    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [October 17, 1995]
    [Pages 1616-1625]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Dinner in Houston, Texas
    October 17, 1995

        Well, Secretary Bentsen, that was such a wonderful introduction, I
    almost forgive you for leaving. [Laughter] The operative word is
    ``almost.'' I thank Lloyd and B.A. for their friendship and the gifts
    they've given our country. And I tell you that when the history of the
    last 50 years of the 20th century is written in the United States, the
    work that Lloyd Bentsen did to not only help to get hold of this
    terrible out-of-control deficit but to do it in a way that would permit
    us to invest in our people and our future and to connect the United
    States to the rest of the world through NAFTA, through the GATT world
    trade agreement, and in so many other ways will mark him as one of the
    greatest Secretaries of the Treasury in the history of the United States
    of America.
        I want to thank two other Texans who are here who made immeasurable
    contributions to our administration: the Secretary of Housing and Urban
    Development, Henry Cisneros. If you ask anybody who has followed the
    work of that Department in the few decades that it has existed, they
    will tell you that without question he is the best Secretary of Housing
    and Urban Development ever to serve in that position. And we're very
    proud of him. And my good friend Bill White, who just came home to
    Houston after being Deputy Secretary of Energy, thank you, sir. I will
    say again that between Bill White and Hazel O'Leary and Ron Brown, the
    Secretary of Commerce, they did more to further the energy interest of
    the United States and to create jobs in the United States by getting
    investment abroad than any previous administration has ever done. Thank
    you, sir, for what you did in that, and I appreciate that very much.
        My heart is full of gratitude tonight and so many wonderful things
    have been said that if I had any sense I'd just sit down. [Laughter] I'm
    afraid if I talk on now I'll disqualify myself for reelection. But I'm
    going to talk anyway. [Laughter]
        I want to thank the statewide chairs of these galas we've had. I
    have had 2 wonderful days in Texas. I thank Arthur Schecter, who made a
    wonderful statement earlier, and Joyce; Lee and Sandra Godfrey and Stan
    McClellan; Lou Congillan; Sheldon and Sunny Smith; and George Bristol
    and Frank and Debbie Branson, who did such a wonderful job for us in
    Dallas yesterday. Thank you very much. Thank you, all of you.
        My good friend of nearly 25 years, who is only a year younger than
    me and looks 15 years younger than me--I resent it bitterly, but I still
    love Garry Mauro. Thank you, my friend, and Judith, his wife.
        I'm really glad to see Ann Richards and Mark White here. I used to
    be a Governor, you know, back when I had a real life. And we served
    together, and we enjoyed it immensely.
        I appreciate Attorney General Morales and former Attorney General
    Mattox being here. I told somebody the other day--he said, ``What's the
    best job you ever had?'' And I said, ``I was attorney general; that was
    the best job I ever had.'' And they said, ``Why?'' And I said, ``Well, I
    didn't have to hire or fire or appoint or disappoint, raise taxes or cut
    spending. And every time I did something unpopular, I blamed it on the
    Constitution.'' [Laughter] So, remember that.

    [[Page 1617]]

