    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 8, 1995]
    [Pages 493-504]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the California Democratic Party in Sacramento
    April 8, 1995

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you for the wonderful,
    wonderful welcome. And thank you for the wonderful film. It's nice to
    see the record out there in a compelling way. Thank you, and bless you.
        I guess you all know that this is Bill Press' birthday. We threw him
    a good party, didn't we? Happy birthday.
        I'm delighted to be here with all the officers of the Democratic
    Party, with Arlene Holt and of course with our chair, Don Fowler. I
    thank him for this remarks. Wasn't Barbara Boxer wonderful this morning?
    I'll tell you, you have no idea what a joy it is to see her in
    Washington, with all those other politicians kind of tippy-toeing around
    and trying to be just careful, you know. And there's Barbara every day
    just right there through the door, the same way every day. I want to
    thank the members of the California delegation who are here, Norm
    Mineta, Bob Matsui, Vic Fazio, Maxine Waters, Walter Tucker. They have
    been our friends and our partners. They have worked hard to turn this
    country around and move it forward and to help California. I thank them.
    I'm glad to be here with Willie Brown. I was watching him on the
    television back there, and he was smiling, you know. And I thought, I
    hope I look half that good when I'm his age. The truth is he already
    looks younger than me, and I resent it. [Laughter] Senator Lockyer, I'm
    glad to be here with you. And Mayor Serna, thank you for hosting us. I'm
    glad to be here with your State controller, Kathleen Connell; your
    superintendent of education, Delane Eastin; and of course, I love
    hearing Gray Davis talk. It's nice to know that you're always going to
    have a Governor, no matter what, and a good one on occasion.
        I'm delighted to be here with a number of my California staffers, of
    course, led by my Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta. I know a lot of you used
    to be represented by him, and you're glad to see him. And you all give
    him a good hand. He doesn't get much of this in Washington, so he needs
    it. I mean, he needs it. Give him really more. Give him a little more.
    [Ap-

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    plause] Don't overdo it; he might quit and come home. [Laughter] That
    was just about right. Thank you.
        I want to also tell you that after we leave here we're going down to
    Los Angeles, and we're going to have an event with the National
    Education Association on school violence. So we have representatives
    here from the national NEA, and our wonderful Secretary of Education,
    Dick Riley, is also here with me today. And I'd like for you to welcome
    him.
        I was looking at that film, and I don't know how many of you know
    this, but there was only one moment in that film when I got kind of a
    twinge and I sort of had to control myself, when that picture of me in
    the academic robe and the tassel--that was at UCLA. [Laughter] Well,
    they won it fair and square, and they deserved it.
        I am delighted to be here. You know, you folks believed in the
    campaign I ran in 1992 well enough to go out and work your hearts out to
    try to turn the direction of the country and the direction of California
    around. And we carried this State for the first time a Democratic
    President had carried it since 1964, and I thank you for that.
        I also want to thank you for all of the applause that came out of
    this audience when the picture of Hillary appeared on the screen. Thank
    you for that. Hillary and Chelsea have just come home, you know, from a
    very long trip. They went to India, to Pakistan, to Bangladesh, to
    Nepal, to Sri Lanka, always looking at the condition of women and young
    girls in these countries, in that very important part of the world. You
    know this in California because you have so many people living here who
    come from those places, but the future of the globe will be determined
    in no insignificant measure by what happens in those nations. And the
    ability to preserve democracy and hope and freedom in those nations
    depends in no small measure on how women and girls are treated and
    whether they have the opportunity to live up to their God-given
    capacities.
        My fellow Americans, we are at an historic moment and an interesting
    time in our history. You know because of what was on that film that I
    have kept the commitments I've made to the people of California and the
    people of the United States in the campaign of 1992.
        I ran for President because I was deeply concerned about the lives
    of ordinary Americans, because half of our people were working harder
    for the same or lower wages than they were making 15 years before;
    because people were working harder, sleeping less, spending less time
    with their children; because we had profound problems in the fabric of
    our society, pressures on the family unit, more and more of our children
    being born out of wedlock, high rates of crime and violence and drugs,
    the absence of hope for so many of our people who felt isolated and
    abandoned; because the Government seemed to me to be caught in a
    gridlock where one side could blame the other, but the facts were that
    we had 12 years of trickle-down economics in which the deficit exploded,
    investment in our people went down, and nobody was really willing to
    take on the serious problems of the country, so that most people in
    their ordinary lives just felt left out. The National Government became
    less and less and less relevant to their lives, except at tax time when
    it was a burden. And so I thought we could change that.
        I ran for President because I thought our country had three great
    tasks: First, we needed to begin once again to reestablish the American
    economic dreams, to grow the middle class, shrink the under class, and
    create more opportunities for entrepreneurs to live out their dreams.
    Second, because I thought we needed to reassert the fundamental values
    that made this country great, responsibility, responsibility in our
    individual lives, in our work lives, in our family lives, and in our
    communities, taking responsibility one for another, understanding that
    we are going up or down together in this country whether we like it or
    not, so we had better make the most of it. And thirdly, because I
    thought we ought to reform Government, to make it more relevant and more
    effective to our daily lives, to do four things: to create more economic
    opportunity; to shrink the bureaucracy; to make our people more secure,
    not only around the world but here at home on our streets and in our
    schools and in our homes; and most important of all, to empower people
    through education to make the most of their own lives in the global
    economy.
