    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 23, 1995]
    [Pages 1465-1472]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Dinner
    September 23, 1995

        Thank you very much, Congressman Jefferson, for chairing this dinner
    and for being my longtime friend. He has such a nice name: William
    Jefferson. [Laughter] One day we were on a platform together in
    Louisiana, and we both kind of got to ventilating, and he said after I
    spoke, ``It's a good thing you've got a last name or no one could tell
    us apart.'' [Laughter]
        Congressman Payne, the CBC chair; Cardiss Collins, the foundation
    chair; to all the distinguished awardees, General Powell, Congressman
    Lewis, Muhammad Ali, Congressman Ford, Renee Gaters, all very deserving;
    Ms. Gaters for your charity and your generosity over so many years; my
    longtime friend John Lewis for being a living reminder of what it means
    to live by what you say you believe; my friend Congressman Ford, who was
    working on welfare reform before the other crowd knew what it was. I
    thank you, sir.
        Of course, one of your recipients has been on the front page of
    every magazine in this country, deluged with TV and radio requests,
    written a book, and has a name and face in-

    [[Page 1466]]

    stantly recognized all around the world. I'm honored to share the
    spotlight tonight with Muhammad Ali and with General Colin Powell.
    [Applause] Thank you.
        There are many things to be said about Colin Powell's lifetime of
    service to our country and service to three Presidents on matters on
    national security, but I know he is being honored tonight in large
    measure because just a year ago this week, he played an important part
    in our successful effort to end Haiti's long night of terror. Because of
    America's leadership, backing sanctions and diplomacy with force,
    because of the courage of President Aristide and the Haitian people and
    the support they received from so many of you in this room, today Haiti
    has its best chance in generations to build a strong democracy and to
    tackle the poverty that has been a scourge to those good people for too
    long.
        In this great drama, General Powell answered my call to service. And
    along with President Carter and Senator Sam Nunn, he made sure the
    Haitian dictators understood the message of the United States that they
    had just one last chance to leave peacefully or suffer the consequences
    of being removed by military force. In no small measure because Colin
    Powell delivered that message so graphically, democracy was restored
    miraculously without the loss of a single American life or a single
    Haitian life.
        Tonight is special for all of us because it's the 25th anniversary
    of the Congressional Black Caucus, now 40-strong. I think that we should
    pay special tribute to the founding members here tonight, and especially
    to the five who are still serving: Louis Stokes, Ron Dellums, Bill Clay,
    John Conyers, and Charlie Rangel. And let me say that after watching
    that film and after watching Charlie Rangel stand up for the rights of
    poor children and elderly Americans just the other day, I feel confident
    that they've still got a lot of juice, a lot of energy, a lot of good
    ideas, and a lot to give this country.
        I don't know where our country would be today without the
    Congressional Black Caucus. I want to thank you, all of you, for
    standing up for the values we all hold dear, for freedom and for
    responsibility, for work and for family, for the idea that we are, as my
    friend the Governor of Florida said the other day, a community, not a
    crowd. A crowd is a collection of people occupying the same space,
    elbowing one another until the strongest and most powerful win without
    regard to what happens to the others. A community is a group of people
    who occupy the same space and believe they're going up or down together
    and they have responsibilities to one another. A community is a group of
    people led by people who do what's right for the long run, even if it
    defies the conventional wisdom and is unpopular in the short run. The
    Congressional Black Caucus has helped to keep America a community. Thank
    you, and God bless you all.
        I have special reasons to be grateful to the Black Caucus. When I
    became President, we had a stagnant and suffering economy. The
    Congressional Black Caucus supported an economic policy that in 2\1/2\
    years has produced 7\1/2\ million new jobs, 2\1/2\ million new
    homeowners, 2 million new small businesses, the largest number of new
    self-made millionaires in any time period in the history of the country,
    and an African-American unemployment rate back down in single digits for
    the first time since the Vietnam war. Thank you for doing that.