        I want to say a special word of thanks to Congresswoman Sheila
    Jackson Lee and Congressman Jim Chapman for their work for our country
    and for your State in the Congress. And let me say a great word of
    thanks, too, to Bob Bullock for what he said and for the private things
    that he has said to me in the last 2 days. It's been a great inspiration
    to me. And I was sitting there thinking that I could play that talk he
    was giving in several States, and it would help us. I wish I could
    patent it and send it around like that Ozark water you talked about.
    [Laughter]
        And finally, let me say a special word of thanks, too, to Mayor Bob
    Lanier and his wife, Elise. We came in and we got out of the car--I
    spend a lot of time with a lot of mayors and I have many, many very
    close friends who are mayors, but I'm not sure there is any mayor in
    America who has the particular combination of compassion and intellect
    and old-fashioned practical insight. It's really quite ingenious, you
    know, to not just talk about problems but to actually do something about
    them. And in so many ways, Bob Lanier has done that. And I guess that's
    why he got 91 percent last time. He has promised that if you beat it
    this time, that he will give me a few that he has to spare in '96.
    [Laughter] So I hope that you will do that.
        I want to thank Reverend Caldwell for praying over us tonight and
    for his mission and his ministry and for bringing his wonderful wife,
    who is a native of my State. His mother-in-law was a supporter and a
    woman I got to know, a remarkable woman. I'm delighted to see you here,
    sir. Thank you both for coming.
        I'd like to thank Terry McAuliffe and Laura Hartigan and Meredith
    Jones, our Texas finance director, for the work they did and all those
    who helped them for this fine night. I thank you.
        I also want to say a word on behalf of two people who are not here
    tonight. The Vice President had meant to come with me when we were going
    to do this last night, but I--thanks to the sponsors here in Houston, we
    were able to defer this until this evening so that I could go out to
    California last night and participate in a national benefit for the
    Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention, something that is very
    important to me because I've dealt with both those issues in my family
    and because our administration is committed to making progress on that.
    And I thank you for your indulgence, but that kept the Vice President
    from coming.
        I just want to say that even my severest detractors, when our
    administration's history is written, will say that Al Gore was the most
    influential Vice President in 219 years of the American Republic. And I
    thank him for his work on the environment, on reinventing Government, on
    technology, on helping us with Russia. But most of all, I thank him just
    for being there.
        When we work together, I wonder what all of those other Presidents
    did and why they didn't do more with this incredibly flexible office.
    The only thing the Vice President really has to do is to sort of show up
    in the Senate when there is a tie vote and hang around waiting for
    something to happen to me. [Laughter] Every day I think about that, I do
    a few more sit-ups and--[laughter]--you know, do what I can to avoid
    that. So you know, you've got a fellow with a high IQ and a reasonable
    amount of energy, it seems like a shame just to let him hang around.
    [Laughter] And I really think he's done a magnificent job. I'm so proud
    of him, and we have a genuine partnership.
        I'd also like to say that I know that the First Lady would like to
    be here with us tonight, but as some of you doubtless know, she has been
    on a very, very successful trip to Latin America. She went to Nicaragua,
    to Chile, to Brazil, and to Paraguay. And since the people of Texas
    understand better than any other people in the United States how
    important our partnership with Latin America is, I hope you will excuse
    her absence.
        I've been trying to think of what I ought to talk about tonight. You
    saw a movie about the accomplishments of the administration, and then
    Secretary Bentsen was kind enough to get up and talk about it, and
    others did. What I'd like to do is to give you some arguments for the
    next year. I've heard all this talk about how the Democratic Party is
    dead because we don't have any new ideas or we're too liberal or we're
    slaves to Government. And I have concluded that since they keep winning
    elections with those arguments, we're better at doing and they're better
    at talking. So I want to give you some talking tonight, if I could.
        I have learned a few things about the limits of liberalism. I heard
    a story the other day--my senior Senator, Dale Bumpers, called me

    [[Page 1618]]

