    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [September 16, 1997]
    [Pages 1175-1179]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
    September 16, 1997

        Thank you very much. Thank you for the wonderful welcome you have
    given to the Vice President and me. Thank you, Xavier. Thank you,
    Carmen, Carolina. To the Members of Congress who are here, members of
    the Hispanic Caucus Institute, members of our administration--all those
    who were introduced by the Vice President. I'd also like to acknowledge
    the presence here of the general chairman of our political party, the
    Democratic Party, Governor Roy Romer of Colorado. Welcome, Governor
    Romer.
        Xavier pointed out that I have been here all 5 years I have been
    President. I come because I have a good time. [Laughter] I like it. I
    know that here I will see the future of America, the vitality, the
    energy, the commitment, the passion necessary to make this country what
    it ought to be. But I have been here five times. [Laughter] I mean,
    those of us who are linguistically challenged--[laughter ]--always learn
    a few phrases--you know, su voto es su voz; mi casa es su casa.
    [Laughter] Now I can say, su caucus es mi caucus. I come here because
    when I leave here, I feel more alive, I feel more committed, I feel new
    energy, and I like what I see.
        I thank the Members of Congress for their service. I thank the
    Hispanics who have served in our administration, more than in any other
    in the past; the members of the Cabinet who are here--Secretary Pena,
    Ambassador Richardson, Aida Alvarez. To all those in the White House--
    Maria Echaveste, Mickey Ibarra, Janet Murguia, and others. To my
    speechwriter, Carolyn Curiel, who I will soon nominate to be Ambassador
    to Belize; Gloria Tristani, whom I have just selected to serve as the
    newest member of the Federal Communications Commission.
        There is also another person here I want to acknowledge who will
    have a lot to do with seeing that the face of the Federal Government and
    the policies of the Federal Government reflect the face and the heart of
    America. And here with me tonight is my nominee for Assistant Attorney
    General for Civil Rights, Bill Lee. And I'd like to ask him to be
    recognized.
        He grew up a Chinese-American in New York, has spent a lot of his
    life working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He has worked to defend
    and protect the civil rights of the most vulnerable among us. And I
    thank

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    you for your continued support for his nomination.
        I'd also like to mention two people who aren't here tonight. We all
    miss Frank Tejeda whose career ended far too soon, as did his remarkable
    life. But I want to say again how much I enjoyed working with him and
    how much I miss him. And I'd also like to say a very special word of
    appreciation and good wishes to the first Hispanic-American elected to
    the United States Congress, Henry B. Gonzalez. He has been an
    irrepressible force for progress. He is an irreplaceable legislator. It
    has been my great honor to know him for 25 years, long before I ever
    dreamed I'd be here, and I'm quite sure long before he ever dreamed I
    would be here. [Laughter] But we wish him well, and we'll miss him.
        Together, we have begun to prepare our beloved country for the 21st
    century. Tonight I want to take just a few moments of your time to talk
    about the work ahead and the responsibility we have to support each
    other in that work.
        It's been nearly 6 years now since I announced my candidacy for
    President. Many of you started with me, almost all of you finished with
    me, and we have begun a journey to restore the American dream to
    everyone willing to work for it, to make America the world's greatest
    force for peace and freedom well into the next century, and to go
    forward into that new century in spite of all of our diversity as one
    America.
        We began with a bold new economic course which reduced our deficit
    80 percent before the recent budget passed. For all of you who voted for
    that, I hope that you're out there clapping to yourselves, because you
    deserve it. We expanded our exports with over 200 trade agreements. We
    invested in our people and their future. We took on the tough social
    problems at home and the tough foreign policy problems around the world.
        Today, the American people are reaping the results of these last
    years of effort: unemployment below 5 percent, Hispanic unemployment
    dropping from over 11 percent to about 7 percent, a drop of over 35
    percent; record rates of small business growth with Hispanic-American
    businesses growing at 3 times the rate of overall business growth; and
    hundreds of thousands of new Latino homes in this country. Violent crime
    has dropped 5 years in a row. We've had the largest drop in welfare
    rolls in history.
        All this signals progress. We should be optimistic, we should be
    hopeful, we should be confident. But we all know we have more to do
    before every one of our people, every one of your people, and every one
    of the American people will be prepared to do well in the 21st century.
        The first thing we have to do is to continue to expand and improve
    educational opportunity. I am proud that the budget I just signed
    represents the largest single increased investment in education since
    1965. I fought hard to ensure that it included a 36 percent increase in
    funding for bilingual and immigrant education, to see that it expands
    Head Start. It funds our America Reads program to mobilize up to one
    million volunteer tutors to make sure our children can read well at an
    early age. It will help us to develop voluntary tests in reading and
    math to help children learn the basic skills they need to succeed, not
    to put them down but to lift them up.
        It also opens the doors of college to all Americans for the first
    time in history with the biggest increase in support for people going to
    college since the GI bill passed 50 years ago. There's the largest
    increase in Pell grants in more than two decades, a $1,500 HOPE
    scholarship tax credit to open the doors of the first 2 years of college
    to all Americans, and further tax credits for all higher education for
    people of all ages, because we know we have to have a system of lifetime
    learning in America, and we should support that for people of all ages.
        Despite a strong work ethic and falling unemployment, however,
    despite exploding numbers of new Hispanic-owned businesses, Hispanic
    family income is not yet rising. And one of the biggest reasons for this
    disparity in income is that too many young Latinos continue to drop out
    of school. The dropout rate for Hispanic-Americans remains far above the
    rates for whites or African-Americans. Many of these young people leave
    school for responsible reasons, to begin to help their families by
    working. But increasingly in a global economy, we must teach our
    children that responsibility means staying in school and going the whole
    route.
        We have organized an intense effort in the White House to address
    the dropout problem of Hispanic-American students. I instructed

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    Gene Sperling, the head of the National Economic Council, Maria
    Echaveste, who heads our Office of Public Liaison, Mickey Ibarra, who
    heads our Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and our Education
    Secretary, Dick Riley, to evaluate all of our current programs and
    identify what more we can do right now to help young Latinos reach their
    potential.
        I am pleased that Senator Bingaman and Representative Hinojosa will
    soon introduce the ``National Dropout Prevention Act of 1997'' to
    establish a coordinated national strategy for lower dropout rates for
    Hispanics and others who should have their dropout rates lower. I want
    to ask you to help us with this. We need your support.
        Let me also say, in the context of education, that balanced budget
    agreement just set a framework for the next 2 years. Every single year
    we have to make sure that the congressional appropriations are faithful
    to the agreement. And I ask your support in helping us and helping the
    Members of Congress make sure that those investments are there.
        And in that connection, let me tell you, I, at least, and I think
    most of you, are quite concerned by the recent, very narrow decision in
    the Senate to support the Gorton amendment that would block-grant
    virtually all Federal education funds to the States. That's a step in
    the wrong direction, because whatever its intent, the effect of the
    amendment is to shift funds away from the schools that serve our
    neediest children. And unless we can persuade them to change it, I will
    not hesitate to use my veto power to prevent that hasty decision from
    becoming the law of the land.
        Let me also say that that budget did one more thing that I want to
    emphasize--it did a lot of good things, including providing health
    insurance for up to 5 million American children, many of whom will be
    Hispanic children and the children of hard-working people who work all
    day, every day, but can't get health insurance at work. It also kept a
    promise I made last year to restore benefits to legal immigrants who
    come to this country legally, work hard, and contribute to our society.
    And I thank the Members of Congress who are here who made that possible.
        The second thing we have to do is to sell more of our goods and
    services around the world. We have 4 percent of the world's population,
    20 percent of the world's income, 96 percent of the world's consumers
    live somewhere else. The growing developing economies are growing at
    three times the rate of our European and other traditional trading
    partners. We have no choice but to compete for those new markets.
        Indeed, 70 percent of our export growth this year comes from our
    neighbors--Canada to the north, and all the other neighbors are to our
    south, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, South America--70 percent
    of our growth is there. Now, the legislation I sent to Congress today to
    renew the President's traditional authority to negotiate trade
    agreements, to open markets to our products, and create good jobs,
    contains important provisions that will enable me to negotiate to
    protect both worker rights and the environment. And it will involve
    Congress every step of the way.
        But I say again, it is in our interest to open these markets. Week
    after week, I read of these European leaders going to South America,
    saying, ``America doesn't care about Latin America. Europe cares about
    Latin America. America is sitting up there sitting on its gain. We want
    you to be allied with Europe.''
        I say, they are our friends. I have worked hard to establish a good
    relationship, and I think we should go forward with fair, balanced
    trading agreements that will help our economy and help our relations.
        I want to say a special word of thanks to Congressman Becerra and
    his allies in the Hispanic Caucus for the contributions that they made
    when I last went to Latin America several months ago, when I went to
    Mexico and Central America and to the Caribbean. Congressman Becerra and
    Congressman Reyes went with me; Congressman Romero-Barcelo joined us in
    the Caribbean.
        In a few weeks, I'll be going for a week's visit in Brazil and
    Argentina and Venezuela, and I'm looking forward to working with you,
    Congressman Becerra, and with the Caucus to make this productive for
    America as well. Thank you very much.
        Let me make one other comment now about the last thing that I think
    we have to do. Our journey into tomorrow is about more than economics.
    It's about the kind of people we are and how we relate to each other.
    It's about whether we can really learn to not only tolerate each other,
    not even just to respect each other, but to celebrate the fact that
    people who are

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    so different share this land together and want to share its future
    together and deserve to share its future together because we are bound
    together by common values, by faith and family and work and community
    and service to country.
        Now, in order to do that, we have to face some facts. The first fact
    is that we still have some unfinished business in this country, some
    discrimination that we have not resolved. It still exists. The second
    fact is that all those people that want to get rid of affirmative action
    carry a heavier burden than they have yet borne to show about what they
    were going to do to replace it, to guarantee everybody has an equal
    opportunity.
        The third thing we have to do is to treat each other respectfully
    and honestly in all of our dealings, particularly in putting together
    our political system. So in that connection, let me just make one
    comment more about the census coming up in 2000 and the whole issue of
    sampling. My sole goal is to have the most accurate count of Americans.
    I have no other political agenda. I have never been involved in this in
    any way, shape, or form. Every expert who has reviewed the census
    process, including a recent report from the National Science Foundation,
    says that the sampling method the Census Bureau proposes to use in the
    year 2000 is designed to count hard-to-find Americans, including the
    homeless and some minorities, not to leave them out. We are not
    interested in counting people who do not live here and do not exist, but
    we want to make sure, finally, that everybody who is here is counted in
    the census of the American people in the year 2000.
        If we're going to be one America, we have to make sure our
    immigration laws are fair and humane to all. To that effort, we have
    undertaken two initiatives I want to mention briefly. First, we're
    seeking to extend the legal authority that permits people to obtain
    permanent immigration status without having to leave our country, often
    leaving their families and their jobs behind. And second, we're working
    to enable some Central Americans and others who have already made lives
    for themselves here in the United States to be considered for permanent
    status under less stringent rules in place prior to the passage of the
    recent immigration bill.
        But the most important thing we can do is to really make up our
    minds that we're going to share the future together. The reason that I
    organized this national conversation on race for the next year and had
    an advisory board constituted, including Linda Chavez-Thompson, who is
    well-known to many of you, is that it bothers me that so few Americans
    have really thought about what this country is going to be like in 20 or
    30 or 40 years.
        Within 5 years, our largest State, California, will have no majority
    race. Hawaii already has no majority race. Hispanic-Americans are the
    fastest growing American minority, but within a matter of decades, we'll
    all be members of some racial or ethnic minority.
        Now, people have said for years--maybe for over 200 years, maybe
    going all the way back to the beginning--that America is not a place, a
    nation, that is about a particular religious creed or a particular race
    or even a particular place; America is just a set of ideas. We are about
    to find out. We are about to find out.
        And so I say to all of you, when I come here and I feel your energy,
    your spirit, your patriotism, your dreams, your affection for each other
    and for your country, that is what I want every American to feel. And
    that's what I want you to be able to feel about every other American.
    And we have a heavy responsibility here. No other great democracy like
    ours has ever been so diverse, and yet people living together so
    closely. No one has ever tried to do this. We are trying to do this
    against the backdrop of reading in the last several years about all of
    the problems, from the Middle East to Bosnia, to Northern Ireland, to
    Africa, to you name it.
        We say to the bottom of our soul, we don't believe in any of that.
    We don't seek, any of us, to lift ourselves up by putting someone else
    down. We are simply trying to create a country where everybody's
    responsible, has opportunity, where we're drawing together more closely
    every day, and where we're still trying to promote what we believe in
    around the world.
        You, as the fastest growing group of Americans, have a special
    responsibility to make sure that message pierces the mind and heart of
    every one of your fellow citizens, because if it does, we'll take care
    of the economics, we'll take care of the other work we have to do. If we
    can get our hearts right and our heads straight about how we're going to
    do this together, we will get to the next century with this country
    still the greatest nation in human history.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

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    Note: The President spoke at 8:15 p.m. in the International Ballroom at
    the Washington Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to
    Representative Xavier Becerra, chair, and Carmen Votano, vice chair,
    Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute; and Carolina Reyes, wife of
    Representative Becerra.