[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[March 11, 1997]
[Pages 285-288]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
March 11, 1997

    Thank you. Please sit down. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank 
Roy Romer for his willingness to go back and forth across America, from 
here to Colorado and back several times every week to try to help us do 
what all of us need to do with our party. I thank in his absence Steve 
Grossman. We're all thinking about him and Barbara. Nothing hurts worse 
than cracking your elbow, I don't think, and we've got to be thinking 
about them. And I thank Alan Solomont for his work. And I thank all of 
you for your support.
    I have just come from an event for Senator Byron Dorgan of North 
Dakota. It was a fascinating event. You know, North Dakota is a State 
that's so small, I felt like a sophisticate from Arkansas being there. 
[Laughter] And it's one of the few delegations that's completely 
Democratic, even though the State always votes Republican in 
Presidential elections. They have two Democratic Senators and a 
Democratic Congressman.
    And the first time Byron Dorgan ran for Congress was in 1974, the 
first year I ran for public office. And Senator Conrad was his campaign 
manager, and Congressman Pomeroy was his driver. And I told him that it 
took all three of them to lose that race, and I lost mine all

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by myself. [Laughter] But it was a very interesting and heartening 
event, because I was thinking about Byron Dorgan and Kent and Earl, and 
I was thinking that if any of those three had either not been there or 
had not been willing to put their necks on the line, we would not have 
passed the budget in 1993. And we would have not reversed trickle-down 
economics, or in a less pejorative term, we would not have reversed 
supply-side economics.
    And because we did, in an economic plan that invested in our 
children and our technology, in a fairer tax system for working people, 
4\1/2\ years later--or 4 years later, we've got 11\1/2\ million jobs, 
the first time any administration, period, had produced that much; 63 
percent decline in the deficit; lowest rates of unemployment and 
inflation combined since the 1960's. That's what this party is about, 
and don't ever forget that. That's one big thing.
    I'll tell you a little thing. Today I got a letter from a woman that 
I know from Iowa. I met her in Cedar Rapids in 1992. She was offering to 
defend me from the attacks that we're only interested in people like 
you. And she reminded me of this story of how I met her. I met her in a 
rally in 1992, and she was holding a child of another race in her hands. 
I said, ``Where did you get that baby?'' She said, ``This baby is my 
baby.'' I said, ``Well, where did you get it?'' She said, ``In Miami.'' 
I said, ``Where in the world--how did you get a baby from Miami? You're 
from Iowa.'' She said, ``Well, nobody else wanted this baby. This baby 
has got AIDS.''
    And later in the campaign, my staff actually went out of their way 
to try to help this lady in a difficult situation. She adopted a child 
when she had been left by her husband. She was raising two children on 
her own, her own children. She had barely enough money to put body and 
soul together. And she was at a political rally because she thought it 
was important for her future. And she has struggled to keep that little 
baby alive for 4 years. And that child is coming up to the National 
Institute of Health now, because a lot of the things that are now 
keeping adults with AIDS alive for very long periods of time, they're 
not quite sure how to do that with children.
    So she wrote me a letter because, she said, ``You've always welcomed 
us. You've always tried to help us, and we'd like to come by and see 
you.'' And I love this little kid, and I've kept up with her all these 
years. And I thought to myself, that is also what this administration 
and what this party is about, giving people like that little girl a 
chance to live the fullest life she can, recognizing the dignity of 
people like that woman who took what only--you could characterize as a 
truly heroic stand to do something most of us in far more comfortable 
circumstances have never done. And all those things in the middle, that 
is really what this is all about. And we can never forget that what we 
do affects real people in real lives.
    So when we replaced trickle-down economics with invest-and-grow 
economics, we gave Americans a chance to have a better future.
    When we got away from hot rhetoric and got down to concrete action 
on social problems and we reversed the social decline, working with 
people all over America to get the crime rate down and the biggest drop 
in welfare rolls in history, we helped to give people a better future.
    When we restored family, not just in rhetoric but in fact, at the 
center of our social concerns, with things like the Family and Medical 
Leave Act and the V-chip and the television ratings and the regulations 
to protect children from tobacco and the earned-income tax credit, those 
things changed people's lives.
    When we reaffirmed the leadership of the United States for peace and 
freedom in the world and reduced the nuclear threat, that makes our 
future better. That's what I'm going to try to do when I go to meet with 
President Yeltsin next week in Helsinki. What can we keep doing to 
reduce the nuclear threat? What can we do to build a Europe that's 
united and free, so in the 21st century we don't have the hundreds of 
thousands, indeed, the millions of young Americans going over to Europe 
and risking losing their lives, as happened in World War I and World War 
II. This is about big things. And I want you to think about that.
    And Roy talks about 1995 and '96--we had--I found that experience 
sometimes exhausting but ultimately exhilarating, because we were 
fighting about real things, and the American people had to make a 
decision, huge, big differences in how we should move into the future, 
what is the role of Government in our lives. And I think the election 
pretty much resolved that.
    And we decided we would no longer try to have our daily bread by 
demonizing our Government in a democratic, free society. I can say