    and told me a story I want to share with you about the limits of
    liberalism, involving Huey Long, the famous populist Governor and
    Senator of Kentucky. One day, you know, when we were in the middle of
    the Depression and we had--I mean, Louisiana. [Laughter] I've got a
    Kentucky story I wanted to tell, but I decided, upon reflection, I
    shouldn't tell it. So my conscience is clicking in on me.
        Anyway, when--do you remember Huey Long? Those of you who are old
    enough to remember when he was Governor and then later Senator, he
    campaigned around the State and then around the country on this ``share
    the wealth'' platform. He came up north to Arkansas, actually, and
    helped a woman named Hattie Caraway get elected to the Senate. The first
    woman in American history ever elected to the Senate in her own right
    was Hattie Caraway from Arkansas. And the only time anybody ever came
    into our State as an outsider and helped anybody win an election was
    Huey Long. He was a great politician. And unemployment was 25 percent in
    America, and the per capita income of Arkansas, Louisiana, and
    Mississippi was only about half the national average. So you could say
    whatever you want to about sharing the wealth, and you had a pretty
    willing audience.
        And he was out on a country crossroads one day, talking about how we
    ought to share the wealth. And there were all these farmers standing
    around. He saw this old boy in overalls, and he said, ``Farmer Jones,''
    he said, ``let me ask you something.'' He said, ``Now, if you had three
    Cadillacs, wouldn't you give us one so we could go around here on these
    country roads and pick up these kids and take them to school during the
    week and take them to church on Sunday?'' He said, ``Of course, I
    would.'' He said, ``If you had $3 million, wouldn't you give us a
    million dollars so we could put a roof over every family's head and give
    them a good meal at night and breakfast in the morning?'' He said, ``You
    bet I would.'' He said, ``If you had three hogs--'' And he said, ``Now,
    wait a minute, Governor, I've got three hogs.'' [Laughter] So the
    Democrats, to be fair, have learned a few things about the limits of
    liberalism. [Laughter]
        Here's what I think is going on. This is a time of extraordinary
    change but very great promise for this country. We're moving from an
    industrial age to an information and a technology age. We're moving out
    of the cold-war era into a global village, where we're all closer
    together than ever before and where there are vast new opportunities for
    cooperation existing alongside the new security threats of terrorism,
    biological and chemical warfare, organized crime, and global drug
    trafficking. What we have to do is to harness all this change to make
    America a better place.
        I ran for President with a clear mission in my own mind to try to
    take good care of this country to achieve two objectives in the 21st
    century. One was to make sure that the American dream was alive and well
    for all people without regard to their race, their income, or their
    region. And the second was to make sure that America continued to be the
    strongest country in the world, so that someone could lead the world
    after the cold war toward greater freedom and greater democracy and
    greater security and greater prosperity. That's what I wanted to do.
        I said at the time that I thought we would have to move beyond the
    old political debate that parties had been having for many years toward
    what I called a new democratic philosophy. And I'd just like to go over
    what those elements were that I told you I would try to bring to the
    Presidency.
        I said I thought our economic policy ought to be based on growth,
    not dividing the pie but growing the economy more; that we ought to do
    whatever it took to maintain our world leadership but that we couldn't
    be involved in everybody's problem everywhere; that we needed a new form
    of Government that would be smaller and less bureaucratic, would be more
    entrepreneurial, would give more responsibility to State and local
    governments and to the private sector, would embrace all kinds of new
    ideas, but would still fulfill our fundamental obligations that can only
    be done by the National Government; and that all of this ought to be
    done based on a reassertion of old-fashioned, mainstream values that I
    think got lost over the last 10 or 20 years, that we needed both
    responsibility and opportunity in our country, that people had to be
    able to succeed both at work and in their family lives, that we had to
    have both growth and fairness in our country, and that in the end we had
    to decide, as Mayor Lanier said, to be a community. We had to decide
    that we had certain obligations to one

    [[Page 1619]]

    another. That's what people in a community feel.
        If we have no obligations to one another, then we're not a
    community, we're just a crowd. We occupy the same piece of land, but
    we're just going to elbow each other until whoever is strongest winds up
    at the front of the line. And we never will turn over our shoulder to
    see what happened to the others. Being a community means you have
    obligations to our parents, to our children, to those who need help
    through no fault of their own. It also means that we revel in and
    cherish and build up our diversity, we don't use it as a cheap political
    trick to divide the American people. That's what it means.
        Now, what I want to say to you tonight is that I believe I've been
    faithful to that and I believe this country is moving in the right
    direction, thanks mostly to the American people. But I believe that our
    administration has made its contributions.
        You heard what was said about the economy, about the growth of the
    economy. The misery index that the other party used to talk about so
    much, the combined rates of unemployment and inflation, you never hear
    them mention it anymore because it's at the lowest level it's been in 25
    years.
        And beyond the new jobs, I'm really proud of the fact that we've had
    the largest number of new small businesses incorporated in the last 2\1/
    2\ years of any comparable period in American history, that we've got,
    thanks in no small measure to the remarkable partnership Henry Cisneros
    has established with the housing industry in America, we have 2\1/2\
    million new homeowners, a record number for such a short time. And if he
    keeps going, we're going to have two-thirds of the American people in
    their own homes by the end of the decade, something that has never been
    done before.
        Most of the credit goes to the American people, but the fact that we
    drove down the deficit while increasing our investment in technology, in
    research, in the education of our people, and that we expanded trade
    dramatically--up 4 percent in '93, 10 percent in '94, 16 percent in
    '95--those things have made a contribution to that economic picture
    because we broke the mold.
        We brought down the deficit and invested in our people. We went for
    free trade with NAFTA and GATT in 80 agreements with other countries,
    including 15 with Japan. But we also went for fair trade that looked
    after labor standards and the environment and that finally, finally, got
    an agreement with Japan that we can enforce on automobile related
    issues. These are important things that will make a difference over the
    long run. And I think they're worthy of support.
        You heard what Mr. Schecter said about the role the United States
    has played in world peace; I won't belabor that. I will tell you that
    this is also a safer country than it was 2\1/2\ years ago. There are no
    Russian missiles pointed at anyone in America for the first time since
    the dawn of the nuclear age. We are moving toward a comprehensive
    nuclear test ban treaty next year. We have extended indefinitely the
    agreement of over 170 nations not to be proliferators of nuclear
    weapons. We are making progress in working with other countries in
    fighting terrorism, in fighting the spread of biological and chemical
    weapons, in trying to make the American people safer. I am proud of
    that. And we have to continue to do it.
        This Bosnia issue has been difficult, but we must lead here. And if
    we can get a peace agreement, as the leader of NATO we have to help
    implement it. Otherwise, we will have a terrible problem in the middle
    of Europe that can engulf us in the future.
        Do we have problems? Yes, of course, we do. We still have too much
    income inequality. You always have that when you change from one
    economic arrangement to another and everything gets shaken up. The
    people that are best positioned to do well do very well. Those that
    aren't positioned to do well get hurt worse. And we have to do something
    about that. And I've put forward a program to do that, to offer more
    educational opportunities, to raise the minimum wage, to give middle
    income families a tax deduction for the cost of a college education so
    that more people can get that education.
        We have to deal with that, but let's see it in the context of what's
    happening. This country is generating jobs and growth and opportunity.
    There will always be problems as long as the world exists. We need to
    focus on the problems but keep doing what is working in America.
        If you look at the issue of Government--Lloyd Bentsen said the
    Government's 165,000 smaller than it was when I took office; let me tell
    you what that means. Next year, the Federal

