all that, and I said, ``Oh, by the
    way, we're going to ban juvenile ownership of handguns, and nobody
    thinks that anybody can ever beat the NRA in the Congress, but we will
    actually pass an assault weapons ban,'' if I had said that, you would
    have said, ``Nice try, but it's another bunch of political promises.''
    That is exactly the record of this Congress and this administration in
    the last 20 months.
        And let me say again, we did this by making the Government smaller.
    Our White House is the most active in a generation. We cut the White
    House staff when I came in office to set an example. We are cutting the
    Federal bureaucracy over 6 years by 272,000 people and giving every last
    red cent of the money back to communities to pay for the crime bill. We
    have really reinvented the Government. The other guys always talked
    about the terrible Federal bureaucracy.
        When I became President, the most unpopular agency in the Federal
    Government was the Emergency Management Agency because every

    [[Page 1623]]

    time there was a disaster, they made it worse. [Laughter] It is now the
    most popular agency in Federal Government because I appointed somebody
    to run it who'd actually dealt with disasters before. And you can talk
    to the people in California, the people in the Middle West, the people
    in the Southeast, everybody who's dealt with it.
        They're supposed to be the party of small business. Now, because
    I've put somebody in the Small Business Administration who had actually
    spent 20 years starting small businesses instead of losing elections,
    which is how it's usually filled, you can now go to the SBA and fill
    out--if you want a loan, you fill out a one-page form, and you get an
    answer, yes or no, in 3 days. That is stuff they talked about, but we
    did.
        And I could give you lots of other examples. Vic's from California.
    When they had that earthquake in southern California and the busiest
    highway in America was shattered, right, what did we do? We had an
    innovative contract out there. We said, ``If you can beat the deadline
    and you will work around the clock 7 days a week, we'll give you a
    premium.'' And we beat the deadline by more than half of what they said
    it would take to finish it. We opened it months early, the highway. The
    American people who have to ride on that road in California know that we
    are delivering.
        So this is a very different image, right, than you hear when our
    adversaries talk about this administration. And while we were doing all
    this, we made a remarkable partnership for democracy and economic growth
    with Russia. We've worked with them as the Russian troops have been
    withdrawn from the Baltics and Eastern Europe for the first time since
    World War II. We've got 21 new nations in a new security partnership
    with NATO, trying to unite Europe for the first time since nation states
    have existed there. We are working with the Irish and the British on
    peace in Northern Ireland. We worked to help conduct free and fair
    elections that produced Nelson Mandela's miraculous victory in South
    Africa. We have worked hard to make dramatic steps forward on peace in
    the Middle East and, I believe, in what we are doing tonight in Haiti.
        Now, that is the record of the last 20 months. Do we have a lot of
    work to do? Sure, we do. We've still got a lot of things we could do
    back in Washington now: pass the GATT worldwide trade agreement, pass
    campaign finance reform, pass the lobby reform bill. There's a whole
    spate of environmental legislation still waiting to be passed in the
    Congress right now. And I will never give up until we have finally
    joined the ranks of other nations and found a way to provide health care
    to all Americans and to bring the cost in line with inflation, because
    if we don't do that the deficit will start to go up again, and being in
    Congress will be a matter of writing health care checks for the same old
    health care with no money to invest in America's future.
        Yes, there is work to do. But the fact is, the economy is stronger,
    the deficit is lower, taxes are fairer, trade is greater, working
    families and communities have a chance to be secure and safer. That is
    the record of this Congress and this administration in the last 20
    months. The American people don't know it, but thanks to your help, they
    will by election day, and the results will be there.
        Now, you might ask, ``Well, Mr. President, if you're so smart, why
    don't they know it?'' First of all, many people--let's deal with the
    real world--many people have not felt these changes in their own lives.
    When they have, I can tell you who they're voting for--when a person
    comes up to me and says, ``I have doubled my business in international
    trade; thank you. I never thought I'd be a Democrat, but I am now.'' And
    a man in the White House came up to me on a Sunday morning several
    months ago and he was going through a tour, which is very unusual on
    Sunday morning, with his three children, and I noticed one was in a
    wheelchair. This man came up and grabbed me and he said, ``I want to
    tell you something. My little girl here is sick, and she's probably not
    going to live. And her wish was to see the White House. But because of
    that family leave law, which your predecessor vetoed twice, I can take
    time off from work and spend this precious time with my daughter without
    losing my job and hurting my other children and my wife. Don't you ever
    think what you do up here does not make a difference; it does.'' But
    most people haven't felt it.
        And look at the problems of the country. We have social problems
    that we have had now developing for 30 years, the crime, the drugs, the
    family breakdown. We have economic problems that working people feel in
    the form of stagnant wages and fragile benefits that have been devel-

