    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 27, 1995]
    [Pages 1502-1506]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1502]]

    Remarks to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute
    September 27, 1995

        Thank you all. Please be seated. It is wonderful to be here,
    wonderful to be back. I thank Congressman and Mrs. Pastor for coming out
    here with me, and I thank Ed for that fine introduction. To your
    mistress of ceremonies, Giselle Fernandez; members of the Congressional
    Hispanic Caucus; the Institute Board; your executive director, Rita
    Elizondo; and Secretary Cisneros and Mary Alice; Secretary Pena and
    Ellen; Secretary Riley and Tunky; Attorney General Reno; and all your
    honored guests: I thank you for inviting me to come again this year.
        For 18 years you have held this event, and it's become a part of our
    Nation's important Hispanic Heritage Month. I have been here for 3 years
    running, and during these 3 years my daughter has been studying Spanish.
    So I hope you'll keep inviting me back; it's getting a little better
    each year. How's this? Y me gusta hablar Espanol. Is that okay?
    [Applause]
        I was thinking tonight coming over here--it's not in my prepared
    remarks, but I was thinking of two connected events that shape what I
    wish to say to you tonight. The first was the honor I had to be a part
    of the premiere here a few months ago of that wonderful movie ``Mi
    Familia.'' And the second was the experience I had just today to be with
    the Governor of the State of Oklahoma and Mrs. Keating, and the Mayor of
    Oklahoma City and Mrs. Norick, and a group from Oklahoma as they came
    here on their national tour, thanking all the volunteer workers who went
    to Oklahoma City in the aftermath of the horrible bombing of the Federal
    building. And what I thought and said there was that in that moment we
    all became a family, the whole country.
        In Florida last week, Governor Lawton Chiles said that the central
    question of our time was whether we were going to be a community or a
    crowd. The Hispanic community in America has always been a community,
    always tried to live by family values, not just talk about them. Now, a
    crowd is a group that occupies the same piece of land but really has no
    particular connection to one another. And so they elbow and shove and go
    to and fro until the strongest win and others are left behind. A
    community is a group of people who occupy the same piece of land and
    recognize their obligations to one another, people who believe they're
    going up or down together, people who believe they should help protect
    children and do honor to the elderly and help people make the most of
    their own lives, people who believe in freedom and responsibility,
    people who believe that we have an obligation to find common ground and
    sometimes to do the right thing because it's right, even if it's
    unpopular in the short run.
        And in this period of change, as we move out of an industrial to an
    information society, out of the cold war into the global economy, that
    is what we need more than ever before, the values of your family and
    your community and your work.
        The work of the Hispanic Caucus has never been more important than
    it is today, because you have stood for the values that are the very
    heart of the Latino culture and the very best of America. Some seek to
    divide us by spreading fear and laying blame. But the Hispanic Caucus
    has always sought to unite us all in America. I have counted on your
    support, literally from everything from A to Z, from affirmative action
    to zero tolerance gun policies in our schools.
        The Hispanic Caucus has been my partner in 3 years of hard-won
    progress. When I became President, we had a stagnant and suffering
    economy. When I proposed a remedy to drive down this terrible deficit
    and increase investment in our people and in our economy and in our
    future, the naysayers who turned away said it would wreck the economy.
    But with the help of the Hispanic Caucus we passed an economic policy,
    and after 3 years, they were wrong and we were right.
        We have 7.3 million new jobs, 2\1/2\ million new homeowners.
    Secretary Cisneros has a plan that will take home ownership above two-
    thirds of the American people by the year 2000 for the first time in
    American history. We have the largest number of new small businesses
    incorporated in any 2\1/2\-year period in American history, about 2
    million. We have the largest number of new self-made millionaires in any
    2\1/2\-year period in American history, and we have

