    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 18, 1996]
    [Pages 1303-1307]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Democratic National Committee 50th Birthday Reception for
    the President in New York City
    August 18, 1996

        The President. Thank you.
        Audience member. Cut cake, but don't cut welfare!
        Audience members. Boo-o-o! Go away!
        The President. Wait, wait, wait. They've had their say. Now, we've
    heard--wait, wait. They got their message. We heard them. Give them an
    applause, and let them go now. Give them a hand, give them applause.
    [Applause] Thank you.

    [The demonstration continued.]

        The President. All right, we got you an audience. We did do that
    also. Now please let me talk.
        Audience member. You don't represent poor working people! Stop the--
    [inaudible]--against the poor!
        The President. Well, all I know is I just got the minimum wage
    raised. And we cut income taxes on the 15 million poorest working
    families in America. And there are 1.3 million fewer people on welfare
    today than there were the day I became President. So I think we've got a
    pretty good claim on that.
        Let me begin by thanking Chairman Don Fowler. I know he said before
    I came out a word, but I'd like to say another word of respect and
    condolence to the families of those who were on that Government
    airplane, the Air Force plane that was carrying those who work with me
    on my security detail out there in Wyo-

    [[Page 1304]]

    ming. It's a very sad thing. One of the safest planes we ever had. We
    don't yet know what happened, but tonight I just ask you to be thinking
    about their families.
        And let me also say to the people who provided our music, to Smokey
    Joe's Cafe and to the Cravat's Orchestra, I've been out here listening
    while you all have been in here enjoying it directly, and you know, if
    you're President, when you stand up in front of people, you're always
    afraid that you're not supposed to be on one foot; you're not supposed
    to be snapping your fingers; you're not supposed to be doing all these
    things. So I can really enjoy this music better if I'm out there, and
    you're not looking at me--we're all paying attention to the music. You
    guys were great. Thank you very much, and we're grateful to you.
        I know that Governor Carey is in the audience tonight. And Carolyn
    McCarthy, our new candidate for Congress, is here. I wish her well. I
    believe Mark Green and Judith Hope are here, and I thank you for being
    here. And somebody told me two people I very much admire for their
    different gifts with the English language, Neil Simon and Arthur
    Schlesinger, are here. If they're here, I welcome them, and thank you
    very much.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I feel very grateful tonight to be on the
    verge of my 50th birthday. I don't know why I feel grateful for that.
    [Laughter] I have been getting all of these absolutely hilarious cards.
    I got one card I couldn't begin to figure out. There were nine people in
    black robes on it and Mr. Perot was on it and Diana Ross was on it. And
    it said, ``Happy birthday from Diana Ross and the Supremes.'' [Laughter]
    I got a card today pointing out that as bad as this is, Paul McCartney,
    George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are older than I am. [Laughter] So I'm
    getting all of these cards, trying to put the best face on this event.
    I'm going to be all right until I get my AARP card in the mail.
    [Laughter] And there will be a couple of bad hours there.
        Let me--you know, our friends in the Republican Party that had their
    convention last week--and I didn't watch it because I was too busy on
    vacation, but they've had their say and now we can have ours. I just
    wanted to say to you that when we have our convention in Chicago next
    week, I have told our people that I don't want anybody standing up at
    the platform at the Democratic Convention making demeaning personal
    remarks about any Republican, not their nominee, not their nominee's
    wife, not any of them.
        On the other hand, since they neglected to talk about their record
    for the last 2 years, I think we ought to remind people about that every
    chance we get and remind everyone that this is really a great contest
    between two different visions of the future. There is no status quo
    option. Neither of us believe that we can stay with what we did for 40
    or 50 years. But on the other hand, there are very different
    consequences to where we will go in the future.
        Now, this administration can be proud that, compared to 4 years ago,
    there are 10 million more jobs; there are a record number of new small
    businesses, including businesses owned by women and minorities; there
    are a record number of exports. We've had 4 years in a row where the
    crime rate went down. There are 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers
    that could not get handguns because of the Brady bill. And as I said a
    moment ago, we dramatically cut taxes for the 15 million American
    working families with incomes of $28,000 a year or less who are the most
    hard pressed and reduced the welfare rolls by 1.3 million--all that
    compared to 4 years ago. The average closing cost on a home for first-
    time homebuyers has been cut by $1,000. We have almost 4\1/2\ million
    new homeowners. Ten million American families refinanced their homes.
    Things are better than they were 4 years ago.
        And the most important thing to know is that the leaders of the
    other party, their nominee for President, their Speaker of the House--
    they fought us on the economic program; they fought us on the crime
    bill; they fought us on the Brady bill; they fought us on the family and
    medical leave law; they fought us on the things that we tried to do that
    made a difference for America. The results are in. We're better off than
    we were. We need to keep going where we're going, not take a great U-
    turn and go back in the other direction.
        And the second point I want to make to you is that this is not an
    election like most elections where there's a little guesswork involved.
    This is your birthday present. You get a Presidential election where you
    don't have to guess. I mean, if you think about it, there's normally
    some guesswork in any election. You took a chance on me 4 years ago.
    Those of you who knew