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that this administration has done more to reduce the size of Government 
and the number of regulations and the burden of it than our Republican 
predecessors, but we never could figure out how to use the rhetoric to 
convince the American people that the Government that they elected and 
paid for was their enemy inherently. And I think what we see now is that 
people want it to work better, and they want it to be effective.
    Today I had the privilege of appearing with Walter Cronkite and Paul 
Taylor, who spearheaded the coalition last year to try to get the 
networks to give free television time to the candidates for President as 
the opening salvo of what they hope will be a broad campaign finance 
reform effort that will actually open up the airwaves to all qualified 
candidates. And I said to them that I felt very strongly that now that 
we were switching from--we were switching to digital channeling, which 
will give the networks far more options to communicate with people, that 
we ought to require as a part of the public interest more free TV time. 
And at least one executive, Barry Diller, has challenged his colleagues 
to do that. And it sounds like a lot of money--let's say we just equal 
what is about spent on television that's funded now, about $55 million 
in the off-years; let's say $400 million in election years; that's still 
less than 2 percent of the total revenues of these operations.
    And when you get a monopoly on the airwaves, I think you ought to 
act in the public interest. All of us know that we cannot--those of us 
who've followed the campaign laws--under the decisions of the Supreme 
Court, the only way we can ever control the aggregate spending in 
political campaigns is to offer something to those who voluntarily 
observe the limits. And the only thing that's worth it is access to the 
voters in a free and unfettered way, principally through television. So 
we were talking about that today. That's something that's important to 
do.
    There are a lot of other things that we have to do here. We've got 
to balance the budget. We've got to pass the education reform proposals 
that I have recommended, both to raise standards and to open college. 
We've got to take more seriously this juvenile justice issue. Even with 
the crime rates dropping dramatically, juvenile crime rates are too high 
almost everywhere. But we know we can do something about it.
    I was in Boston the other day; I spent a day in Boston. There has 
not been a single child killed in Boston in a year and a half, not one, 
zero, because--and it is not an accident--because of all the things that 
they have done there that we have now put into a bill and tried to give 
the tools to the rest of the country to do, which is exactly what we did 
with the crime bill.
    So we have all these things out there to do, and that's what you're 
fighting for. But I want you to be proud of the fact that this country 
is in much better shape than it was 4 years ago because of specific 
changes that were made as a direct result of the efforts made not only 
by the President and the Vice President but by the people who supported 
us in the Congress and throughout the country. This country is better 
because of that, and I thank you for that.
    And I ask you for your support for all the things we're trying to do 
now. Stay with us. We have so much more to do. As I said, this is not a 
time, just because things are going well, that the country can afford to 
relax. We have to finish the job of balancing the budget, if you want 
the economy to continue to grow. We have to finish the job of raising 
educational standards and opening opportunity, if you want everybody to 
participate in economic growth. And ultimately, our economic growth will 
be retarded unless we dramatically improve the education of our people. 
Because of the job mix, the good new jobs we're creating, virtually all 
of them now require something more than high school.
    If you expect everybody to be treated fairly in this society, we 
have got to find a way to give jobs to those people on welfare. We've 
told them they've got to go to work. Who are we to say that unless they 
have work that they can go to every day?
    So there's a lot out there. Let me say again, I am proud of what 
Governor Romer and Steve Grossman have done in putting the Democratic 
Party foursquare on the side of passing campaign finance reform this 
year. And I hope that some of the decisions that are being taken now in 
the Senate will help us to do that.
    But I want all the Democrats to stay out there for that. We need to 
be on the side of positive change. We have rescued--I believe we

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have rescued the debate from a sterile, meaningless debate over whether 
Government is the problem or Government is the savior. We know it is 
neither now. What we now have to do is to create a Government for the 
21st century that will command the support of the American people and do 
the job that needs to be done to give people the tools to make the most 
of their own lives.
    That's what we're going to do for 4 more years, thanks to you. And I 
want you to be happy about it, proud of it, and determined to continue 
to do it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 7:35 p.m. at the Sheraton Carlton Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Democratic National Committee officials Gov. 
Roy Romer of Colorado, general chair, Steve Grossman, national chair, 
and his wife, Barbara, and Alan Solomont, national finance chair; 
President Boris Yeltsin of Russia; and Walter Cronkite, chair, and Paul 
Taylor, executive director, Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition.