    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [August 8, 1994]
    [Pages 1449-1453]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Fundraiser
    August 8, 1994

        Thank you. Thank you very much, Senator Graham. Ladies and
    gentlemen, I hope you'll forgive me. I have my annual August ragweed
    voice. If you don't have allergies and you can't tell whether ragweed
    has come out in Washington, DC, you just wait for me to get my sort of,
    you know, raspy--surely there's a role for me in the movies when I talk
    like this. I could be the guy that delivers the bad news, and that
    wouldn't be any role change I would have to take. [Laughter]
        I want to thank many people. I thank the incumbent Senators who are
    here, Senator Graham and the others who have worked so hard. I also want
    to congratulate the nominees who are here. We have an exceptionally
    outstanding group of people: Bob Carr, Alan Wheat, Tom Andrews, Sam
    Coppersmith, Jim Cooper, all from the House of Representatives, and
    former Congressman Jim Jontz, all of whom have real records of fighting
    for the interests of ordinary Americans in trying to build this country
    and all of whom have a real chance to be elected to the United States
    Senate if we work hard for them.
        Joel Hyatt from Ohio is not here tonight, but he and I were in law
    school together. He's younger than I am. Most people are these days.
    [Laughter] And those who aren't look younger now. Joel Hyatt began a
    program when we were in law school for undergraduates to tutor inner-
    city kids and then went on to become famous by making legal
    representation available to ordinary middle class folks. The program he
    started when we were in law school is still operating there, a real
    tribute to his capacity to innovate.
        Richard Fisher from Texas is also not here tonight, but he is
    another longtime friend of

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    mine who worked with me in the Democratic Leadership Council and tried
    to bring new ideas into the party. And believe it or not, in Texas, no
    matter how much the Republicans crow, he's got an excellent chance to
    win there, and we're going to work hard for him.
        The attorney general of Delaware is here, Charles Oberly, who--now,
    that's the job I used to have. That's the best job I ever had. I don't
    know why he wants to be in the Senate. When you're attorney general, you
    don't have to hire people or fire them, except your own staff; you don't
    have to raise taxes or cut spending; and when you do things that are
    unpopular, you can blame it on the Constitution. [Laughter] Nonetheless,
    he wants to leave that wonderful institution. And we were together in
    Delaware a few months ago. It was apparent to me, not only from what I
    read in the Delaware papers but from what I saw of him on the stump and
    the reaction of the people of Delaware, that he had an excellent chance
    to win that race.
        I also want to note the presence here of Jack Mudd from Montana who,
    like me, was a law professor. But unlike me, he became the youngest law
    school dean in America. And it hasn't seemed to do him much harm; he's
    here running for the Senate. Everybody I know in Montana believes that
    he has a great chance to win. That State went Democratic in the last
    election. And it's a very tightly fought State, a very closely contested
    one, but I think he's got an excellent chance to win.
        I'd like to mention three other folks who are here, two from the
    State legislature, Linda Kushner of Rhode Island and Ken Harper of
    Mississippi, and Pat Shea of Utah who used to be counsel for the Senate
    Foreign Relations Committee, a committee that I worked for when I was
    trying to work myself through college here in the 1960's. I have had the
    occasion to meet and be with all three of them over the years, and I
    highly recommend them to all of you.
        Most of you have heard me speak before. The last thing you need to
    hear is me give another speech, except when I'm hoarse. But I want to
    make a couple of points. I ran for President as an underdog, as a
    challenger. I was buried two or three times before the final vote came
    in. One of the things that I know is that you can't win a race unless
    you want to win for something bigger than yourself and that if you do
    want to win for something bigger than yourself, you have always got a
    chance to win. I know that you can't win in a tough time if you don't
    fight, but if you do fight, you're always in the race. And I know that
    the American people are basically ambivalent about most things in their
    politics today. I think it is largely because of the time in which we
    live. And I think it is an enormous opportunity for us to show
    conviction and direction.
        And I might say--I don't want to single out just one of the Senators
    here, but I am very, very proud of the conviction, direction, and
    strength that Chuck Robb is showing in his heroic fight to be reelected
    to the United States Senate from Virginia. And I want to begin with a
    story from one of his debates, and then I'll end with another one to
    illustrate what this election is all about.
        When I entered the race for President in late 1991, when President
    Bush was at 70 percent approval in the polls and most people, aside from
    my mother, thought I had lost my mind, I did it because I was very
    worried that this National Government had become more about words than
    deeds and that we had become addicted to seeing the Presidents always
    worried about how they were positioned, rather than what they were
    doing, and that we were moving toward the 21st century at a breathtaking
    pace with the economy going down, the deficit going up, the middle class
    being squeezed--genuinely in danger of losing our position of energy and
    leadership and direction in the world. It seemed to me that to keep the
    American dream alive, we had to do some simple things that were not
    being done. We had to restore the economy, empower individuals to
    compete and win in it, rebuild our communities and support our families,
    and make Government work for ordinary people again.
        When I started running for President--I was looking out there--Jerry
    McEntee came out for me fairly early, and a lot of people thought he had
    lost his mind, because some people said, ``Well, Clinton's not enough of
    a Democrat; he's always working with Republicans and trying to get
    things done.'' I plead guilty: I did that. I was even popular with the
    previous administration until I filed. [Laughter] I believed, you know,
    that we had all these problems that did not fit very neatly within the
    categories that the Democrats and the Republicans had used in the past,
    and I still believe that.
        But I want to tell you what the problem is and why these races are
    so important with two