    [[Page 1624]]

    oping for 20 years. We had a political climate that said that the
    Government would mess up a one-car parade, that Democrats were aliens,
    and that tried to divide us and frighten us for 12 years.
        We've just been here 20 months, folks, but we are going in the right
    direction. And the thing that we must not permit to happen is to have
    the American people, out of their frustration and out of our failure to
    tell them what we've done, vote for that which they are against. That is
    why your presence here is important tonight.
        Also, let's face it, the guys we're running against are good at
    talking. And they have a simple system: rule or ruin. They've not much
    interest in doing. So they're not only good at talking, they've got more
    time to work on it than we do. We show up for work every day; they show
    up for talk. You think I'm kidding? Every single Member of the other
    party in Congress, every last one, voted against that economic program.
    And you say, ``Well, maybe they just didn't like it.'' No, no, no, no, I
    was told the first week I was President by one of the Republican leaders
    that there would not be a single vote for the economic program, no
    matter how we changed it. He said, ``We want to be in a position to
    blame you if it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, we'll still blame
    you, and we'll convince people that you taxed them even if you didn't.''
    That's what I was told the first week I showed up.
        So when we gave the 15 million working people a tax break, every one
    of them said no. When we made 90 percent of small businesses--supposed
    to be their constituents--when we made 90 percent of them eligible for a
    tax break, every one of them said no. When we gave 20 million Americans
    a break on their college loans and all the middle class kids to come,
    not just poor kids, middle class kids, every one of them voted no, every
    single one of them. When we made the first big cut in the size of the
    Federal Government in three decades, every one of them voted no. George
    Mitchell, our Democratic leader, said that if you took the word no out
    of their vocabulary, a bunch of them would be stone mute. [Laughter]
        Then, we moved to the crime bill. When we banned assault weapons,
    passed a dramatic bill to deal with the problems of violence against
    women and children in the homes, passed a bill that protected the rights
    of victims in the criminal justice process, put 100,000 more police on
    the street, put 100,000 more prison cells out there, toughened the
    penalties, all their leaders and most of them voted no. And the ones
    that didn't were absolutely excoriated for putting their country ahead
    of their party.
        Now, these are facts. When I showed up in Washington, I really
    believed that we would be able to do what we did with just a few
    Republicans on the crime bill and more on trade. I thought we would be
    able to have a more nonpartisan or bipartisan spirit of governance
    because so many of these problems are new problems. They don't fit
    within the proper categories of Democrat and Republican that you could
    tell right off in the forties, fifties, or sixties, well, who would vote
    which way. These are new and different problems. So I said to myself, I
    will reach out to them. But I already gave you one example. On the
    budget bill they told me in advance.
        On the crime bill, let me tell you what happened. Last year the
    Senate passed the crime bill with the assault weapons ban and a vote
    among the Republicans was 42 to 2 for the crime bill. My ratings in the
    polls were high at the time. It was a long way from the election at the
    time, and they never dreamed the House would pass the ban on assault
    weapons because they knew they'd have to vote on it separately. Lo and
    behold, the House, stunning me, passed it by two votes. I thought that
    the NRA would beat us like a yard dog in the House on that. Lo and
    behold, they passed it. So the bill goes to conference. And it comes
    out, and then all of a sudden they start making all these speeches about
    pork.
        Let me tell you something, when the Senate passed the bill, it was
    4\1/2\ years long. When we passed it, it was 6 years long. We put more
    money in it for 100,000 instead of 50,000 police and a little more money
    in it for prisons, but the prevention programs were actually slightly
    higher on an annual basis in the bill the Republicans voted for 42 to 2
    than they were in the bill they voted against 6 to 38. Nothing had
    changed except the politics. In their conference, they were told, ``Our
    job is not to lower the crime rate and make the American people more
    secure. Our job is to stiff anything that the other party and that
    administration tries to do.''
        I'll give you a third example, health care. When I introduced our
    health care bill, I said, ``Look, this may not be a perfect bill. It's
    the