        Three years ago, most Americans despaired that anything could ever
    be done about crime. Acting on old values and embracing new ideas, the
    Congressional Black Caucus played an active role in shaping a crime bill
    that had people and punishment and prevention. It put more police
    officers on our streets, punished people who should be, but gave our
    people something to say yes to, some opportunities to live positive,
    good, constructive lives, and to know they were important to someone
    else. And because of that, in every State in this country and in almost
    every major urban area, the crime rate is down, the murder rate is down,
    and people believe we can make a difference. And I thank you for that.
        Because you supported the policies of this administration to advance
    peace and freedom and democracy, from the Middle East to Northern
    Ireland to Russia and the other places of the former Soviet Union, there
    are no missiles pointed at the people of the United States tonight for
    the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age. Peace is making
    progress in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland; democracy was
    restored to Haiti; we have supported South Africa, all because of people
    like you who made it possible. You have been a steadfast partner in
    standing up for America's best interests and America's best values.

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        I want to say a special word of thanks to you for the crucial role
    you have played in expanding freedom and opportunity in Africa. Today,
    two-thirds of the nations of Africa are moving toward democracy and
    market opportunities, with the help of American leadership and American
    assistance. Whether we supported historic elections in South Africa and
    Mozambique, provided dramatic humanitarian relief in Rwanda, assisted in
    the opening of stock markets in Botswana and Namibia, the United States
    has been committed to making a difference in Africa. Much remains to be
    done, fostering peace in Liberia and Angola, standing up for democracy
    in Nigeria, but with your help, America can remain a force for progress.
        And in this debate on the budget, I implore you to remind the other
    Members of the Congress that we must remain a force for democracy and
    progress, not only in Africa but throughout the world. We cannot walk
    away from people who look to us for support and encouragement.
        But this is still a difficult and unsettling time. In each area I
    mentioned, you could have said, ``I heard what you said, Mr. President,
    but--'' For example, if I had told you 30 months ago that this country
    could produce 7\1/2\ million jobs, 2\1/2\ million homeowners, 2 million
    entrepreneurs, a 4,700 stock market, the largest number of self-made
    millionaires in history, but the average wage of the person in the
    middle would go down, not up, it would have been hard to believe, but it
    happened.
        We can say all we want that the crime rate is down, the murder rate
    is down, the number of people on welfare and food stamps are down, the
    teen pregnancy rate is down, the drug use rate among people between 18
    and 34 is down. But the rate of violent crime, death, and casual drug
    use among our teenagers is still going up.
        We can say all we want about all the peace and prosperity that is
    coming to the world and how democracy is sweeping the world, but in
    every country, forces of extremism have a stronger voice than they have
    had in years. And organized groups, committed to destruction, based on
    racial or ethnic or religious or political extremism, have enormous
    capacity to do that destruction. You see it in a school bus blowing up
    in the Middle East. You see it when a fanatic breaks open a little vial
    of sarin gas in a subway in Japan. You see it in a bomb blowing up the
    Federal building in Oklahoma City. And you see it in more subtle ways,
    yes, even in America. Like when five children in an upper class suburb
    in this country write the hated word ``nigger'' in code word in their
    school album.
        What is going on here? How do we account for all the good things and
    all the bad things that are happening at the same time? I've spent a lot
    of time thinking about this, and since last November, I've had a little
    more time to think about it. I believe with all my heart when the
    history of this era is written and people look back on it, they will say
    that this was the most profound period of change in the way the American
    people live and work and relate to the rest of the world in a hundred
    years.
        One hundred years ago, most of our forebears lived out in the
    country or in little towns. Most of us farmed the land or made a living
    because other people were farming the land. Then we began to move to
    cities, and we became an industrial country. A hundred years ago, we
    were keeping to ourselves, but within 20 years we had to get into World
    War I so that the forces of freedom could win. And we began to assert
    national leadership.
        Now, we're moving away from this industrial age to an age
    characterized by information and technology, where people will soon be
    able to do most of the work they do wherever they want to live--in a
    city or in an isolated place in the mountains somewhere. We are moving
    from a cold war in which nation-states look at each other across a great
    divide but still are able to provide most of people's needs, to a global
    economy where there's a lot of integration economically but a lot of
    pressures of disintegration on ordinary working people everywhere.