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    me, maybe it wasn't such a big chance, but most people didn't.
        Well, now people know what we've done for the last 4 years, and they
    know that I'll do everything I can to implement these plans that we put
    before the American people. And they know what the Republicans will do
    because, even though they did not talk about it at their convention,
    apparently, they've already done it once. I just vetoed it the first
    time. [Laughter] And so that's a very happy thing.
        So if you look at these choices, the choice is not the standard
    choice. This is not between, for example, as they would say, cutting
    taxes and balancing the budget. I'm not against cutting taxes. I'm just
    against cutting taxes if to do it, you have to explode the deficit again
    after we took it from $290 billion down to $116 billion a year or if you
    have to cut Medicare and Medicaid, education, and the environment to pay
    for it. That would be wrong. That would be wrong.
        So if you like the budget I vetoed, you will love the next one
    that's coming along with this new plan. If you didn't, stay with us.
    We'll balance the budget and invest in education and invest in
    protecting the environment and protect Medicare and Medicaid while
    reforming them so that we can all preserve them over the long term. And
    we will give the American people the right sort of tax cut, targeted to
    education, sending everybody to college, raising children, and giving
    people incentives to save for their own retirement, their own health
    care, their own educational needs. That is the right thing to do for
    America. We do not want to take a dramatic turn in the wrong direction.
        Finally, let me say that there are a lot of things that have to be
    done in the future, and I want you to think about that. I want you to
    think about what the family and medical leave law has meant to America:
    12 million American families, someone in the family got to take a little
    time off when there was a baby born or a sick parent or a sick child
    without losing their jobs. I'd like to see that extended so that parents
    could go to regular parent conferences and doctor's appointments with
    their children, without losing their jobs.
        If you look at what happened--if you look at the results that we've
    gotten with the Brady bill, the assault weapons ban, and the plan to put
    100,000 police on the street, I'd like to see that expanded so that we
    can ban those cop-killer bullets that have no purpose other than to
    knock our police officers and other innocent citizens out of their
    lives.
        If you look at what we did with the college loan program to make
    more college loans available to people and more scholarships available
    at lower cost, I'd like to see that expanded to give American families a
    tax credit of $1,500 a year so that every single American adult could at
    least get a community college education, and it would be as universal as
    a high school education is today, and we have tax deductions for the
    costs of college education for everybody.
        So there's a lot more to do here. But our country is stronger; we
    are more respected in the world; we are a larger force for peace and
    freedom and decency than we were.
        And let me just say one last thing about this welfare issue. I've
    been working on this since 1980. And about 10 years ago when I was
    trying to write the last welfare reform bill, I asked a woman from my
    State who had moved from welfare to work to come be a part of a panel
    that I had for the Governors. This was nearly a decade ago. And this
    lady was asked the following question, and I did not know--she was being
    questioned by other Governors. I didn't have a clue about what she was
    going to say. I just knew that she had been a successful graduate of our
    experiment.
        And this lady was asked, ``Do you believe that people should be
    required to move from welfare to work if there is a job there and if
    they can take care of their kids?'' She said, ``I certainly do.'' And so
    the questioner said, ``Well, why?'' She said, ``Well, because people
    like me have been treated like we can't do anything for so long, we'll
    just keep on doing nothing unless somebody requires us to do it but also
    gives us the help to do it.'' And then they said, ``Well, what's the
    best thing about having a job?'' And she said, ``Well, the best thing is
    not the check. It's when my boy goes to school, and they say, what does
    your mama do for a living, he can give an answer.''
        Now, what I have done in signing this bill is to give us a chance to
    move everybody from welfare to work, but we're all thinking about this
    in the wrong way. This welfare reform issue is not over, it is just
    beginning. It is just beginning.
        So those folks holding those signs up and everybody else ought to be
    thinking about this: Who do you trust to give jobs to those people?

