    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [October 20, 1996]
    [Pages 1875-1878]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Presidential Unity Fund Reception in New York City
    October 20, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you. Thank you so much, all of you, for being
    here. Let me begin by thanking the Members of Congress who are here, who
    were just introduced, Congressmen Nadler, Manton, Engel, Congresswoman
    Maloney. I know that Carl McCall and Speaker Silver and Martin Connor
    and Ruth Messinger I think is here and Mark Green. And Judith Hope, our
    State Democratic chairman--I think you're all here. Thank you.
        Thank you, Harry Belafonte, for being great and for always being
    there for us. And I want to thank Harry Belafonte for another thing, the

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    early support and strong encouragement he gave me to restore democracy
    and freedom to the people of Haiti. Thank you, Harry Belafonte, for that
    as well.
        I'd like to thank Whoopi Goldberg, who has been the most faithful
    supporter of our common efforts for the last 6 months in the United
    States. Whoopi emceed my birthday party, and she was a stitch, as
    always, and almost made it bearable turning 50, just listening to her.
    [Laughter] And she is a wonderful person behind all that good humor. And
    she doesn't have to do this. She does it because she loves her country
    and cares about what happens to other people and their lives. And I am
    very grateful to her for that.
        And I'd also like to thank Marlo Thomas, who spoke earlier, who has
    been a wonderful, progressive force in our country for so long. And
    there's another terrific actor here who has come to a number of our
    events in the last few weeks. And I want to thank him for his support
    and say that I look forward for decades more of stellar performances.
    Mr. Kevin Spacey is here. Thank you, Kevin, for coming.
        I want to thank Chairman Don Fowler and our general chairman, Chris
    Dodd. Thank you, Terry McAuliffe. Thank you, Senator Bob Kerrey, for not
    only raising a lot of money for the Democrats but for recruiting stellar
    candidates for the Senate. We've got a lot of folks out there that
    you're helping tonight you've never met. But believe me, you can be
    proud of them. They are good. I am proud of them, and I thank them.
        To Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, let me say to all of you, a lot of
    you in this room know me better than you know Senator Daschle, who's
    from South Dakota--which if you've never been to South Dakota, I
    recommend a trip there someday. Last time we went to South Dakota, they
    delayed a high school football homecoming for an hour so I could have a
    rally in this little town, and 10,000 people showed up. It rained, they
    stayed, and then they went on to the football game. It's that kind of
    place. It was absolutely wonderful. But I want you to know that Senator
    Daschle and Congressman Gephardt have worked very hard to earn the trust
    of the American people, have worked very hard to make sure that we were
    working together to move forward in a prudent but progressive way, and I
    believe will fulfill their responsibilities in a way that will inspire
    an enormous amount of support even from people beyond the rank and file
    of the Democratic Party if the voters give them the chance to lead the
    Congress in the coming election.
        Let me just say to all of you--I can be quite brief about this--most
    of you know what the consequences of this election are in specific
    terms. I mean, if you just look at the budget that was adopted in this
    last year, in the last couple of weeks right before the Congress had to
    go home and face reelection, as compared to the budget they wanted to
    adopt that I vetoed--they took 50,000 people out of Head Start; we put
    50,000 more in. They cut the college loan program; we wound up with the
    biggest increase in Pell grants for needy college students in 20 years.
    That's the difference.
        They cut environmental enforcement and ended the principle that the
    polluters should pay. We vetoed that, and they wound up fully funding
    our environmental program, setting aside the Sterling Forest here on the
    Atlantic seaboard. We're going to create three national parks in the
    Mojave Desert area of California. We're moving forward. But that's
    because the American people made their voice heard.
        Now you've got these two different visions weighing in the balance.
    The big ideas, it seems to me, are pretty clear. Everybody knows that
    we're going into a time of greater possibility for people who are
    prepared for it than at any time in human history. There will be more
    opportunities for people in a position to seize them than at any time in
    human history. Within 4 or 5 years, it will be typical to see a kid in a
    school in Brooklyn doing a research project on a computer out of a
    library in Australia, for example. That will be typical. It will be
    usual. You'll have children who will be E-mailing each other from every
    African country that has an immigrant counterpart in a United States
    school. There will be unbelievable opportunities.
        To give you some example, we've created 10\1/2\ million more jobs,
    we Americans have, since I became President. More than half of them are
    in high-wage categories. Why? Because they're tied to the rest of the
    world more closely and into the things that we do well, to the emerging
    information society.
        We believe that we have two great ideas here that are very
    important, that should permeate every single policy decision we make. We
    think that we ought to be building a bridge to the future wide enough
    and strong enough for ev-