    [[Page 1625]]

    best I can do. But what we ought to do is do what other sensible
    countries have done. We ought to find a way to cover everybody in a way
    that brings cost more in line with inflation. And we ought to do it by
    keeping the system as private as possible, private health care
    providers. And I don't want to eliminate private health insurance, and
    this is my idea.'' I was so happy; there was a bill introduced in the
    Senate by 24 Republican Senators that did the same thing, provided
    coverage for everybody and controlled costs, universal coverage and cost
    control. It wasn't the way I would have done it, but I was elated. I
    thought, this is what I came to Washington to do. We're going to have a
    debate, and they'll say, you know, they'll characterize my plan
    unfairly, they'll brag on theirs, and we'll get together and work it
    out. We'll solve this problem for the American people and everybody will
    share the credit. By the time our bill got to the floor, do you know how
    many Republican Senators were left on that bill to provide universal
    coverage? Zero. Not a single solitary one. Why? Politics. One of them
    was quoted in your local paper here the other day saying, ``Well, we
    killed health care. Now the trick is not to have our fingerprints on
    it.''
        I just gave you a list of all those things that are back in
    Washington awaiting action. In the House where all these folks work, you
    can't delay action. We may or may not get any of those things voted on
    now because for the first time in the history of the Republic--never has
    this happened before, ever--the Republican Senators are requiring the
    Democratic majority to jump through procedural hoops that take 30 hours
    just to get a vote on procedural things to take up bills. And then when
    they run through this exhausting 30 hours, half of them jump on the
    bandwagon and vote for it so they won't get caught doing what they did.
    It has never happened before, ever.
        Those are just four examples. I'm telling you, I came here running,
    saying the Democrats had problems, too, we had to change the partisan
    environment. But I want the American people to know that the no-sayers
    in this crowd are the leaders of the Republicans in Congress.
        There are a lot of good Republicans in the Congress that would like
    to work with us on a lot of issues, and most of the time they are
    threatened with their very lives. You see the Congressman from Iowa was
    threatened; he was told, under no circumstances could he cooperate with
    any of us on health care.
        Now, the American people need to know that. Why? Because this is a
    time of change. We're moving away from the cold war into a new era. I am
    convinced the 21st century can be the best time this country ever had. I
    believe that. I believe that. But we have to be able to face our
    challenges in an open and honest way. We have to be able to make change
    our friend, and that requires a certain level of security.
        And all the American people here with this sort of partisan,
    negative stuff pounding on them day in and day out, they do not know
    what we have done. We haven't had time to talk; we've been busy doing.
    So we're going to go out now and talk. But if you think about your
    organization, whatever it is, we live on people-power today. And people-
    power depends on spirit as well as it does brains. You cannot get
    anything done in a world where people determine the course of history
    unless people are in a good frame of mind. You think about whatever it
    is you do and wherever it is you work, and how well would you do if two-
    thirds of the people showed up every day convinced what you were doing
    was in the wrong direction and nothing good could ever happen; they were
    in a deep funk. Wouldn't be very pleasant to go to work, would it?
        That is what our political adversaries actually try to create every
    day in the minds of the American people. They say no; they play on their
    fears; they try to turn us into aliens. And frankly, they do a very good
    job at it. And when we can't get out there and talk to them, they do it.
    But the bad thing is not what happens to me or whether I get reelected
    or Vic gets reelected. In the big line of history, that's not as
    important as whether the American people face the future with confidence
    and hope and are willing to take on their challenges and are willing to
    find strength in our diversity. That is what we have to do.
        And I am telling you, that's what this election is all about. It's
    not about seats in Congress and everything else, except as they reflect
    whether we are going into the future with fear or hope. If you think
    about this time in our history, it's most like the times at the ends of
    the wars. At the end of the First World War, the American people were
    tired, distracted, they got inward looking. They said, ``We're just
    going to walk away from everything.'' What happened?