    [[Page 1620]]

    Government will be the smallest it's been since Kennedy was President.
    But more importantly, as a percentage of the work force, the Federal
    Government today is the smallest it's been since 1933. I hardly think
    that qualifies us to be the party of big Government.
        We've done more to give authority to States to get out from under
    Federal rules on welfare and health care experiments than the last two
    administrations combined did in 12 years. We have done more to get rid
    of thousands and thousands of pages of regulations. We are trying to
    make this Government work. Does it still do dumb things? Of course. Do
    we make mistakes? You bet we do. Is the answer to abolish the Federal
    Government? No. No. The answer is to have it be smaller but make it so
    it can still protect people.
        This is a fundamental decision that's at issue in this election
    season, that's at issue in this budget fight. Do you really believe that
    the market will solve all problems and we'd be better off without any
    Government? Are you willing to tolerate the occasional mistake of a
    Government that is transforming itself radically in order to know that
    somebody is there looking out for the public interest and our
    obligations to one another as a community.
        Do we need to do more? Of course, we do. I still want the line-item
    veto, lobby reform, campaign finance reform. There's lots of things we
    can do. But the point is, we're going in the right direction. The answer
    is to reform the National Government, not to dismantle it. That is the
    answer. That's what will work for America. That is the right approach.
        If you look at whether we've furthered our values or not, let me
    tell you that I want to give you some statistics that will support what
    you saw yesterday in that march. Forget about all the speeches and all
    the politics about it and everything; just remember the faces of the
    people that were at that march yesterday. Listen to what they said. That
    march was about them and their desire to reassert responsibility for
    themselves, their families, their communities. Their understanding that
    until everybody in America is willing to do their part, then the
    Government can't fix the problems, no one else can--that is a beautiful
    and awesome thing, and no one should denigrate it and no one should
    underestimate it.
        What I tried to do at the University of Texas yesterday was to give
    a clear voice to what I believe was in the hearts and minds of most of
    the people who showed up there yesterday. But I believe it's in the
    hearts and minds of most Americans. And I think it is a great tragedy
    that people who basically share the same values and, frankly, have a lot
    of the same problems, often cannot reach across the divide at one
    another.
        But what I want to tell you is, this country, even more than what
    you saw at the march yesterday, across racial and gender and age and
    regional lines, there is a reawakening in this country, a sort of a
    coming back to common sense and shared values and a determination to go
    into the future with greater strength and character and devotion to the
    things that make life worth living.
        And I'll just give you a few examples of that. In the last 2\1/2\
    years, the crime rate is down, the murder rate is down, the welfare
    rolls are down, the food stamp rolls are down, the poverty rate is down,
    the teen pregnancy rate is down. A lot of people don't know that. Now,
    no Government program did that. That's the folks that live in this
    country getting themselves together and sort of--you know, we're a great
    big, complicated country, and we change slowly, but that's an awesome
    thing when you think about that.
        Now, I think our policies helped. I think we helped when we cut
    taxes on 15 million working families who were making modest incomes, so
    that we'd be able to say, if you work 40 hours a week and you've got
    kids in your house, you won't be in poverty anymore. I think that was a
    good thing to do. I think that was an honorable thing to do.
        I think the family and medical leave law helped. I don't think
    people ought to lose their jobs if their parents get sick or their
    baby's born and they need to be there.
        I think the 35 States who we gave permission to experiment with
    welfare reform--I think that helped. I'll give you an example. One thing
    that they're doing in Texas that I agree with is they have asked for
    permission to get out from under Federal rules so that they can say, if
    you want a welfare check and you've got a child, you have to prove your
    child has been immunized against serious diseases. We have one of the
    lowest immunization rates in the country. I think it's a great idea.
    It's a great idea.
        And I hope--I think the crime bill helped. I appreciate what Mayor
    Lanier said. I was very