        And what we have to do is to try to understand this time in which we
    live, embrace the new ideas that we need to embrace to preserve our
    vision of the future, which has to be rooted in the values for which you
    have always stood.
        Don't you want a 21st century in which America is the leading
    opportunity society: growing entrepreneurs, growing the middle class,
    shrinking the under class; where everybody has a chance to live up to
    their God-given ability; where families and communities have a chance to
    solve their own problems; where the streets are safe and the schools are
    good and we have a clean environment and a strong health care system;
    and where we're still a force for peace and freedom in the world? I
    think that's what most of us want.

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        To get it, we need new ideas. We need a devotion to our old-
    fashioned values. We need to stop looking for ways to be divided and
    instead seeking common ground and higher ground. And we've got to be
    prepared to stand up for the future, even if it's not popular in the
    present. That's what this budget debate is all about. It's really not
    about money and programs; it's about what kind of people we're going to
    be. What are we going to look like in the 21st century? What are we
    going to look like? What are our obligations to each other? If we're a
    community and not a crowd, what kind of obligations do we have to our
    parents and to our children, to those who aren't as well off as we are,
    to those who through no fault of their own are not doing so well, to
    people all around the world who look to us for leadership? What are our
    obligations?
        I agree with the leadership of the Republican majority in Congress
    that we ought to balance the budget. We never had a permanent structural
    deficit until about 12 years before I showed up. And to be fair to the
    caucus--again, this defies conventional wisdom--but the plain truth is
    that in the previous 12 years, in every year but one, the Congress
    appropriated less money than the executive branch asked for. But we
    wound up quadrupling the debt.
        Next year, if we don't do something about it, interest payments on
    the debt will be bigger than the defense budget. But we have begun, you
    and I, to do something about it because this year the budget would be in
    balance but for the interest we're paying on those 12 years. The deficit
    was $290 billion when we started; it's down to $160 billion now. And
    that's not bad, a 40 percent cut in 3 years, for the first time since
    Harry Truman was President.
        But why are we going to do this? Why should we balance the budget
    anyway? Because we believe it will take debt off our kids. Because we
    believe it will lower interest rates and free up money for the
    entrepreneurs who are here to borrow more money and put more people to
    work and make America stronger. Because we think it will fulfill our
    vision of the future. Therefore, when we do it, we have to do it in a
    way that supports that vision, otherwise there's no point in doing it in
    the first place. It is where we want to go that matters.
        So I say to you, we ought to do this. But we ought to do it in a way
    that is consistent with our values, maintaining our investments in the
    things that make us strong, keeping our commitments as a community.
    That's what we have to do.
        The proposal I put forward balances the budget but increases our
    investment in education. We will never stop the decline in learning
    until we give lifetime educational opportunities to every person in this
    country no matter what their race, no matter what their income, no
    matter what their background. We will never do it.
        We ought to secure the Medicare Trust Fund, but we can do that
    without breaking our contract with the elderly of this country. Three-
    quarters of them live on less than $24,000 a year. It's pretty hard to
    charge them several hundred dollars more a year for what they thought
    was already going to be paid for.
        Now, let me just say that a lot of the things that I believed when I
    showed up here, I thought were matters of bipartisan consensus, are
    almost nonpartisan. When a country goes through a great period of
    change, it is important that people try to join hands on those things
    that are critical to its security and its character. That's what we did
    in the cold war. I think education is an important part of our security.
    I think growing the middle class and shrinking the under class is an
    important part of our security. I think reminding us, ourselves, that in
    the global economy of the 21st century our racial diversity is our great
    meal ticket to the future if we can all figure out how to get along and
    how to lift each other up. That's a part of our security. And we ought
    to treat it that way.
        So I say, balance the budget, but don't deprive hundreds of
    thousands of young kids of a chance to get off to a good start in
    school. Don't deprive schools that happen to be poor of the chance to
    have smaller classes or computers in the classroom or high standards and
    high expectations or just the chance to be safe and drug-free. Don't
    raise the cost of going to college at a time when it's more important to
    go to college than ever before just because the people that used to make
    a lot of money out of the student loan program aren't making it anymore.
