[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.