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    moved by what I saw that he was trying to do in Houston when I ran for
    President. And that crime bill, by putting 100,000 police on the street
    and community policing, is helping America to lower the crime rate. But
    also by emphasizing the prevention and giving these kids something to
    say yes to, that's also helping to lower the crime rate. And I want to
    say more about that in a minute.
        I just want you to remember this little moment from yesterday's
    speech in Texas--at the University of Texas, I mean. I tried to say that
    a lot of what has to be done to bridge the racial divide requires first
    the assumption of personal responsibility by all Americans without
    regard to race. Second, the ability to talk honestly and listen
    carefully to one another--we don't do enough of that. We still haven't
    even scratched the surface of that. But thirdly, there are
    responsibilities of things we have to do. One of the big fights I'm in
    now with Congress is whether we ought to just get rid of all this money
    for prevention. Now, they say they like this, giving the States and
    localities the right to spend the money; that's what we did. We said,
    here's the prevention money. I don't know what works in Houston and
    whether it would work in Hartford, Connecticut. I know one thing, you
    get enough kids in these programs playing soccer after school or
    learning to play golf or doing whatever else these kids are doing, you
    get all of them in there, and your crime rate is going to go down.
    You're going to save a lot of kids' lives. You won't have to spend all
    that money building jails and putting them in prison. You can spend less
    money and educate them and have them do well. I believe that.
        I have always believed we should be very tough on crime. I have
    always believed that in some crimes you just have to give up and be
    unforgiving. But I am often reminded of one of my favorite lines of
    poetry that was written in the context of the turmoil in Ireland but
    applies to the children growing up alone on these mean streets today.
    William Butler Yeats once said, ``Too long a sacrifice can make a stone
    of the heart.'' And we shouldn't forget that.
        Our biggest problem today is, in spite of all those good numbers I
    told you, in spite of the fact--one thing I didn't say is that drug
    usage among young adults is down--in spite of all that, the violent
    crime rate among juveniles in most cities is up. Casual drug use,
    especially marijuana, among young teenagers--not young adults, among
    teenagers--is up. Why? Because there's too many of those kids out there
    raising themselves. And nobody's looking after them and making sure they
    have something to do, something to say yes to. The mayor told me that
    the juvenile crime rate is not going up in Houston because those kids
    are being engaged.
        So I say to you, we're moving in the right direction. The answer is
    to do more of this, to do more things consistent with our basic values,
    not to do less, not to do less.
        This is a great country. We are getting our act together culturally
    and socially. And our economy is going great. What we have to do is to
    figure out how to spread the benefits of the economy to people who don't
    have it and how to deal with the social and cultural problems that need
    some help from the outside, that can't be totally solved by individuals
    and families on their own. This is what I want you to think about. That
    means that a great deal of the rhetoric in Washington today is
    irrelevant to what we have to do, to the future, and that's what bothers
    me about it.
        Now, you want to deal with yesterday's rhetoric--and the Republicans
    say, ``Well, Clinton's liberal; the Democrats are liberal; they love big
    Government''--you got a few questions you can ask them. You say, ``Well,
    if that's true, of the last three Presidents, who cut the deficit more?
    Who was the only one to present a balanced budget? Who reduced
    regulation more? Who gave more authority to State and local governments
    to get out from under the Federal Government more of the last three
    Presidents? Who cut the size of Government more? Who cut taxes more for
    small businesses?'' Believe it or not, we did in 1993, thanks to Lloyd
    Bentsen. Those are all facts. Who had the most pro-family welfare and
    child support and tax policies? We did.
        But that is not the argument we need to make. I want you to say
    that; maybe that will open some people's ears and eyes. But that's not
    what this is about. This is not about politics. This is about the people
    of the United States, about our future, about how we're going to get
    into the 21st century, remember, with the American dream alive for
    everybody, with America the strongest country in the world. That is the
    mission. The mission is what happens to