    Don't do that.
        I want to emphasize this: My goal is to see every young person in
    this country get out of high school and get at least, at least, 2 years
    of further education. That's my goal. That ought

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    to be your goal. That's what the economy tells us has to be everybody's
    goal.
        And yet today, because of the rising cost of college, enrollment is
    already dropping for poor people and, therefore, disproportionately for
    minorities. And if you don't believe it's a problem, just look at
    California. They've been through such wrenching problems that the cost
    of education has gone up almost 20 percent and enrollment has dropped 10
    percent. And when a State's in trouble, you need more people going, not
    fewer. This is a big deal, and we don't have to do it to balance the
    budget.
        I believe, as all of you know, in reforming the welfare system but
    not as a way of dividing the American people but as a way of liberating
    people who are trapped in the system. Most people in this country work.
    Most parents work. So it's not unreasonable to say most people who have
    children who happen to be on welfare should move toward work.
        But what we want in America is for every parent to be able to
    succeed at home and, if they must work, at work as well. We don't need
    to tear people down; we need to lift people up. Most people who are poor
    and on welfare would give anything in the world to be somewhere else
    doing something else. We ought to help them do it. And we ought to help
    them succeed as parents and workers.
        We say--everybody says--if you took a poll in the Congress on Monday
    morning, ``Everybody that does not believe in work, please stand up.''
    Nobody would stand. ``Everybody that believes we ought to encourage
    welfare over work, please stand up.'' Nobody would stand. But their
    budget proposal proposes to cut taxes for nearly everybody in America,
    including upper income people like me that don't ask for it and don't
    want it and sure don't need it. General Powell is about to move into
    that category--[laughter]--with his book.
        They propose that, but you know what? They want to raise taxes on
    some Americans. The 14 million working families that we lowered taxes on
    in 1993, who are working full-time, have children in the homes, barely
    have enough to get by, the Congressional Black Caucus voted to lower
    their taxes. Now this congressional proposal is to raise their taxes by
    $40 billion. This is wrong. Ronald Reagan said that the earned-income
    credit for working families was the best antipoverty program in history
    because it rewarded work. We increased it so dramatically that it was
    the biggest effort to lift the incomes of low-income working people and
    to equalize the middle class in America in 20 years. And now, while
    everybody else's taxes are being cut, those people's taxes are going to
    be raised by people who say they want to get people off welfare and into
    work. That is wrong. It violates our values. It's not about money; it's
    about families and rewarding work and standing up for what's right.
        Medicare, Medicaid--for 3 years we said that health care costs were
    growing too fast, they had to be slowed down. The Congressional Black
    Caucus, with no help from members of the other party, added 3 years to
    the life of the Medicare Trust Fund when nobody was looking and some
    were denying it was there. Now, the Medicare trustees say we need to add
    more life to it, and it costs $90 billion to $100 billion to do it. I
    offered a balanced budget plan to do it, to save the Trust Fund, and add
    a decade of life.
        Under the guise of saving the trust fund and balancing the budget,
    they propose to take 3 times that much out of Medicare and so much out
    of Medicaid that it will endanger the life of urban hospitals and rural
    hospitals, elderly people in nursing homes and getting care in their
    home, and the health care of all the poor children in the country who
    through no fault of their own are poor.
        And so I say to you, let's save the Medicare Trust Fund. Let's slow
    the rate of growth in inflation in Medicare and Medicaid. But let's
    don't pretend that we can just jerk $450 billion out of health care
    system of America without hurting anybody and that we can do it without
    absolutely ignoring our obligations to our parents and our grandparents
    and to the children of this country. It is wrong. We should not do it.
    We can balance the budget without doing it. And we should listen to
    those who tell us that.
        Let me just say one last thing about crime. Earlier this week I had
    the privilege of going to Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville, as a
    united city and county government--got some people clapping back there.