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    stories. I'll begin and end with one. The one I'll begin with was from
    Senator Robb's first debate on the Larry King show. The other three guys
    were just pounding, you know, and Marshall Coleman looked at him and
    said, ``You come from conservative Virginia, and you pretend to be a
    conservative, but you are one of the top 10 Democrats supporting Bill
    Clinton in the United States Senate.'' Chuck Robb looked at Marshall
    Coleman and smiled, and he said, ``Yep, and I was one of the top 10
    Democrats supporting George Bush in the United States Senate. I do not
    believe the purpose of politics is to destroy the President, and I've
    finally got somebody who is trying to get the deficit down instead of
    just talk about it, and so I supported him.'' And I never will forget
    that.
        Now, what's that got to do with anything? You have to decide what
    the purpose of your public life is. Is it to do things that genuinely
    respond to the needs of people, or is it to posture? You remember one of
    the Republican House Members that's leaving the House, Fred Grandy, said
    the other day that his colleagues had been told not to work with us on
    health care. Senator Dole was quoted a few weeks ago as saying, well, he
    understood that some of the Republican Senators wanted to work with us
    on health care and work something out, but ``I've got a party to think
    of.''
        Now, all I know is, when we showed up here, the deficit was going up
    and the economy was going down. And with no help from them, we passed an
    economic program that cut spending by $255 billion, cut taxes on 15
    million working Americans, made 90 percent of the small businesses
    eligible for tax cuts, raised taxes on 1.2 percent of the people but
    devoted all the money to paying the deficit down, made 20 million
    Americans eligible to refinance their college loans at a lower interest
    rate. And not a one of them helped us. They said the sky would fall.
    They said the deficit would go up and the economy would go down. I never
    heard so much Chicken Little talk in my life as we heard a year ago this
    month.
        And they all talked about how we were the tax-and-spend party and
    they were against big government. You just remember this: The Democrats
    alone, with not a single, solitary vote from the opposition party,
    adopted a budget which will shrink the Federal Government to fewer than
    2 million people for the first time since John Kennedy was President--
    something they say they're for but couldn't or wouldn't do--that will
    give us 3 years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since
    Harry Truman was President--something they said they were for but
    couldn't or wouldn't do--and has produced 4.1 million new jobs in 18
    months.
        Now, that's why I want these people to win, not because I am an
    abject partisan--my whole record shows that I'm always willing to work
    with people from the other side--but because the voters have to send a
    message to all of us that they expect problems to be solved. If the
    message they send is they'd rather have hot air than firm action to
    advance the cause of middle class people, then the Democrats will start
    behaving the same way.
        We must keep our eyes on doing things, and then we need to stand up
    and do them. Today I had the pleasure of presenting the Presidential
    Medal of Freedom to nine distinguished Americans, one of whom was
    Barbara Jordan from Texas, and I wish she were here tonight. She said,
    ``I just don't get it.'' You can just imagine. She said, ``The Democrats
    have a wonderful record; what they need is to fight for it.'' Barbara
    Jordan said that.
        We need this crime bill. It's being held up by people who know if it
    comes to a vote, it'll pass overwhelmingly. So they think they can beat
    it on a technicality--and the American people won't understand it--
    called a rule. It's the House equivalent of the filibuster: Beat it, but
    act like you're not.
        The Democrats have put together a bill the Republicans said they
    were for for 6 years but couldn't produce, that every one of us can be
    proud of: 100,000 more police, a 20 percent increase; tougher penalties;
    a ban on assault weapons; a ban on ownership of handguns by children;
    and billions of dollars in prevention programs to give our kids
    something to say yes to. We cannot walk away from it.
        In the health care debate, we have on the floor of both Houses of
    Congress, for the first time in the history of the Republic, bills that
    would provide health care to all Americans--never been done before,
    never even got on the floor before. And yes, there's a lot of
    controversy about it. There's a lot of information and a lot of
    misinformation, some genuine difference of opinion. But we do know some
    things about which there is no dispute. And the burden should be,
    therefore, on those who have no plan.