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    the people, not what happens to the politicians, not what happens to the
    political parties, what happens to the people of the United States of
    America.
        And I ask you to consider just two things as I move out of this and
    leave you here and go back to work. First is, in a time of change the
    President has to do what is right for the long run, which means
    inevitably he will do things that will be unpopular in the short run.
    Now, that is absolutely true. I'd bet everything I've got in the bank,
    which isn't all that much--[laughter]--that I've done four or five
    things that made everybody in this room mad in the last 2\1/2\ years.
    And sometimes I've been wrong. But I show up every day. [Laughter] But
    the point I want to make here, what I want to say is, you have to
    understand that when things are changing so quickly and the moment is
    there, you cannot even imagine what will be popular in a month or a year
    in a time of change like this. You have to think about what it would
    look like in 10 or 20 years.
        When Lloyd Bentsen and I--he didn't tell you the whole story--I'll
    tell you the whole story about that budget--probably people in this room
    still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too
    much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much,
    too. But you know why we did it? Because we had been in Washington--you
    ask--we had been in Washington one week when the then-minority leaders
    of the House and Senate, now the Senate majority leader and the Speaker
    of the House, informed us that we would not get not one single, solitary
    vote from the other party for our budget, no matter what we did, and
    were very candid. They said, ``We want to be in a position to blame you
    if the economy continues to go down. And if it goes up, we want to be in
    a position to attack you for raising taxes, whether you raise taxes on
    people or not. You're going to raise taxes on some, and that's the
    attack we want, so we're not going to vote for it, not a one of us.''
        Well, needless to say, we had information, as you heard Secretary
    Bentsen say, that if we could get the deficit down $500 billion in 5
    years, we could lower interest rates and boom the economy. And so we
    decided, even with only Democrats voting for it, we would have to make
    whatever decisions would be necessary to do that, even though it meant a
    little more tax and a little less spending cut than we wanted. And we
    reasoned--and I remember him telling me this, he said, ``I'm going to
    pay more, but most people will make a whole lot more money if we get
    this economy going than they'll pay in extra taxes.'' And that's exactly
    what happened. It was the right thing for America for the long run, even
    though it was difficult politics in the short run. It was the right
    thing to do.
        You know and I know they cut us a new one in Texas over the assault
    weapons ban and the Brady bill. [Laughter] But let me tell you
    something. Since we adopted the Brady bill, last year, 1994, there were
    40,000 felons who did not get handguns and didn't have a chance to shoot
    innocent Americans because of it.
        I know when we had to decide whether we should move the
    administration through the FDA to try to crack down on teenage smoking
    and restrain advertising directed at teenagers, all the political advice
    was, ``Don't do that. Don't do that, because if you do that, everybody
    that's against you will vote against you, and everybody that's for you
    can find some other reason to vote against you.''
        That's why things often don't get done, by the way, in national
    politics. [Laughter] Because organized, intense, minority interests will
    all vote against you and will terrify whoever they can terrify if you do
    such and such a thing. And then everybody that agrees with you will find
    some other reason to be against you. So it paralyzes the political
    system.
        But we studied this problem for 14 months. Three thousand kids a day
    start smoking; 1,000 of them are going to die earlier because of it. How
    much political hit is 1,000 lives a day worth? I think it's worth a
    whole lot. It's the right thing to do. Twenty years from now, there will
    be a lot more kids alive because of the initiatives of the
    administration. It is the right thing to do.
        Most of you liked it when I helped Mexico, but the day I did it,
    there's a poll in--the Washington Post came out, the poll was 81-15
    against what I did. I thought it just another day at the office.
    [Laughter] But the American people could not possibly see ahead 10, 20
    years to what would happen to the United States if the economy of Mexico
    failed and the financial markets in Argentina and Brazil collapsed. And
    our whole strategy for growing the American economy in the 21st century
    in a world economy, but starting in our backyard with Mexico and the
    rest of Latin America and then moving to