    It's a county that normally votes Republican and increasingly so. But
    they elected an African-American Democrat sheriff. Why? Because he
    promised to make his office the streets. Because he promised to put law
    enforcement officers on the streets in the neighborhood. Because he
    promised to make the safe-

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    ty of all the people in the county his first priority. And within 6
    months the crime rate had gone down 9 percent, in only 6 months. And he
    was there with me expressing his thanks to you through me for the crime
    bill and the 100,000 police officers it put on the street.
        The Attorney General was there with me. We had all the children from
    the community there. We were in a poor neighborhood. We walked the
    streets talking to these people who said nobody ever paid any attention
    to their safety before, and they were so glad to see that they could
    have law enforcement officers on the street.
        So this sheriff stood up and said, ``This is working. The crime
    rate's going down.'' The Congress should not abolish the national
    commitment to 100,000 police and say that they're going to meet it in
    some other way by cutting the money they're giving and writing a blank
    check to local governments or to the State. It'll never happen.
        Now, out there in the country, fighting crime is a bipartisan issue.
    There is no constituency anywhere in America for raising the crime rate
    with the possible exception of Washington, DC, and this debate that's
    going on over the crime bill here. That also is not necessary to balance
    the budget, and it is wrong.
        Let me just say one last thing to you about all this. Nobody knows
    how this is going to come out, so I've got a suggestion. We're in a 100-
    year period of change. You and I can no more calculate what will be
    popular next week or next month than a man in the Moon. In 1992, I
    wasn't smart enough to figure this out back then; I thought it had
    something to do with my ability. But in 1992, when I was nominated, on
    June 2, I was in third place in the polls. Six weeks later, I was in
    first place in the polls. Who could have predicted that? Nobody.
        It is idle speculation. We have to now go back in these next 2
    months and tell people with whom we disagree, Look, we want to find
    common ground. But we have to balance the budget in a way that is
    consistent with our vision. And we may have to do some things that are
    unpopular just because you think they're going to be right over the long
    run.
        You know, two-thirds of the American people thought I was wrong in
    Haiti, but I'm glad I did it. And I think history will prove us right.
        And a lot of you caucus members will have to say you lost some good
    colleagues out of the Congress because we voted for the Brady bill and
    we voted for the assault weapons ban. But you know, last year alone over
    40,000 people with criminal records were unable to get handguns. And if
    we just take a few Uzis off the streets and out of the schools and we
    have a few fewer kids being shot dead standing by bus stops, having
    their lives robbed from them, it is worth the political price. They
    said, ``Don't you do it,'' but it was worth it. We did the right thing.
    We did the right thing.
        A few weeks ago we were trying to decide how to handle the studies
    of the FDA on teenage smoking. And every political adviser I had in and
    out of the White House said, ``You can do this if you want to, but it's
    terrible politics, because the tobacco companies will get you. And
    they'll terrify all those good country tobacco farmers that are good,
    decent people. They work hard, but they can be scared to death. And then
    they'll wipe out--they'll vote against anybody in your party. And all
    the Americans that agree with you will find some other reason to vote
    against you, but they will stay against you. So don't you be the first
    person in office to take them on. You were already the first person in
    office to take the NRA on; don't do that.''
        But the research showed that for 30 years some of those folks were
    aware of the danger of tobacco. And the evidence showed that there is
    still targeted efforts to advertise to teenagers, even though it's
    illegal for children to smoke in every State in the country. And most
    important of all, the evidence showed that 3,000 young people a day
    start to smoke, and 1,000 of them will end their lives early. And if it
    saves a thousand lives a day for longer, fuller, better lives, then who
    cares what the consequences are? Twenty years from now in the 21st
    century, people will say they did what was right. And that is exactly
    what we ought to do on every single issue.
        Finally, I thank Bill Jefferson for what he said about affirmative
    action. We reviewed every one of those programs. We looked at them all.
    I argued it nine ways from Sunday. It was obvious that the politics was
    one place and the merits were somewhere else. It's obvious that a lot of
    people in our country feel anxiety-ridden about the economy. And the
    easy answer is, ``There's nothing wrong with you; you don't have to
    change in this time of change; we just need

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    to get rid of the Government; and they're spending all their money on
    affirmative action, welfare,'' you know, whatever that list is.