    [[Page 1626]]

    We elected three Presidents, starting with Mr. Harding who promised us
    normalcy, whatever that is. What was normalcy? Normalcy was the rise of
    the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Scare, and a global depression.
        Then at the end of the Second World War, Harry Truman found himself
    as President. He was at 80 percent approval in the polls the day after
    he dropped the atomic bomb that ended the war. Two years later, when he
    sent national health reform to Congress for the second time, he was at
    36 percent in the polls. Why? He was an instrument of change, and it was
    disruptive to the established order of things. But, he said, ``We've got
    to rebuild Japan and Germany and rebuild Europe and have international
    mechanisms for growth.'' He carried through on Roosevelt's vision of the
    United Nations, where I will speak tomorrow. He said, ``We have to stand
    up to the Communist threat and limit it, and we have to rebuild America
    at home.'' And it required change, and it was difficult and
    uncomfortable. But when he finally got out there on that train and told
    the American people the truth, they stuck with him. And now most people
    think Harry Truman ought to be on Mount Rushmore.
        But I'll tell you something. I come from a family that was for him
    when he was living, and it wasn't so simple back then. Because when
    countries go through periods of change, they are just like people. You
    think about every period of change you've been through in your life,
    when you went off to college, when you got married, when you had your
    first child, when you took your first job, when you started your first
    business. Every period of change is marked by hope and fear, isn't it?
    And when you're going through the change as opposed to the beginning or
    the end of it, when you're going through it, every day you wake up and
    it's like there are these scales inside, and some day hope's winning and
    some day fear's winning. Right? In your personal life.
        That is what our country is going through today. And all these dire
    predictions about the election and all these polls showing how sour and
    frustrated the American people are--let me tell you something, the
    people of this country are good people. And if you give them a chance,
    they will do the right thing 99 times out of 100. And they desperately
    want to believe in the future of this country, but they have been
    bombarded with everything that's wrong. They have not heard what is
    right. And there are real objective problems still out there. Our job is
    not always to win but to be the party of hope over fear, to be the party
    of big over little, to be the party of change over the status quo, to be
    the party of the children's future, not yesterday's vision. And I
    believe, since this is a time of change, that also, in the end, is the
    right thing to do politically. The right thing to do morally for our
    kids and their future is the right thing to do politically.
        And I want you to look around this room. Every Member of this
    Congress that's here--there were bills that we won by one vote, by two
    votes, bills that passed by the narrowest of margins--they deserve
    credit for stepping up to the plate and voting for the future of this
    country and for our children instead of for their momentary interests,
    and they deserve to be rewarded in this election. And if you want the
    changes for this country to continue until all Americans feel them, then
    I ask you not to quit with your check tonight but to keep speaking for
    them and working for them and talking to your friends and getting them
    to help all the way until election day, because they are about the
    future of this country.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:45 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to Representative Vic Fazio, chairman, and his
    wife, Judy, finance director, Democratic Congressional Campaign
    Committee; and Sumner Redstone, chairman, Viacom, and his wife, Phyllis.