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    Who do you trust to take care of their children? Who do you trust to
    implement this instead of turning around and walking away from it?

        Remember the bills I vetoed that--you know what they did, the bills
    I vetoed? No child care; take away the guarantees of the school lunch
    program; take away the guarantees of the food stamp program; take away
    the guarantees of health care for children with disabilities. That's
    what they tried to do. I vetoed all that. We got that back in. We got
    protections back in.

        The question is now how are we going to embark on this great
    experiment to put jobs in the inner cities and jobs in the isolated
    rural areas and give people something to do? You can't just put people
    in the street. You have to give them work and child care and health care
    to support them. That is my commitment, and that is the decision we
    ought to be facing in this election.

        So let me just say this last point. This is my birthday gift to you.
    I want you to think about it for 79 days. [Laughter] I did an interview
    with one of the most highly watched news programs in the country,
    showing just in a couple of hours here, today before I came up. And the
    questioner said, ``Well, Mr. President, aren't you worried about what
    happened after the convention and this big tax cut promise and the
    movement in the polls, and doesn't that really bother you?'' And I said,
    ``No.'' I said, ``I'm not against a tax cut. I just don't want one
    that's too big, that we can't pay for. I don't want one that's big and
    indiscriminate, that will either explode the deficit or force us to
    really hurt people with more cuts in education and the environment and
    Medicare and Medicaid. But we can have a tax cut targeted at
    childrearing and education and family savings, and pay for it. But I'm
    not worried about that.''

        He said, ``Well, what if it causes all these changes in the polls?
    Everybody else that's ever run on one has won.'' I said, ``Well, first
    of all, it's a false choice between a tax cut and no tax cut. The issue
    is, are you going to have a good one that you can pay for?''

        I said, ``You know, Hillary and I used to live around the corner,
    when we were living in Arkansas, from this wonderful place called the
    Community Bakery. I used to go down there all the time, and in the
    morning I'd buy bagels.'' [Laughter] Sometimes on the weekend I'd buy
    other things, but there were wonderful things in the Community Bakery.
    [Laughter] There were cookies, bagels, doughnuts, fruit tarts. And so I
    was telling this fellow, I said, ``You know, every one of them was good,
    but if you bought them all and ate them all at once you'd get sick.
    That's my attitude about this tax cut issue. We can have one, but we
    have to have what we can afford, that's consistent with balancing the
    budget, investing in our future, bringing our people together. That is
    the right decision.''

        And then I said--and this is what I want you to think about for 79
    days--``If the American people want to go back to a failed economic plan
    of the past that quadrupled the deficit, gave us high interest rates,
    increased unemployment, increased welfare, and weakened America, they
    can do it. But that's what the election is for.'' I cannot do that. I
    will not do that. That is the wrong thing for America. There is another
    choice there. I won't do that.

        So my gift to you is to remember that this is a choice. And I'm
    delighted that you're here to celebrate my birthday. And I'm going to
    have a wonderful time tonight. But I want to remind you that we have 79
    more days before we can really celebrate the assurance that America will
    march into the 21st century with the vision I articulated in 1991 that I
    reaffirm to you today. I want us to go into the 21st century with three
    things unquestionably true. I want every child in this country, without
    regard to race or gender or station in life, to be able to live out his
    or her dreams if they're responsible enough to work for it. I want to
    know that our country is the world's strongest force for peace and
    freedom and democracy. And I want to know that with all of our
    incredible diversity--unlike all these other countries that are coming
    apart at the seams because of their racial, their religious, their
    ethnic, their tribal hatred--I want America to be the one country in the
    world that says, we believe in our common humanity, and we are growing
    stronger through our diversity, not weaker. That is my dream, and that's
    the present I want for you.

        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:05 p.m. in the Imperial Ballroom at the
    Sheraton New York Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Donald L.
    Fowler, national chairman, Democratic National Committee; Hugh Carey,
    former Governor of New York; Carolyn McCarthy, candidate for New

    [[Page 1307]]

    York's First Congressional District; Mark Green, New York City public
    advocate; Judith Hope, New York State Democratic Party chair; playwright
    Neil Simon; and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.