        That was the easy answer, but it's the wrong answer, not because all
    those programs are perfect, not because they don't need to be changed
    but because in the heart of America we still, we still, are not able to
    make all of our decisions without regard to race or gender. We ought to
    be able to. I pray to God someday we will. But you know it, and I know
    it; we still need to make a conscious effort to make sure that we get
    the most of every American's ability and we give every American a fair
    shot. That's what this is all about.
        And I will say again, if it were not for our racial diversity, we
    wouldn't be as well positioned as we are for the 21st century. I know
    that it makes a difference in the administration that we have people
    like Ron Brown and Lee Brown and Jesse Brown and Hazel O'Leary. And I'll
    tell you something else, Mike Espy was the best Agriculture Secretary in
    25 years. It makes a difference that we have people like Deval Patrick
    and Rodney Slater and Jim Joseph, who's going to be the Ambassador to
    South Africa. That makes a difference to how America works. Alexis
    Herman and Bob Nash and Maggie Williams and others make a difference in
    the White House. It makes a difference.
        I was so attacked by the conventional wisdom for being committed to
    diversity. But after nearly 3 years, we're appointing Federal judges at
    a more rapid rate than the previous administration. We have appointed
    more African-Americans than the last three administrations combined. And
    according to the American Bar Association, they have the highest
    qualified ratings in the last 20 years. So I don't want to hear that you
    can't have excellence and equal opportunity at the same time. You can,
    we must, and we will.
        Let me say that there is a lot of talk about personal
    responsibility. What we have to do is practice it. There's a lot of talk
    about valuing family and work and community. What we have to do is value
    them.
        Let me close by talking about one particular American citizen that I
    think would be a pretty good role model for the President, the Speaker,
    the Senate majority leader, the Congressional Black Caucus, and
    everybody else that's going to be making decisions about America's
    future in the next 60 days. I got permission from my wonderful wife
    tonight to have a date with another woman to the Congressional Black
    Caucus. Her name is Oseola McCarty.
        At the young age of 87, she is a stellar example of what it means to
    live a life of dignity, service, values, and personal responsibility.
    Before today she had never been to Washington. She had never flown on an
    airplane, and when I invited her to do it, she said she'd like to come
    see me, but not if she had to get on an airplane. [Laughter] So Oseola
    has come all the way from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, by train.
        You may have read about her in the last few weeks. A lot of people
    talk about the dignity of work, but from the time before she was a
    teenager, she worked all her life washing clothes for people. She
    started out charging $1.50 to $2 a bundle. She lived modestly and was
    able to accumulate savings over the years. In fact, while she earned
    what by any stretch of the imagination was a very meager income, she
    saved such an enormous percentage of what she earned, and she and her
    local banker invested it so well that she amassed a sizable sum. Last
    month, after a lifetime of work, this woman, who did that job for
    decades and decades and decades quietly and with dignity and with
    excellence, donated $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi
    for scholarships for African-American students.
        When people ask her why in the world she did this, she said, ``I
    just want the scholarship to go to some child who needs it, to whoever's
    not able to help their children. I'm too old to get an education, but
    they can.'' Well, the University has already given $1,000 scholarship in
    her name to an 18-year-old graduate of Hattiesburg High School named
    Stephanie Bullock. Someday Stephanie Bullock may be a lawyer, a doctor,
    perhaps a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, because of Oseola
    McCarty.
        Our country needs more people like her, people who don't just talk
    about responsibility and community but who live those values. I'm proud
    that she's my guest tonight. Before we came over, I brought her into the
    Oval Office and awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal for her
    extraordinary act of generosity. I'd like to ask her to come up here so
    you can all get a good look at her. [Applause]
        I want to make you a promise, and I want to issue a challenge. My
    promise to you is that

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    in the next few weeks when we make decisions that will shape the future
    of our great country into the 21st century, I'll try to keep her example
    in mind. And my challenge is that everyone else do the same. If we do,
    this great country is going to do just fine.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:24 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the
    Washington Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to former
    boxing champion Muhammad Ali and civil rights attorney Renee Gaters.