    [[Page 1623]]

    Asia, Europe, and other places would be wrecked. And our ability to
    cooperate in fighting drugs and in dealing with illegal immigration and
    all these things would have been undermined.
        So I said to myself, ``Yes, it's unpopular, but this is a good
    country. People are fairminded. Maybe it will work out in the next year
    or two. But whether it does or not, 20 years from now, it will look like
    a very good decision.'' That is the way we all have to begin to think.
    And when we do, then we can begin to dismiss out of hand these trivial
    wedge issues that are designed to divide us and drive a stake in our
    hearts.
        I applaud the mayor for not abandoning affirmative action. It's not
    time yet. It's not time yet. It's not time yet. We had so many different
    programs in Washington, there were things wrong with them. We're trying
    to fix them. And any time you do anything, if you do it long enough,
    somebody will make a mistake, and then someone else can go find it, and
    they can blow it up in a 30-second ad and make it look like, you know,
    you can't find your way home at night. [Laughter] But it is not time
    yet. If we haven't learned anything from the last few weeks, we should
    have learned that. We have still got work to do to make sure everybody
    has a chance to participate on fair and equal terms in the bounty of
    America.
        So these are the things we have to do, and that's what I want you to
    see. Now, having said that, I want you to see this fight over the budget
    in these terms.
        Let me tell you as you leave here, this is not about balancing the
    budget. For the first time since Lyndon Johnson was President, the
    President and the leaders of Congress are committed to balancing the
    budget. That is a very good thing. I applaud the Republican leadership
    for that. This is not about slowing the rate of medical inflation and
    securing the Medicare Trust Fund for the first time in a good while.
    We're both committed to that. The issue is, how are we going to do it,
    and are we going to do it in a way that is consistent with our values
    and with common sense and bringing us together?
        Now, my budget is a good, credible, conservative budget. It gets rid
    of hundreds of programs. But it does not, it does not, in this age, gut
    education or research or technology. I want everybody to get on that
    information superhighway and ride straight into the 21st century, and it
    is nuts for us to cut education if we're going to do that. It is wrong.
    And it doesn't hurt families. I can't imagine my getting a deduction for
    Chelsea's college costs, which is what would happen under their bill,
    and turn around and raising taxes on families making $20,000 a year
    trying to support three children. But that's exactly what they'd do.
    That's wrong. That is wrong. It doesn't make sense, and it's wrong.
        And on the health care issue, you may think there's a lot of
    demagoguery in it, but let me tell you--we have got to slow the rate of
    medical inflation, but that is happening. Health insurance premiums went
    up less than inflation this year for the first time in 10 years. We can
    fix this. But we do not want to cut Medicare so much.
        Listen to this. This is their proposal: Cut Medicare so much that we
    stop paying the copay requirements for really poor elderly people.
    You've got a bunch of old folks out there living on $300 a month. And
    the way this budget, their budget, is written now, they get hit the
    hardest. We stopped--because right now, we pay their copays and their
    deductibles because they don't have enough money to live on. And it's
    estimated a million elderly people could drop out of the Medicare system
    if the budget passed. We don't have to do that. We don't have to do
    that.
        And we don't have to go back to the time where we say to an elderly
    couple, if they're lucky enough to both live and be happy, and they're
    way up in their seventies or eighties, and they're still together, but
    they don't have much money, and one of them needs to go into a nursing
    home, we don't have to go back to the time when you could tell the
    person that's not going into the nursing home, ``You've got to sell your
    house. You've got to sell your car. You've got to clean out your bank
    account, or your spouse can't get any help.'' Do you really want to give
    those people that choice? I don't. We don't have to. It's in their
    budget, but we don't need it to balance the budget. And I'm going to
    fight it. It's not right. It's not right.
        Do you really want to take thousands of kids out of the chance to be
    in the Head Start program or cut the number of college scholarships for
    poor kids at the time when we need more children going to college? What
    do you think

    [[Page 1624]]

    it's going to do to the racial dialog in this country when you need more
    and more and more education? Look around here. If we'd had this dinner
    20 years ago and charged us to get in, would there have been any black
    people here? Would there have been any Hispanic people here? No. How do
    you think they got here? They have good educations. What are we going to
    do--does that make any sense? No.
        I could go on and on and on. This is--they want to get rid of the
    Commerce Department. Who do you think is opening all these doors for all
    these Texas energy companies in these countries that many people just
    learned existed a couple of years ago? [Laughter] The Commerce
    Department, the Energy Department, the United States of America, working
    in partnership with our business interests to create jobs here in
    America by building bridges of commerce around the world. Why should we
    do that? We don't have to, and it doesn't make any sense.
        Let me tell you something about the Medicaid program. This is the
    last one I'll mention. This is big for Houston, the Medicaid program.
    Most people think that that's that program for health care for poor
    people on welfare. Well, that's sort of true. About 30 percent of the
    Medicaid program goes to pay for health care mostly for children of
    welfare families; 70 percent of it goes to help older people who don't
    have a lot of money in their nursing homes or home health care or to
    help the disabled population in America.
        And when that happens, it means that their middle class children, if
    you're talking about nursing homes, or their middle class brothers and
    sisters and parents, if you're talking about the disabled, are therefore
    able to save the money they have and educate their children and maintain
    a middle class lifestyle. And it holds us together. I don't know a
    single, solitary health care provider in the United States of America
    who believes we can maintain the quality of health care we've got now
    for all those people if we put these Medicaid cuts in.
        Not only that, the Medicaid program helps cities like Houston big
    time. Why? Because the Medicaid program gives extra money to university
    teaching hospitals, gives extra money to children's hospitals, gives
    extra money to inner-city hospitals, gives extra money to rural
    hospitals in all those little towns in Texas that are 90 miles from
    nowhere and wouldn't be able to give health care if they didn't have
    country hospitals out there. What's going to happen to that? Is that
    what you want? I'm not for that. We don't have to do that.
        And then there are all those little curlicues in the budget. You
    know how they're giving everything to the States, right? The States are
    the source of all wisdom now--[laughter]--all wisdom. They're never
    going to make a mistake. We're giving everything to the States except a
    few things. For example, they've decided that Texas, even though Texas
    just passed a tort reform law, you don't have enough sense to do your
    own laws. So they want to take away your right to decide what your
    malpractice laws are and what all your other laws are. They want to just
    take that away. All of a sudden, you can do everything but decide what
    your legal system is.
        And last week--you know what they did last week? This is an amazing
    thing. One of their committees, last week they said, ``We're going to
    give the Medicaid program back to the States in a block grant. Now,
    we're going to cut their money by 30 percent, but we're sure they'll do
    fine because they're so much more efficient than we are, they can get
    lower costs.'' And the next vote--I mean within the same hour they voted
    to stop States from being able to bargain with drug companies to get
    cheaper prescription drugs. [Laughter]
        This is not about balancing the budget. This is about whether you
    believe America should be a winner-take-all society or a society where
    everybody has a chance to win. That's what this is about. It's about
    whether you believe that the market can solve every problem in the world
    or that all human systems are imperfect and democracies are instituted
    to find fair ways to treat people fairly so we can go forward together.
        I'm telling you, folks, this country is in better shape than it was
    2 years ago. Part of it is because we have had a good economic policy.
    We've had good social policies. We've done the right things by the
    Government. We stood up for America around the world. But a big part of
    it is, the American people are changing the way they live and think, and
    they are moving into the future. And you deserve better than what is in
    that budget. And I'm going to do my best to see that you get it. It is
    the right thing for America. And I want you to help me.

    [[Page 1625]]

    And I want you to fight for it because it's right for you.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:15 p.m. in the Westin Galleria Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to former Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd
    Bentsen and his wife, B.A.; former Texas Governors Ann Richards and Mark
    White; Texas Attorney General Dan Morales and former Texas Attorney
    General Jim Mattox; Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock; Texas Land Commissioner Garry
    Mauro; and Terence McAuliffe, national finance chair, and Laura
    Hartigan, national finance director, Clinton/Gore '96.