        Now, in the first 2 years, we have gone a long way toward keeping
    all those commitments. The economy is up; the deficit is down. We have
    the lowest combined rates of unemployment and inflation this country's
    had in 25 years in spite of the economic problems that continue to
    endure in this State, and I'm proud of that.

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        In California, which was hit hardest by the 1989-90 recession and
    hit by far harder than any other State by the defense cutbacks, the
    unemployment rate has now dropped about 2 percent. So we are moving in
    the right direction in terms of the economy. We're trying to help places
    that have been left behind with empowerment zones and extra investments
    in cities that need it.
        We are trying to establish community development banks in cities
    that will loan money to people who previously could never get any money,
    so we can bring free enterprise into poor areas and give people the
    promise that they can get a bank loan and start a business and hire
    their friends and neighbors and get something to happen.
        We have plainly shrunk the bureaucracy, something they never thought
    the Democrats would do. The Democrats reduced the deficit, and the
    Democrats shrunk the Government bureaucracy by 100,000 in 2 years and
    put it all into paying for safety on our streets. That's something the
    Democratic Party did.
        My friends, when you go back out of this room and you see people you
    know who don't belong to the Democratic Party, you just remind them of
    this: that this Government is the first Government in 30 years that is
    running an operating surplus, that is, except for the interest on the
    debt run up between 1981 and 1982, before our administration took over,
    our budget would be in balance today. And don't you forget it. And you
    ought to be proud of that.
        The third thing we have done is to make this country more secure.
    For the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, there are no
    Russian missiles pointed at the children of the United States of
    America. And we have taken on a lot of tough issues to make our world
    more secure, from North Korea to Northern Ireland to Haiti to Mexico.
    I've done a lot of things that weren't popular, but they were right, to
    make this country more secure, to have this country have a better
    future.
        And perhaps most important of all, we really have moved on the
    education agenda I promised in 1992. We expanded Head Start. We have
    given more money to our schools to meet high standards. We have
    supported apprenticeship programs for young people who don't go to
    college but do want to have good education. We have made over 1.5
    million people right here in California alone eligible for lower cost
    college loans and better repayment terms, so that everybody can go to
    college who wants to go. And here and throughout the country, our
    national service program has given 20,000 young people a chance to earn
    their way to college by serving their communities at the grassroots
    level in the best, old-fashioned, American tradition. And there are some
    of them right there.
        Now, let's talk about where we are today. You might say, well, if
    we've got 6.3 million new jobs in the country; the lowest combined rates
    of unemployment and inflation in 25 years; we're making progress in
    terms of our national security abroad and here at home with the crime
    bill, the Brady bill, the assault weapons ban, 100,000 more police on
    our streets; if we have shrunk the size of the Federal Government; and
    if we are doing more for education and that's the central problem of our
    time, how come they won the last election?
        Well, let's talk about it. One reason is we spent too much time
    working and too little time talking about it. And they're better
    talkers, and we're better workers. And we ought to give them credit for
    that. They're great; they say one thing one day and another thing the
    next, and it doesn't bother them. And they sometimes get rewarded for
    that. So you can say that's what happened. But that's not really what
    happened.
        What really happened is that this country's economic problems have
    been building for 20 years, and our country's social problems, tearing
    at the fabric of orderly life, have been developing for 30 years. And
    they are clashing against one another in place after place after place.
    And Government's irresponsibility has been there for more than a decade.
    And in this new age, a lot of what we do in Washington to help the
    economy, whether it's bringing the deficit down to get interest rates
    down so people invest and create jobs or expanding trade so we get more
    high-wage jobs, those things have an indirect effect on people, not a
    direct effect on people.
        So a lot of people's lives haven't changed. There may be more jobs,
    but most people haven't gotten a raise. There may be more jobs, but a
    lot of big companies are still downsizing and making people feel
    insecure. And a lot of the things that we have done that are good have
    an indirect effect on people. So in 1994, the people said, ``We still
    feel insecure; we still feel uncertain. We want more done. We want

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    it to happen faster.'' And they gave the Republicans a chance to control
    the Congress.
        Well, in the last 100 days, the House of Representatives has
    certainly passed a series of bold initiatives. Of the 10 items on their
    contract, they passed all but one, term limits, which they didn't really
    want to pass anyway, now that they're in control. [Laughter] And then,
    in the Senate, one has been defeated, the balanced budget amendment. Two
    items [applause]--two items I was proud to sign into law, because I also
    campaigned on them in 1992, and I'll talk about that more in a minute.
        So here we are now at the beginning of the second 100 days. Now, one
    of the things we ought to do is to reaffirm what we are as Democrats.
    Barbara Boxer did that; you cheered; that's good. Don't forget. Don't
    forget. But we also ought to say, what are we going to do in the next
    100 days and beyond? What do you want us to do in Washington, what do we
    believe we must do, and what should you be doing out here in the
    country?
        Keep in mind--keep in mind the object of this for you is to remind
    the American people that we've been up there fighting for them and that
    a lot of these items don't have much to do with their welfare. They
    won't raise their incomes; they won't educate their kids; they won't
    create any more jobs; they won't help to bring us together. That is not
    what is going on here. They basically amount to an attack on Government
    and an assertion that the private market is always better than anything
    done by Government.
        Now, that is plainly not so. But let me go through these things with
    you item by item and tell you what I'm going to do on them. And let me
    remind you that we have an unfinished agenda. We have not yet done
    everything we pledged to do in 1992. I believe what the country wants us
    to do is to get up there and try to do something that makes sense that
    helps ordinary people improve their lives. That's what I think the
    country wants us to do.
        When I ran for President, I wanted to do things to change your life
    for the better. I did not imagine that I would go there to try to make
    political points by piling up a stack of vetoes. I still don't want to
    do that, but I will if I have to. What I want to do is to do what is
    best for the country.
        Now therefore, we have to look at where we are. So let's just go
    through the items, one by one, on their agenda and on our agenda. Taxes:
    In 1993, I made a commitment to try to give some tax relief to the
    middle class. In 1993, the Congress passed our economic plan which ended
    trickle-down economics, cut the deficit, and invested more in education
    and economic growth. What happened? We made a down payment on the middle
    class tax cut. In California today, when people file their taxes, the
    average tax cut for families of four with incomes of $25,000 a year or
    less in this State will be $1,000 because of what we did in 1993. We
    concentrated on that group of people. Why? Because people with modest
    incomes who work full-time and raise children should not be in poverty.
    You want welfare reform? Make work pay. Reward people who work.
        So I do believe in this recovery. Since most people have not gotten
    a raise, we ought to have tax relief for people in the middle class so
    they can feel what is going on in the economy. But this $200 billion tax
    cut that was passed by the House is a fantasy. We can't afford it; it's
    not fair. It will be paid for by cutting programs for poor people and
    for children, and we shouldn't do it. That won't happen. So the question
    is, what will happen?
        It's also important to remind you that we have to keep bringing that
    deficit down because that gets interest rates down. That means more
    money for more people in California to expand the economy, to buy homes,
    to do the things that have to be done to put this country back together.
        So what should we do? First, we ought to target the tax cut to the
    right people. Give the tax cut to middle class people who are working
    hard and haven't gotten a raise. Don't give it to people who have done
    very well in the eighties and the nineties. Their tax bill gives half
    the aid, half, to the top 10 percent of our people and 20 percent of the
    aid to the top 1 percent. All of those folks have done real well in the
    eighties and the nineties. They do not need it. Middle class people
    whose incomes have been stagnant or declining need help. That's where
    the tax relief should go.
        Second question: What should the money be for? Should we just give
    people a check and say go blow it? No. We should target the money to
    things that will grow our economy over the long run and lift people's
    earnings in the short run and the long run. If you get a tax cut, your
    income goes up. But will your income go

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    up in the long run? It depends on what the tax cut is for. So I say,
    target the tax cut to the work that is being done in America that is
    most important. Target it to raising children and target it to
    education. Give a tax cut for the cost of education after high school to
    the American people.
        I'll say more about this in a moment, but what is giving rise to all
    this anxiety behind the affirmative action debate? Because--I'll tell
    you what it is. The middle class is splitting apart in America. The
    middle class is splitting apart. This is a big, new development. From
    the year I was born at the end of World War II until the year I was
    first elected Governor of my State in 1978, all of us as Americans rose
    together economically. The income of all groups of Americans roughly
    doubled from 1950 to 1978, except for people in the lowest group, the
    lowest 20 percent. And theirs went up even more. So we were going up
    together, and we were coming together.
        What's happened since then? We are splitting apart. Even within the
    great American middle class, we are splitting apart. Why? In a global
    economy the fault line is education. Those who have it do well; those
    who don't get punished. Give a tax break for education, so we can lift
    the country and put it back together again.
        Let's talk about welfare reform. Yesterday the Speaker said he
    passionately wanted welfare reform. Well, so do I. In 1992, I ran for
    President with a commitment to end the present welfare system as we know
    it. In 1994, they put it in their contract. What happened in between? I
    have given 25 States, half of this country, permission to pursue welfare
    reform on their own initiatives. And I gave Congress the most
    comprehensive welfare reform ever presented.
        What do I want to do? I want to promote work and responsible
    parenting and tough child support enforcement. That's what I want to
    promote. I want these young parents who made a mistake to have a chance
    to put their lives back on track. And I want these children to have a
    better future. Now, that's what's really important.
        So I take up that challenge. Let's go do welfare reform. But look
    what's in the House bill. I agree that there should be time limits, if
    there's a job at the end of the road. I agree we should let the States
    have more flexibility, because the problems are different from State to
    State. And I am gratified that the House took all of our tough child
    support enforcement provisions, including yanking driver's licenses and
    professional licenses from people who owe money for their kids and they
    won't pay.
        But I do not agree with the rest of the bill because primarily it is
    designed to save money to pay for the tax cuts by cutting aid to
    welfare. We should cut aid to welfare by genuinely, honestly reducing
    the welfare rolls by putting people to work, so they can be good parents
    and good workers. That's the way to cut the welfare budget.
        As compared with our support, theirs is weak on work and tough on
    kids. It ought to be the reverse. That's what ought to happen. Let me
    give you an example. Their bill says, no welfare if someone has a child
    before the age of 18 for the mother or the child at least until they
    become 18. If the State doesn't want to give them any money ever, that's
    fine. I just think that's wrong. Why punish the child for the sins of
    the parents?
        You know, you look across this State or Nation, a baby is a baby.
    You know, in my little Baptist Sunday school class we used to sing a
    song, ``Yellow, brown, black, or white, they are precious in His
    sight.'' In or out of wedlock, those kids are going to grow up someday.
    They're going to be in Stanford, Berkeley, or San Quentin, or someplace
    in between. You think about it. They're going to be in Stanford,
    Berkeley, San Quentin, or someplace in between. They're going to be in
    prison; they're going to be in university; they're going to be someplace
    in between. And whether they are or not is due in part to what we do and
    how we behave. Let us not punish the children and cut off our own nose
    to spite our face in this welfare reform. [Applause] Thank you.
        And as to the parents, think of this. What good does it do to punish
    somebody for a mistake they have already made? If you have a child,
    better to say to the child, ``Now things will change. You must be a
    responsible parent. You must be a student. You must be a worker. You
    must become independent. We want you to succeed as a citizen, as a
    worker, as a parent.'' So I don't have any problem at all with having
    tough requirements on children. But the tough requirements should be
    designed to give the child a chance to grow into responsible adulthood,
    to be a productive citizen. So let's be tough, but let's be smart. Let's
    do something that makes sense.

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        Senator Boxer talked about cutting the deficit. I'm glad they want
    to cut the deficit. We cut it $600 billion in the first 2 years without
    a lick of help from them, so I'd be glad to have some help.
        When we did the deficit cutting before, they were AWOL. I was told
    the first week I became President by their leader in the Senate, ``There
    will be no votes, none, for your deficit reduction package, none. We'll
    give you not one. We don't believe in imposing any tax increases on the
    wealthiest Americans, and we just want you to be out there. And if it
    succeeds, you can get credit, but we'll blame you anyway and call it a
    tax bill.'' That's the first week I was President, that's what they told
    me.
        Well, we did it anyway, because it was right for the country. We--
    [inaudible]--some political heat because it was right for the country,
    and that's why we have 6.3 million jobs today. And you ought to go out
    of this hall and remind people that that's what we did and that's what
    we're going to do in the future.
        But nonetheless, we're here where we are today, and the country
    would be better off if we could figure out a humane and smart way to
    reduce the deficit. So I say to the Republicans: Let's work on making
    sensible cuts, not partisan cuts. Let's don't do something that's really
    foolish. I don't think it helps us to cut our children. I don't want to
    cut immunizations or school lunches or infant formulas or nutrition
    programs. I can't imagine what good that will do.
        In their budget, two-thirds of the cuts come out of the poorest
    people in the country who get only 5 percent of the benefit of their
    proposed tax cuts. You don't have to be a genius to figure out what
    happens to the fabric in America and our need to give everybody a chance
    at a fair shot at the American dream. It is not fair, and it is not in
    our interest to do that. So let us not make those cuts. That is wrong,
    it is unfair, it is unnecessary.
        And let me give you an example. I want to compliment Senator Boxer
    and Senator Feinstein. We just had a big debate in Washington on the so-
    called rescission bill. Now, the rescission bill is a bill that cuts the
    present budget, the one that we adopted last year, to get savings to pay
    for our California earthquake aid and our California flood aid and to
    pay for some other investments we have to make and to reduce the deficit
    a little more. I was open to that. But the House-passed bill had
    terrible cuts in it. They cut education. They cut child nutrition. They
    cut the environment. They cut housing. They gutted the national service
    program. A lot of it was politics and ideology. It was extremist.
        I insisted on restoring some more cuts. The Senate Republicans were
    even embarrassed by some of the things they did, and they put some back
    in. And then we said, ``Put the other cuts back for the kids. Restore
    them. We'll give you some better cuts.'' And Senator Boxer and every
    Democrat in the Senate refused to let the bill come for a vote until
    they did it. They did it. It was sensible. It passed 99-0 because of
    Barbara Boxer and the other Senate Democrats, 99-0. So I can tell you
    that it would work. It would work.
        Political reform. The two bills I've signed are political reform
    bills. One applies to Congress the laws they put on the private sector;
    I'm for that. The other limits the ability of Congress to impose on
    State and local governments mandates they don't help pay for; I'm for
    that, and I'll bet your legislators are, too. But there's more to
    political reform than that. We need campaign finance reform, and we sure
    need lobby reform.
        I'll guarantee you--you heard Barbara Boxer talk about this, when
    the Congress takes out a bill that will raise $3.2 billion over 10 years
    simply by telling billionaires, ``Look, if you make a lot of money in
    our country as Americans, you can't get out of paying the tax that you
    owe on the money you made as an American by renouncing your citizenship
    before the tax bills are due.'' And it was put in, and then they took it
    out. Now believe me, that was not an act of total charity. Somebody
    lobbied for that, hard, carefully, secretly. And I think the American
    people are entitled to know. I think the American people are entitled to
    know.
        So I applaud them for what they've done, but let's go the rest of
    the way. Let's give the American people what they really need, which is
    lobby reform, campaign finance reform, and an even shot in every
    election to have the will of the people manifested.
        Let's talk about regulations. You know, they cuss regulations. Well,
    all of you can cuss regulations. I bet there's not a soul here that
    can't think of one stupid thing that was at least done to you at one
    time by the State, the Federal, or a local government. Everybody can
    tell a story that would make you believe the Govern-

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    ment would mess up a one-car parade. That's the staple of American life.
    But the answer is to fix it, not to stop Government from regulating what
    it ought to.
        We have done what we could to fix it. Let me give you an example.
    Our Environmental Protection Agency Director, Carol Browner, has set up
    a compliance center. If you're a small business person and you're
    worried, ``Am I out of compliance with the environmental laws,'' if you
    call and ask for help in good faith, you cannot be fined for 6 months,
    because we know that you're trying to do better.
        We now give our people the right to waive fines for any first-time
    violators if they're doing it in good faith. We now give our people the
    right to tell people, instead of being fined, why don't you keep this
    money if you will spend it to fix the problem that you've got in the
    first place, clean the environment.
        So we're going to cut 20 million hours of paperwork burden out of
    the American people's time next year in dealing with the EPA. That's
    fine. But if they send me a bill that lets unsafe planes fly or
    contaminated meat be sold or contaminated water get into the city water
    systems, I will veto it, because we need to do that. [Applause] Thank
    you.
        Look at this--let me give you some other examples. Look at the crime
    bill. Everybody is against crime. Anybody who is for crime, please stand
    up. [Laughter] And it's a very serious issue. It's a very serious issue.
    I never will forget when I was doing one of my town meetings in northern
    California, looking at that young man who changed schools with his
    brother because they were so terrified at the school they were in. And
    when they were standing in line to register at the new school, a crazy
    gunman walked in the school and shot his brother standing in line--
    somebody he didn't even know.
        This is a big deal. And it's part of the volatility in our country
    today. People feel if we can't even be safe, is there no discipline, is
    there no control, is there no direction in our society? This is an
    important thing.
        Well, after 6 years of political posturing, we passed the crime bill
    last year. All the law enforcement agencies in the country supported it.
    It had stronger punishments, including a ``three strikes and you're
    out'' law. It had more money for prisons if States had strong sentencing
    provisions. But it also had money for 100,000 police, for community
    policing of the kind that we have seen actually lowers the crime rate,
    because, after all, that's our objective, isn't it? We want a safer
    society. We want to lower the crime rate. And it had money for
    prevention, to give our young people something to say yes to as well as
    no to. It was a balanced, balanced bill. And it was a joy to sign.
        Now, they say they want their crime bill and they want to be even
    tougher on crime. Well, I say if they send me a bill that repeals
    100,000 police or repeals the assault weapons ban, I will veto that bill
    because that is wrong. But if they have some good ideas that will allow
    us to build on last year's crime bill to be more effective in making
    people safer, we would be wrong to turn away from it. We would be wrong
    to turn away from it.
        Crime should not be a Republican or Democratic issue. It was not a
    partisan issue last year until we got right up to the campaign and they
    saw that they could twist it around and turn it into a pork argument.
    They had been supporting the effort all along. And we should not do to
    the American people what they did to the American people to get a few
    votes in last November's election. This should not be a partisan issue.
    When somebody gets killed or robbed or raped, I don't care what their
    political party is, it is wrong. And all of us should say, ``We don't
    want this to be a political issue. We'll work with you, but don't tear
    down what we've done.''
        Let's talk about environmental protection. I've already said I want
    to ease the burden of foolish regulation. But I do not want and I will
    not tolerate the compromise of any effort to clean our water or our air
    or to clean up our toxic waste dumps. That, too, would be wrong. The
    environment cannot protect itself. It requires effort. The California
    Desert Protection Act was a good example of the effort. In implementing
    environmental protection it requires sensible compromise.
        I'm proud of the fact that previous administrations just let
    everybody fight, but we hammered out a compromise dealing with the old-
    growth timber in the Pacific Northwest. We handed out a compromise that
    we hammered out dealing with the farmers and the environmentalists over
    the use of water here in California. We've been able to work out some
    compromises dealing with the Endangered Species Act so that responsible
    developers can do their work in California. We should not be immune to
    com-

    [[Page 500]]

    promise. A lot of these acts can be implemented in a way that defies
    common sense. But we should not, we should not sit on the sidelines and
    watch the work that has been done by Republicans and Democrats together
    for 25 years to protect the environment of America, be wiped away with
    some ill-advised laws overnight.
        Let me give you one example. If that law, which was passed by the
    House, the so-called takings bill, which would require the Government to
    pay property owners billions of dollars every time we act to defend our
    natural heritage of seashores and wetlands and open spaces, were to
    pass, it would either tie our hands in the environment or bankrupt the
    budget. If that is the law in States throughout the country, what it
    means is that local Governments have to give up zoning altogether. This
    same provision has been on the ballot in 20 States and has been defeated
    every time, even in conservative Republican States. In Arizona, the bill
    the House just passed was on the ballot last November in Arizona, hardly
    a bastion of the Democratic Party, and it was defeated 60-40. Now,
    that's how extremist this legislation is. Now, the people don't have a
    vote on this bill, but I do, and I say no, it will not become the law of
    the land.
        Let me say something else that most Americans don't care much about
    today, but I want you to think about it, and that's our foreign policy.
    The House passed a so-called peacekeeping bill that would restrict the
    ability of the United States to cooperate with the United Nations in
    solving the problems of this old world. Well, the U.N. is 50 years old
    this year, and it's going to be a big celebration out here of that. But
    it's only 4 or 5 years old in terms of a real force for peacekeeping,
    because the cold war and Soviet vetoes kept it from being what it could
    have been for a long time. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Dwight
    Eisenhower and Senator Vandenberg, Republicans and Democrats alike,
    always believed the United Nations could be a force for peace and that
    the United States would be a partner in that.
        Now there are those who say that we're oppressed, we're mistreated
    in the U.N., everything's terrible, we should just walk away. Folks,
    they're wrong. They're just wrong. What we did in Haiti was a noble
    thing and a good thing. But for all of our frustrations in Bosnia, the
    United Nations troops on the ground there--none of them American--are
    risking their lives to minimize the slaughter. They're doing it; they
    don't ask us for our troops. All we do is to supply them food and
    medicine, and our ships are there, our planes are there to help them in
    case they get in trouble. It would be wrong for us not to support them
    when they are there, putting their lives on the line, trying to keep
    people alive.
        I know at a time when we have so many problems here at home it is
    easy to say let's just walk away from this. But we are a great country,
    and the world looks to us for leadership. We must not let this kind of
    thing stand.
        So these are the things that are in the contract. I will work on
    welfare reform. I will work on crime. I will work on regulatory reform.
    I will work on tax cuts. I will work on deficit reduction with the
    Republicans. But my idea of cutting spending in the Agriculture
    Department is to close 1,200 offices--that's what we did--not to cut the
    School Lunch Program.
        So I say to you, when you leave here and you see people you know who
    aren't ardent Democrats like us, say to them, ``We're not against
    deficit reduction; we're not against tax cuts; we're not against welfare
    reform. We want America to be a safer place. We want our streets and our
    schools and our own homes to be safer, but let's don't go too far. Let's
    don't be extreme. Let's remember that we've got to put the American
    people first; we've got to put the future of this country first. And
    we've gotten past the first 100 days; now, let's roll up our sleeves and
    do something that makes sense. Otherwise, we'll have to say no. Better
    to say yes to our future, but better to say no than to go to an extreme
    which we will regret for the rest of our lives.''
        Now, I also ask for your support for three other things. They are
    unfinished agenda from the New Covenant that I ran on. One is, we've got
    to do something about health care. Now, I am well aware that by the time
    the interest groups and our political adversaries got through spending
    $300 billion to tell the American people how lousy my ideas were,
    reverse plastic surgery had been performed on them. [Laughter] And I am
    well aware of the fact that the American people believe that I bit off
    more than I could chew in the bill I sent to Congress last year.
        But I also have not forgotten the fact that we got over 1 million
    letters, Hillary and I did, from people who had heartbreaking problems,

    [[Page 501]]

    that there are people every year who have to give up more and more
    coverage because of the cost of health care, that there are millions of
    people who don't have any health insurance, that we are the only wealthy
    country in the entire world where there's a smaller percentage of people
    today with health insurance than people who had it 10 years ago. Nobody
    else has this problem, only us, because we refuse to deal with it.
        So let's take it one step at a time. Let's say, you cannot lose your
    health insurance when you change jobs. Let's make the benefits portable.
    Let's say that a family ought to be able to get health insurance even if
    somebody in the family has been sick. Preexisting conditions preventing
    people from getting health insurance is wrong. Let's say that every
    State ought to have a huge pool where all small business people and
    farmers and self-employed people can buy health insurance for the same
    price as those of us who work for government or big corporations can buy
    it. And let's expand home care for the elderly and the disabled, so that
    they don't have to spend themselves into poverty and go into a nursing
    home to get any decent care. We can afford to do this.
        My fellow Americans, we can afford to do this without raising taxes
    and without expanding the deficit, while lowering the deficit. We can do
    these things. So let's ask them to do it. And let's do two more things.
    Let's ask the Republicans to start acting like Republicans used to act
    and join with us as Democrats and raise the minimum wage.
        They say they want to index tax rates to protect against inflation,
    so we did that. Now they want to index capital gains to protect against
    inflation, which mostly helps the wealthiest people. And they want to
    guard the defense budget against inflation, and I respect that. The only
    people they don't want to protect against inflation are the people that
    are getting hurt worst by it.
        You know, you cannot raise a child on $8,500 a year anymore. You
    just can't do it. And if we don't raise the minimum wage this year, next
    year the minimum wage will be at its lowest value in 40 years. Now,
    we're going around telling everybody, ``Get off welfare; go to work.''
    We're going to extol the work ethic; we're creating 6 million new jobs.
    Is your version of post-cold-war America, is your version of a high-
    technology information age one in which minimum wage workers make their
    lowest income in 40 years? Not mine. Let's raise it, and let's ask them
    to help us.
        Finally, let's ask them to reduce the deficit without cutting
    education. Let's say instead we should increase education. We should
    increase education. Do you really seriously believe that California is
    going to be stronger 10 years from now because of all the hits education
    has taken out here in the last few years?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Nobody does. Nobody does. You know, they used to
    attack us and say, ``Oh, the Democrats are indiscriminate. They just
    want to spend more money on everything.'' Well, that's not true anymore.
    We cut 300 programs. I've asked the Congress to cut 400 more or
    consolidate them. I don't want to spend more money on everything. I want
    to spend more money on the right things. They want to spend less money
    on everything. Neither extreme is right. The right thing to do is to say
    education is the fault line in the modern world; if you want the
    American dream, if you want the middle class to grow, if you want us to
    go up and down together, we had better get every last person in this
    country a decent education. And we had better not walk away from it.
        You imagine this, imagine what California would have been like when
    all these layoffs started occurring if we had had the ``GI bill'' for
    America's workers that I proposed. Take all these Federal training
    programs, put them in a block of money, and send a check to the
    unemployed worker for 2 years, say, ``Go out and get your training. Do
    not sit where you are. We will help you pay for 2 years of education for
    a lifetime.'' We're going to have to do this if we want America to grow.
    We're going to have to do it.
        Let me close with a few words on this affirmative action issue and
    know where we are as Democrats.
        Audience members. [Inaudible]
        The President. Let me speak. Don't scream; let's talk. That's just
    what they want us to do. They want to get this country into a screaming
    match. They win the screaming matches; we win the conversations.
        You already heard what Barbara Boxer said about the incomes. We know
    that. We know there's still disparity in incomes. I'm really proud of
    the fact that under my administration the African-American unemployment
    rate is

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    below 10 percent for the first time in 20 years. But there's still a big
    disparity. But there's still a disparity, right? So we know that.
        Let me tell you something else. There are still things in the human
    heart in this country that we're not totally aware of that affect our
    decisions. I'm old enough to remember that when I was still a young man
    first starting to vote, there were county courthouses on courthouse
    squares in my part of the country and in my State that still had
    restrooms marked ``white'' and ``colored,'' in my lifetime, when I was
    as old as those young people out there.
        Now, we have made great progress in the last 30 years. But we still
    don't all, any of us, understand fully what is in all of our hearts
    about all these complex issues of gender and race. Let me say something
    for all the people that are pushing for this. This is psychologically a
    difficult time for a lot of white males, the so-called angry white
    males. Why? Because those who don't have great educations and who aren't
    in jobs which are growing, even though they may have started out ahead
    of those of you who are female and of different races, most of them are
    working harder for less money than they were making 15 years ago.
        Imagine what it's like for them, just for a moment, to go home at
    night when they're my age, and they're nearly 50, and they think,
    ``Gosh, when I was 20 I thought the whole world was before me. I thought
    by the time I was 50 I'd have three or four kids, I'd be sending them
    all to college, my retirement would be secure, we'd have a good life.''
    Now they've been working for 15 years without a raise, and they think
    they could be fired at any time. And they go home to dinner, and they
    look across the table at their families, and they think they've let them
    down. They think somehow, ``What did I do wrong?''
        It's pretty easy for people like that to be told by somebody else in
    the middle of a political campaign with a hot 30-second ad, ``You didn't
    do anything wrong; they did it to you.'' But what I want you to
    understand is, that doesn't make their feelings any less real. You may
    be aggrieved. Somebody may have been discriminatory against you, but
    that doesn't make their feelings any less real, either.
        I got a letter the other day from a guy I went to grade school with.
    He was a very poor boy. He grew up and became an engineer. He worked
    over 20 years for a Fortune 500 company. They had a good year last year;
    they made a bunch of money. They laid off three of their engineers, gave
    their work to two others who were younger and less well-paid, and they
    trumpeted the fact that one of the other people was a minority. This guy
    wrote me a letter saying, ``Mr. President, I'm glad you ordered a review
    of those programs, and I'm glad you didn't abandon them.'' But he said,
    ``You have to understand what a lot of people are feeling out here is
    what I'm feeling. Three of us who are 50-year-old white males got fired.
    Now, they got rid of us because they wanted to cut their salary costs
    and cut their future health care and retirement costs. And the fact that
    we'd given over 20 years to our company didn't mean anything. There was
    no affirmative action reason they got rid of us, but it's easy for
    people like us to believe that's why it happened, because people then
    say, well, look at us, we're doing better on another front.''
        What I'm telling you, folks, is that what we have done to give more
    opportunities to women and minorities is a very good thing. And we
    should not stop doing that. But--and I'll give you three examples that I
    talk about all across the country that I'm proud of that prove that what
    we're doing is right.
        If you look at the United States military, the United States Army
    not only produced General Powell, it produced a lot of other African-
    American generals and a lot of Hispanic generals. I was with a retired
    African-American general in Dallas yesterday who is phenomenally
    successful in business now and leading the fight to preserve the
    national service movement in Texas because he sees it as giving young
    people the kind of opportunity that he got in the Army. And nobody in
    America thinks that's a bad thing.
        But they do make a special effort to make sure every time there's a
    promotion pool that it reflects the racial and gender makeup of the
    people in the rank just below. No unqualified person ever gets promoted,
    but they do really work hard to make sure that people's innate abilities
    get developed and that they're there and they get a chance. And it's
    made a difference.
        I'll give you another example. The Small Business Administration
    under my administration last year increased loans to minorities by over
    two-thirds, to women by over 80 percent, but didn't increase loans to
    white men. And we didn't

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    make a single loan to an unqualified person. We gave people who never
    had a chance before a chance to get in business. I'm proud of that. We
    didn't hurt anybody.
        Look at the appointments our administration has made to Federal
    judgeships. Look at them. We have appointed more women and minorities to
    the Federal bench than the past three Presidents, one Democrat and two
    Republicans, combined. But you know what I'm really proud of? We have by
    far the largest percentage of judges rated well-qualified by the
    American Bar Association. We did the right thing giving people a chance.
        So we have to keep working on this, but we have to realize that
    there is a real problem out there in this country. We can't deny that.
    There are a lot of people who go home every night and look across the
    table at their families and think that either they have failed or they
    have been stuck by somebody treating them unfairly. That is what we must
    respond to.
        What the people who want to use this issue out here for political
    gain hope is that we will get in a big old shouting match with them, and
    they'll have more people on their side of the shouting match than we
    will, and it'll be a wedge, and they will drive it right through the
    stake of progressive efforts in the State and in this Nation.
        And what we need here is what I've tried to do in Washington. We
    need to evaluate all these programs, we need to defend without any
    apology whatever anything we're doing that is right and decent and just
    that lifts people up, that lifts people up.
        But we do not--we do not need to say that we're insensitive to
    what's going on in these other people's lives. We do not need to say
    that we are for people who are unqualified getting Government-mandated
    benefits over people who are. And we do not need to shrink as Democrats
    when we think there has been a case, however rare, of reverse
    discrimination. We entered a lawsuit, our Justice Department did, on
    behalf of a young, white man at Southern Illinois University who was
    told he couldn't even apply for a public job because he was the wrong
    gender and the wrong race. Now, that's clearly wrong.
        So what we need to do is to say to these people--and what you ought
    to do in California--you can do it--you need to say, look, look around
    this room here. We're living in a global society. Does anybody seriously
    believe that we'd be better off if we were divided by race and gender?
    Look at this room. California, when you get through this terrible
    downturn caused by the military cutbacks, is once again going to become
    the engine of America's economy in large measure because of your
    diversity. Because of your diversity. And everything we do to empower
    people, everything we do to empower people to contribute--when you
    empower people with disabilities to work and to be self-sufficient, you
    strengthen the rest of us. When we empower Native Americans through
    letting them have more economic power, more say over their own tribal
    affairs, that helps the rest of us because more people live up to their
    God-given capacity. That's important. When we find every person we can--
    however poor, however different, wherever they are--and give them a
    chance to become what they ought to be, we're all better off.
        So we can use this occasion for a great national conversation. We
    don't have to retreat from these affirmative action programs that have
    done great things for the American people and haven't hurt other people.
    We don't. But we do have to ask ourselves, are they all working? Are
    they all fair? Has there been any kind of reverse discrimination? And
    more importantly, what we really ought to ask ourselves is, what are we
    going to do about all these folks that are out there working hard and
    never getting ahead. That's what the middle class tax cut is all about.
        What are we going to do? What are we going to do about all these
    people who are being RIF'd by these big companies and by the Federal
    Government--although our severance package is much more humane--what are
    we going to do about these people in middle age who are being told,
    ``Thank you very much for the last 25 years, but goodbye, goodbye before
    your full pension vests, goodbye 15 years before you can draw your
    pension. Goodbye to your nice health care package for yourself and your
    family. Goodbye to your future raises.'' What are we going to do for
    them?
        Use this opportunity to tell people that we have to do this
    together. I'm pleading with you, stand up for the affirmative action
    programs that are good, that work, that bring us together, but don't do
    it in a way that gives them a cheap political victory. Do it in a way
    that reaches out and brings people in and says we care about

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    you, too. Don't do it in a way that gives them a cheap political
    victory.
        Now, I want to read you something. I want to read you something, and
    then I'm done. I got a letter--I got a great little poster. I had two
    posters greeting me when I came in from my morning run, one from a local
    kindergarten and one from the Bowling Green Charter School Number 8,
    Sacramento, California. And these children had written in their little
    handprints the virtues they were being taught in school. I want you to
    listen to these. These are what we are teaching our children:
    cooperation, respect, patience, caring, sense of humor, common sense,
    friendship, responsibility, flexibility, effort, creativity, initiative,
    communication, problem-solving, integrity, perseverance.
        You know what? No place in there, this list of what we are teaching
    our children about how they ought to live, is demonize people that
    aren't like you, look for ways to divide people one from another, take a
    quick victory if you can by making people angry at one another. We do
    not practice our lives as citizens the way we teach our children to
    live, the way we try to run our families, the way we try to run our
    workplaces.
        Now, that's what I'm asking you to do. Go out of here and engage
    these people and say, ``Listen, we are moving this economy, we're moving
    on the problems of the country, we're changing the way the Government
    works, but we had better behave as citizens the way we try to teach our
    children to behave as human beings and the way we try to run the rest of
    our lives.'' You do that, and the Democrats are coming back.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:22 a.m. at the Convention Center. In his
    remarks, he referred to Don Fowler, chairman, Democratic National
    Committee; Bill Press, chairman, and Arlene Holt, first vice chair,
    California Democratic Party; Willie L. Brown, Jr., California State
    Assembly speaker; and Bill Lockyer, California State Senate president
    pro tempore.