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        We know we spend more on health care than anybody else, 40 percent
    more of our income. We know that even though we do that, we're the only
    country in the world with an advanced economy that hasn't figured out
    how to cover everybody. We know that we're the only country going in
    reverse. There are 5 million Americans today, almost all of them working
    Americans and their children, who don't have insurance who did have
    insurance just 5 years ago. That's not happening anywhere else in the
    world, only here.
        So by what reasoning is it that we say, ``This is good that we spend
    40 percent more than anybody else, do less''? We're the only ones losing
    ground, and we spend billions and billions on paperwork, bureaucracy,
    and administrative costs that no one else spends. We say we are a
    pragmatic people. But we know that in Hawaii, small business insurance
    rates are 30 percent lower than the rest of the country because
    everybody's covered and everybody bears some of the burden.
        Should we try something else? I'm willing to try something else for
    4 or 5 years. I think it ought to be phased in. I think we ought to be
    careful. I think we ought to give the market a chance to work. But I
    think we also should not walk away from what we know works.
        The main thing I want to tell you is this: When we enter this
    debate, what I hope it will be about is the health care of the American
    people, their pocketbooks, the pocketbook of the Federal Government, the
    quality of care, the ability to choose your doctors, and the ability to
    meet the legitimate needs of middle class working people, and not
    politics.
        Last week--and this is the story I want to end with--last week I had
    the honor of doing something that Presidents have done for 44 years:
    that is to present awards every year, with the Attorney General, to four
    young Americans who have either shown great heroism or great public
    service. One of the public service winners was a young woman from Keyes,
    Oklahoma, who was paralyzed in 1990 from the chest down in a car
    accident and since then has spent her time trying to organize children
    not to drink and drive, not to ride with people who drink and drive, and
    always to wear their seatbelts. In other words, instead of being bitter,
    this beautiful child is trying to make sure other people don't have the
    experience she did.
        And so there I was, just totally captivated with this young woman
    and her little sister and her fine father and mother. And her daddy was
    a farmer from Keyes, Oklahoma, way out in western Oklahoma. And we just
    got to talking about health care. And he said, ``You know, I was paying
    $3,400 a year for a limited policy. And my daughter's bills, they were
    all over 2 years ago. We hadn't had any bills in 2 years. But they told
    me I had used up my wellness quotient, and my premium is going to $9,600
    in 2 weeks. So in 2 weeks, we'll be out of insurance.'' And he said--he
    tickled me--he said, ``It's not a political deal.'' He said, ``I'm a
    Republican, Mr. President.'' But he said, ``If somebody's working as
    hard as I'm working and can't even have health insurance for their kids,
    something is wrong somewhere.''
        And so as we begin this debate, there are legitimate differences of
    approach. I welcome them. Nobody's smart enough to know everything about
    this issue. But let us remember that farmer from Keyes, Oklahoma, and
    his fine wife and his two beautiful daughters and ask ourselves, how
    will he send them to college if he can't even pay their health
    insurance? And when we go into these fall elections, let us proudly say,
    ``Yes, we're Democrats.'' And when they attack us for being tax-and-
    spend, say, ``We cut taxes on 10 times as many people as we raised them
    on. You guys had a bigger Government than we're having. We're just
    trying to solve the problems of the people of the country. We put
    100,000 police on the street without a tax increase, by shrinking the
    Federal bureaucracy.''
        We can win the partisan debates if we'll fight. But the main thing
    we need to do is to remember that this is a difficult and confusing time
    for our people. The cold war is over. We're moving to a new era. It has
    not been defined. Every time this happens, the American people become
    vulnerable. At the end of World War I, we were vulnerable to the first
    Red scare and to the Ku Klux Klan. At the end of World War II, the same
    thing happened all over again. The only difference was Harry Truman
    gladly let his popularity drop from 80 percent to 36 percent to keep our
    eye on the ball, to rebuild the country and recapture the rest of the
    world. And in the end, the American people worked through their
    confusion and came back to their better nature. And they will now if we
    can make this election about them, not about an argument between
    Republicans and Democrats, not about

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    all these rhetorical hard balls. Let's just stand up and defend what
    we've done, defend what we believe in, and fight for the American
    people. If we do, the crowd we've got in this room can win these
    elections in November.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:54 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to Gerald W. McEntee, international president,
    American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.