    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [September 9, 1997]
    [Pages 1147-1148]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1147]]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
    September 9, 1997

        First of all, thank you, Steve, and thank you, Alan, and thank you,
    ladies and gentlemen, for being here. This is meant to be more of a
    conversation than a speech, and I want it to be so; I'll be quite brief.
        We have had a very good year as a nation, and we've had a good year
    here in Washington. And it was capped by the passage of what I think is
    an excellent balanced budget agreement, not only because it does bring
    the budget into balance for the first time since 1969, which is a long
    time to wait, and therefore changes the whole dynamic of what we talk
    about here in Washington--we Democrats have been literally paralyzed for
    years and years and years in the efforts to do what a lot of what we
    thought ought to be done because everything was seen through the prism
    of the deficit; not so anymore--but also because this agreement has some
    remarkable positive things about it, including the biggest investment in
    health care since 1965, most of which will go to insure 5 million
    children who don't have health insurance now; biggest investment in
    education since 1965, which will go to put more children in Head Start,
    to put computers in our schools and to hook them all up, all the
    classrooms and the libraries, to the Internet by the year 2000; and has
    the biggest increase in help for people to go to college since the GI
    bill was passed 50 years ago. And that's just part of what's in this
    budget. It's a very fine budget.
        But today I went to American University to talk a little bit about
    what we're going to try to do between now and the end of the year. It's
    all very well to say, ``Well, we've got 13 million more jobs, and we've
    got crime coming down and welfare rolls dropping and a lot of the
    poorest neighborhoods in the country are beginning to be revitalized.''
    But the truth is there is still a lot to be done, and we have a very
    busy agenda.
        And you may not want to talk about it tonight, but let me just go
    through a list of some of the things that still have to be done. Number
    one: This balanced budget agreement has to be implemented. The balanced
    budget plan which was passed which I signed is a 5-year budget plan. It
    funds Medicare and Medicaid and all the other so-called entitlement
    programs and has the tax cuts in it. But anything that requires an
    annual appropriation, like education or transportation, we have to
    actually pass a bill every year, including this year, to make that
    budget agreement real.
        So Steve talked about the national standards today--we are having
    quite a little vigorous debate in Washington about whether we ought to
    have national standards and whether there should be a test to measure
    whether every fourth grader can read and every eighth grader can do
    math. I think it's a miracle we've done as well as we have without doing
    it, since we're the only major country in the world that doesn't have
    both kinds of standards. And I hope we will have, and I intend to fight
    hard for it.
        Secondly, we're going to try to pass the juvenile justice bill that
    will help to keep more of our kids out of gangs, off drugs, and away
    from guns. And it's very important.
        We're going to try to prevail, for the fifth time in 5 years, but
    this time I think we've got a better chance and more visibility than
    ever before, with campaign finance legislation. I supported the bill
    every year for the last 5 years, and every year for the last 4 years the
    campaign finance reform legislation has been killed by a Senate
    filibuster. And as you know, it only takes 41 Senators to do it, and the
    people that did it before say they're going to do it again, even though
    some of their folks are no longer in the Senate. They may do, but this
    time we'll have at least the glare of day on it.
        We are going to seek, starting tomorrow, in a very public way the
    authority that has been given to Presidents since the 1970's to
    negotiate comprehensive trade agreements. And this will be somewhat
    controversial, mostly because of people I think looking backward and
    thinking that the past trade agreements haven't been so great. But here
    are the facts: We've negotiated over 200 trade agreements since I've
    been President. We're now the number one exporter in the world; 70
    percent of our export growth has come from our own hemisphere and from
    Latin America. And we estimate that about 25 percent of the 13 million
    jobs we've got have come

    [[Page 1148]]

    because of the expanded trade we've done. And I think we ought to do
    more of it.
        Latin America will grow, Asia will grow quicker than the global
    economy. We are 5 percent of the world's population. We have 20 percent
    of the world's wealth. If we want to keep it we've got to sell to the
    other 95 percent. It's not complicated.
        And so I hope that we will prevail in making that argument, because
    I'm convinced that more than money is at stake. Our world leadership in
    supporting democracy and open markets and a future where people work
    together and work out their problems, instead of fight them out, is very
    much at stake in this debate over the President's role in world trade.
        Finally, we will have a major effort later in the year to reach
    consensus in our country--and it's going to be difficult to do--on a
    commitment that I need to make in December about how much we will reduce
    our greenhouse gas emissions by early in the next century.
        I am convinced the problem of climate change is real. I know the
    American people have not fully focused on it yet, but literally, the
    overwhelming majority of scientists who have studied this problem say
    that our environment is changing dramatically because of the volume of
    greenhouse gases that we're putting into it. And it's fixing to get
    worse if we don't do something about it because all these developing
    countries--most importantly China, which is the biggest one--are getting
    rich the same way we did, that is, by burning fuels which put great
    stress on the atmosphere. We have got to turn this around.
        And the United States cannot be dragged kicking and screaming into
    this. And I believe--I don't believe; I know--we can find a way to do it
    and grow the economy. This will be very controversial. And I hope that I
    can get a lot of support from the business people in this country and
    from labor organizations and from others who realize that we have to
    pass along to our children and our grandchildren an environment in which
    they can live, or all the economic growth in the world won't amount to a
    hill of beans if people can't breathe and enjoy their lives and feel
    that we're in a balanced environment. So that's a big issue.
        Meanwhile, the Secretary of State is in the Middle East; we are
    struggling to make some progress in Bosnia; things look better in
    Northern Ireland than they have in a good long while. And the Chinese
    President is coming here before the end of the year, and I'm going to
    Latin America. And the country is in good shape. We're moving in the
    right direction. And those of you who have supported me made it
    possible, and for that I am very grateful. But I ask you to keep the
    energy behind our efforts. We've got to keep going. We've got to keep
    moving forward. We can't rest. And there's a lot more to do.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:45 p.m. in the Chandelier Room at the
    Sheraton Carlton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Steve Grossman,
    national chair, and Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, Democratic
    National Committee; and President Jiang Zemin of China.