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    the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in nearly three
    decades.
        The Hispanic Caucus helped this administration to tackle the problem
    of crime. When I showed up here, for 6 years Washington rhetoric had
    paralyzed the crime bill while everybody made speeches about it. We
    broke through that rhetoric and the partisan discord and passed a crime
    bill at a time when most Americans believed that nothing, nothing, could
    really be done about the crime problem. Our crime bill put more police
    officers on our street. It did punish serious criminals more, but it
    also gave our young people something to say yes to. And in every State
    in the country now, in virtually every urban area, the crime rate is
    down, the murder rate is down.
        I was in Jacksonville, Florida, last week, and I saw that for the
    first time, people really believed that crime could go down in their
    neighborhoods, as they saw these police officers that we have put on the
    street. Again, we did it in the face of intense partisan opposition, but
    you were right, and I thank you. And America is a safer place tonight
    because of the leadership of the Hispanic Caucus.
        Last year at the Summit of the Americas, we saw what a vital role
    Hispanic-Americans can play as we expand trade with all of Latin
    America, through NAFTA and the free trade area we agreed on by the year
    2005. When Mexico got in trouble, so many of you stood by my side in
    what had the least popular support of anything I think I've done since
    I've been President.
        But think what would have happened if we had not gone to Mexico's
    aid. Look what was happening in Mexico. Look what was happening in
    Argentina. Look what was happening in Brazil. Look what would have
    happened in terms of illegal immigration, in terms of political discord,
    in terms of economic dislocation. Maybe those of you who stood with me
    were part of only 15 percent approval of the policy at the time, but
    when the President of Mexico gets here in the next week or in the next
    couple of weeks for his state visit, we will see a Mexico coming back in
    the right direction, moving toward constructive partnership with the
    United States, with a future that we can be hopeful about, instead of
    one we can rue, because of you and your leadership. And I thank you for
    that.
        I also thank you for your support for our policies designed to
    improve the security and prosperity and advance the values of the
    American people around the world. It is no longer possible in this
    global society to talk about domestic and foreign policy; they're all
    blurred. And I thank you for your support in policies that have led us
    to the point where I can say that for the first time since the dawn of
    the nuclear age there are now no foreign missiles pointed at the people
    of the United States of America.
        I thank you for our efforts to make peace in Haiti and Northern
    Ireland and for the celebration we will have tomorrow on the next step
    on the road to peace in the Middle East. I thank you for the work we
    have done to bring a genuine peace in Bosnia. And one of your members,
    of course, I must thank specifically, because through his combination of
    energy and imagination, heart and diplomacy, he has helped time and time
    again to make the world a safer place, Congressman Bill Richardson.
    Thank you.
        On Friday, I will have the honor of acknowledging the work of
    another great American when I present the family of Willie Velasquez
    with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in
    the land. I wish he could be here tonight to see how much he has helped
    citizenship to bloom among Hispanic-Americans throughout this country.
        I also want to say a special word of thanks to the Hispanic-
    Americans who have helped to enrich the work of our administration.
    Beginning with Henry Cisneros and Federico Pena and the Latinos who have
    been appointed to the Federal District and Circuit Court of Appeals,
    those who occupy senior levels in Government in both categories,
    considerably more than any previous administration. You have proved, as
    I said in my speech on affirmative action, that excellence and diversity
    can go hand in hand; they must go hand in hand. And if they do, that is
    our ticket to a very, very bright future.
        I thank those from my administration who are here tonight, including
    Gil Casellas, Norma Cantu, Maria Echaveste, Nelson Diaz, George Munoz,
    Aida Alvarez, Fernando Torres-Gil, Katherine Archuleta, Jack Otero; the
    people from the White House who have been wonderful to be part of my
    family, Janet Murguia, Suzanna Valdez, Carolyn Curiel, Ray Martinez,
    Alfred Ramirez, Liz Montoya, and Grace Garcia, my advance person who got
    me in here tonight.

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    I couldn't get around without her anymore. I thank her. I also want to
    thank someone who recently left the White House, Isabelle Rodriguez
    Tapia, who was the Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of
    Advance for both the First Lady and for me. All of these people and so
    many others are a part of what America is in its Government. And this is
    terribly important.
        As we look at this balanced budget, I ask you to think about the
    people, the values, the vision you have for the future. It's really
    about values. Should we balance the budget? Of course, we should. Of
    course, we should. We never had a permanent deficit, never, until the 12
    years before I come to Washington. We never had one before. And lest
    anyone blame any one party or the other, I would remind you that in 11
    of those 12 years, the Congress appropriated less money, not more, than
    the President asked for. This was not a partisan thing, but Presidents
    have a responsibility to lead. And thanks to the efforts of many of you
    here, we reduced our Government deficit from $290 billion to $160
    billion, a 40 percent reduction in 3 years, the first time since
    President Truman that had been done.
        So, should we balance the budget? Of course, we should. Otherwise we
    will spend more and more of your money on paying interest on the debt,
    and we'll have less to spend on the things that make us strong and good
    and give us a better future. Otherwise we will take too much money at
    interest rates that are too high away from the business community in
    America that needs to borrow that money to generate jobs in the private
    sector, which is where we're trying to grow our future.
        But the question is, how should we do this, and don't we have to do
    it in a way that is consistent with our most fundamental values, with
    work and family, with responsibility, with our obligations to the
    elderly and to our children, with our obligations to help those who
    cannot help themselves through no fault of their own, and perhaps to
    stop helping those who can help themselves just as well without it? What
    are we going to do? How are we going to do this?
        Let me just offer a few observations. I don't think it is consistent
    with our values to balance the budget by reducing the number of college
    scholarships and more affordable college loans or by depriving hundreds
    of thousands of little children who happen to be poor the chance to get
    off to a good start in school or by depriving schools of the chance to
    have smaller classes and computers in the classroom and meet the higher
    standards that we're holding out for them, just because the districts
    happen to be poor.
        Why are we trying to balance the budget to strengthen America's
    future? We cannot strengthen America's future in a global economy, where
    what we earn depends on what we can learn, by weakening our commitment
    to education at the moment we should be strengthening that commitment to
    education. And let me say this as an aside: neither should we use the
    balanced budget as an excuse just to go after things that we do not like
    and cannot find a more open way to deal with.
        And I want to just say a word in that context about bilingual
    education. Of course, English is the language of the United States. Of
    course, it is. That is not the issue. The issue is whether children who
    come here, while they are learning English, should also be able to learn
    other things. The issue is whether American citizens who work hard and
    pay taxes and are older and haven't mastered English yet should be able
    to vote like other citizens. The issue, in short, is not whether English
    is our language; it is. The issue is whether or not we're going to value
    the culture, the traditions of everybody and also recognize that we have
    a solemn obligation every day in every way to let these children live up
    to the fullest of their God-given capacities. That's what this is about.
        Look at the balanced budget on the tax issue. Can we afford to
    reduce taxes and balance the budget? I believe we can. But we should do
    it consistent with our values. We should not cut taxes more than we can
    afford to do and provide our other obligations and meet them. And we
    should focus tax relief on the most important and most stressed things
    in our society, the need that middle class families have to get help
    with raising their children and to get help with financing the cost of
    education after high school. That's what we ought to do.
         And the last thing we ought to do is what is now proposed,
    unbelievably, by the congressional majority. They want to raise the
    family tax credit by $40 billion. One of the most important things we
    did in 1993 with our economic proposal was to give over 14 million
    working families who lived on modest incomes a reduc-

    [[Page 1505]]

    tion in their income taxes to send out two very important messages:
    Number one, this country should never favor welfare over work. And
    number two, if someone is working 40 hours a week and they have children
    in their home, they should not live in poverty because of a tax system.
    We must not reverse that. How in the world--how in the world anyone
    could justify cutting the taxes of someone in my income group and
    raising the taxes on working mothers with children who have an income of
    $11,500 a year is beyond me. It is wrong, and we must stop it. We must
    not permit it to be done.
        And let me say this: There's a lot of budget balancing to be done in
    the name of welfare reform. This administration has given 35 States the
    right to get out from under various Federal rules and regulations, to do
    more to move people from welfare to work. But what is our objective with
    welfare reform? It is to see people who are poor who may have made some
    mistakes in their lives have the chance to live good, strong, pro-work,
    pro-family lives. Our objective is to look at the reality of America
    where most parents work and most parents have to work and to say what we
    want is for everybody who can work to work, but we also want people to
    succeed as parents, for that is still our most important job.
        And we must do both those things with welfare reform. Therefore, I
    say to you, it's all right to be very tough in child support
    enforcement. The Congress has adopted my provisions because there aren't
    any that are tougher. It is all right to be strong in saying you must,
    if you can, be in school or be in a training program or take a job when
    it is offered. And it is good that the Congress seems to be willing now
    to give some funds for child support so that you don't have to neglect
    your children if you go to work and you're poor. But it is wrong to use
    this as an excuse to punish people just because they're poor or they
    made a mistake or they happen to be children who, through no fault of
    their own, are in the family they're in.
        Democratic, Republican Governors, the Catholic Church, they've all
    helped us to try to take some of these extreme provisions out of the
    welfare reform debate. And I say we have to keep them out. And let's
    remember, what we want is for people to be able to work and raise their
    children with dignity in this country. That is the purpose of welfare
    reform.
        Finally, let me just give you one last example. There's a lot of
    talk about Medicare and Medicaid. We have to slow the rate of inflation
    in those programs. If we don't, they will soon be taking virtually all
    the discretionary money of the Government. We won't have money to invest
    in education or Secretary Pena's infrastructure programs that can put
    people back to work and rebuild communities. So we do have to do that.
        It is true that the Medicare Trust Fund needs help. But the trustees
    that are so often cited by the congressional majority say that it costs
    $90 billion to fix the Medicare Trust Fund for more than a decade. That
    money comes from slowing the reimbursement rates to medical providers.
    Their proposal to double the premiums, double the deductibles, stop
    giving Medicare to anybody under 67 years old, to raise 3 times as much
    as it takes to bail out the Trust Fund has nothing to do with saving
    Medicare; it has everything to do with funding their budget priorities.
        My priorities say, we owe it to the elderly not to do that to them.
    Most of them have very limited incomes. The average senior lady in the
    country, a woman over 65 living alone, is living on less than $9,000 a
    year average. In many States, 75 percent of those folks are living on
    less than $7,500 a year. They cannot afford to have their premiums and
    deductibles doubled. It is wrong. It is not necessary. And we should not
    do it.
        And finally, let me say just a word about the Medicaid program. It's
    not popular to stand up for poor children anymore, but the Medicaid
    program, two-thirds of that money in Medicaid goes to the elderly and
    the disabled Americans of this country. It pays for their nursing home
    care, for in-home care to avoid the costs of going to nursing homes, and
    for hospital care. About a third of the money goes to the poor children
    of America to pay for their medical bills. And a lot of that money goes
    to hospitals in big cities and isolated rural areas.
        And if you take a third of that money away over the next 7 years, 3
    times as much as I have recommended in my balanced budget plan, there is
    no way you will not do grievous harm to the elderly, the disabled, and
    the poorest, most vulnerable children in America. And to all those who
    say, ``Well, I'd rather have mine now; I don't care about them,'' just
    remember, those children will be, will be, the adults of

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    the future. And we--those in my age group--will be depending on those
    kids to take care of us when we are retired. We are a family. We better
    act like a family. We cannot afford to do these things that violate our
    family values.
        Lastly, let me say how very proud I am that the Hispanic Caucus
    mirrors these values every day in their work. And let me encourage all
    of you who may be discouraged by what I have just said--and I left a lot
    of things out. They also have proposed, for example, that if an elderly
    couple has one of--the husband or the wife needs to go into the nursing
    home, they've proposed letting States require the one that's not in a
    nursing home to have to sell their house, their car, and clean out their
    bank accounts before the one who's in the nursing home can get any kind
    of help. I don't think that's right, either.
        My idea of the America of the 21st century is a high-opportunity
    country where everybody has a chance to live up to the fullest of their
    ability. I do not want my child to get ahead by driving elderly people
    into poverty. That is not my idea of family values. That is not the
    right thing to do.
        Now, I want to ask all of you, without regard to your political
    party or where you live or what your income is, in these next few weeks
    to urge the Congress to live by the values of Hispanic America, to
    decide by the values of Hispanic America, to lift up work and family, to
    work for more freedom and responsibility, to remember our obligations to
    our children and to our parents, and to remember the future belongs to
    the United States if we can just remember that we're a community, not a
    crowd.
        Look at America and imagine what the world's going to be like in 20
    or 25 years, the global economy, people moving around, technology,
    ideas, information moving around. There is no country in this world as
    well-suited to seize the 21st century as the United States, if we will
    just remember how we got to where we are: by being a community, not a
    crowd.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:50 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to Giselle Fernandez, NBC News
    correspondent, and the late Willie Velasquez, founder, Southwest Voter
    Registration Education Project.