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    erybody to walk across who is responsible enough to do their own part.
    We believe that. We believe that we'll be a stronger, better country and
    all the rest of us will do better if we give everyone a chance to live
    up to their God-given capacities. That's why we make a decision
    different from them on something like family and medical leave or
    putting 100,000 police on the street or the Brady bill or the assault
    weapons ban or a better student loan program. We just have different
    views of that. We believe that we should do things that help people to
    go forward together.
        The second thing we believe is that we should be one community in
    harmony with each other, in harmony with our environment, and insofar as
    we can, a force for peace and freedom throughout the world. And if you
    look around this room--just take a look, think about this. Just take a
    look around this room tonight. You've got people here whose ethnic
    heritage is in Europe, Asia, south Asia, the Middle East, and--maybe
    we've got some Native Americans here; there have been Native Americans
    in every other crowd I've been in for the last week--and every continent
    in the world. You live in a country which is basically bound together by
    a set of ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of
    Rights, and the rest of our Constitution. And we say at our best points,
    ``If you believe in these ideas and you show up and you obey the law and
    you respect your neighbors, you're part of our American community.''
        All over the world people are being convulsed by their ethnic,
    religious, tribal, racial hatreds. All over the world people are less
    than they ought to be. Children are being killed because one group has
    to be able to look down upon another group in order to look up to
    itself. All over the world, people are still taught the most ancient
    stupidity of all, that ultimately the most important thing about you is
    what you are not, when clearly the most important thing about you is
    what you are.
        Now, we in the United States, we in this administration, and we on
    this stage, we believe that the best future for America is one that
    consists of our saying, ``You may be different from us; you may even do
    things we don't think are right. We don't care as long as you believe in
    the same values embodied in the Constitution, you're willing to work,
    you're willing to be responsible, you're willing to treat your neighbors
    who are different from you with respect. You can be part of our country,
    you will be part of our community, and you will walk across the bridge
    to the 21st century with us.'' And that's important.
        Now, if you believe that, it means that if we're going to balance
    the budget we can't do it in a way that hurts seniors who have no other
    way to take care of their health care needs except through Medicare and
    Medicaid. It means you can't walk away from working families that have
    children with cerebral palsy, for example, who couldn't stay middle
    class working families if they lost the guarantee that Medicaid gives
    them to buy those wheelchairs for their kids and so their kids can stay
    at home and stay in school and grow and do the very best they possibly
    can. It means you can't walk away from that.
        It means you can't abandon the obligation the United States has to
    continue to clean up our environment while we grow the economy. It means
    you must invest more in education, not less, and open the doors of
    college education to all.
        It means it's not enough to say that we're going to end welfare as
    we know it, give it to the States, and walk away. You can't require
    people to go to work unless you provide jobs for them and training for
    them and an opportunity to find their way to raise their children
    successfully the way everybody else does.
        It means these things. It means you can't just look at children and
    say, ``Stay off drugs,'' and then turn around and take away the funds
    that the schools are using to bring the police officers and the others
    into the schools to be role models, one on one, to these kids, not just
    a once-a-month speech but a daily positive presence in the lives of
    these children that give them a chance to reclaim their lives, look
    toward the future, and build something good for themselves.
        So let me say this in closing: We do have just a few days left. The
    big danger in this election is that people won't show up who have the
    most riding on the outcome of it. And what I want to ask all of you to
    do is to promise yourselves that every day between now and election day
    you will contact somebody to tell them they ought to show up, to tell
    them there is a relationship between what we do in Washington and how
    you live here and in every other community around the country, that this
    country

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    is better off than it was 4 years ago, that we do have good ideas for
    the next 4 years, and that we need to go into the 21st century walking
    across a bridge and walking across it together. And the decisions we
    make in these elections will determine both those things: Are we going
    to build a bridge, number one, and number two, are we going to walk
    across it together?
        The best days of this country are ahead if we answer the questions
    right. That means people have to show up. Will you help us do that? Will
    you help us? [Applause]
        God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10 p.m. at the Sheraton New York Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to H. Carl McCall, State comptroller; Sheldon
    Silver, State assembly speaker; Martin Connor, State senate minority
    leader; Ruth Messinger, Manhattan borough president; Mark Green, New
    York City public advocate; musician Harry Belafonte; comedienne Whoopi
    Goldberg; actress Marlo Thomas; Donald L. Fowler, national chairman,
    Democratic National Committee; and Terence McAuliffe, finance chairman,
    Clinton/Gore '96.