    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [December 1, 1997]
    [Pages 1684-1686]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
    December 1, 1997

        Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Governor. I want to thank
    Jeff and Andy for hosting this event tonight, and I thank all of you for
    being here. I just came in with at least three members of the White
    House staff. I think Ginny Apuzzo is already here, but I came in with
    Sandy Thurman, Craig Smith, and Richard Socarides. And if anybody else
    is here from the White House, I apologize for making an omission.
        Let me say to all of you, first, I really appreciate your being here
    tonight and your support for our party. Five years ago when I became
    President, I felt very strongly that our country needed a common,
    unifying vision to get us into the 21st century that included all
    Americans who were willing to work hard and obey the law, that
    guaranteed opportunity in return for responsibility, and that maintained
    the leadership of our Nation in the world.
        Five years later I don't think any serious observer could question
    the fact that our country is in better shape than it was 5 years ago on
    virtually every front. The economy is in the best shape it's been in in
    a generation. We have made genuine progress in resolving a lot of our
    deepest social problems. The crime rate is dropping in virtually every
    community in the country. The welfare rolls have dropped by more than at
    any time in history. We have begun to try to reconcile the demands of
    work and family, which is in some ways the central dilemma that people
    with school-age children face and with preschool children.
        And we have taken on a lot of issues that had not been taken on
    before: the dangers of tobacco to children, something Mr. Tobias has
    been on me about since long before he ever thought I could become
    President--[laughter]--the issue of having legal guns in the wrong hands
    and illegal guns getting into the country when they shouldn't, and also
    this issue of what it means to be inclusive.
        On World AIDS Day I think it's worth pointing out that we've made a
    lot of dramatic progress in how fast we're moving drugs from the testing
    stage to approval to market. The increases in investment across the
    board have helped to lengthen and improve the quality of life of people
    living with HIV and AIDS. And I still believe that we will be able to
    find a cure within the next few years if we continue to intensify our
    efforts.
        Now, one of the things that I would like to say, since this is a
    Democratic Party fundraiser, is that there is a direct chain of events
    between your support of our efforts and the things which happen in this
    country. And if you go back over the last 5 years--and I won't mention
    many, but I'd like to mention just a few--and

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    you look at the areas where there has been a partisan fight and then you
    look at the areas in which there has been bipartisan cooperation, in
    both areas you can see the signal difference it makes to have a strong
    party representing the values that we represent.
        If you look at the partisan fights--I'll just mention two--in the
    '93 budget fight, we didn't have a single--a single--Republican vote,
    but before the Balanced Budget Act kicked in, we'd already reduced the
    deficit by 92 percent because of the work that we did, while increasing
    investments in medical research, in treatment, in education, in health
    care, and reducing the budget 92 percent--it was our kind of budget--and
    reducing income taxes on working families with incomes under $30,000.
        If you look at the crime bill debate we had in '94, we had a few--
    and I thank God for them--we had a few Republican votes on a strategy
    which is now universally accepted as having a dramatic impact on
    lowering the crime rate: putting 100,000 police on the street, passing
    the Brady bill, passing the assault weapons ban, passing preventive
    programs. In the last session we actually got a lot of--a substantial
    amount of money through the Congress for after-school programs for kids
    who would otherwise be wandering on the streets or for work programs for
    kids who are out of school. Juvenile crime has not dropped as much as
    regular crime. The overwhelming percentage of juvenile crimes is
    committed between 3 o'clock in the afternoon and 7 o'clock at night.
        So that--on these issues, I think history shows we were right.
        Where there was bipartisan cooperation--I'll just mention two--in
    the welfare reform bill, because I had a party in the Congress that
    would back me, I was able to veto the bill twice when it tried to take
    guaranteed health care and food away from poor children in welfare
    families and because it lacked an adequate commitment to child care for
    people who were going to work. So when we signed the bill, I think it
    was a much better bill plainly because of the contribution our party
    made.
        In the balanced budget bill last summer, which I am strongly in
    favor of, it is true that some of the more liberal members of our caucus
    didn't vote for it, but over two-thirds of the Democratic caucus voted
    for that balanced budget for a very good reason: It contained the
    biggest increase in child health since Medicaid passed in 1965, the
    biggest increase in aid to public education since 1965, the biggest
    increase in opening the doors of higher education since the GI bill in
    1945, and a huge increase in medical research through the NIH.
        So again I say, the parties make a difference because they bring to
    bear their views on public decisions. And if people didn't help them get
    elected, they wouldn't be able to do that.
        If you look at where we are today--I'd just like to mention one or
    two things. I believe that we are moving to deal in a more open way with
    this whole idea of what it means to build one America. The White House
    hate crimes conference could not have come at a better time. And if you
    look at some of the terrible things that Governor Romer has been going
    through in Denver, you see that it is a problem in America in more
    contexts than one. And I think that's very important.
        I hope that the appearance I made at the Human Rights Campaign Fund
    dinner the other night and the continuing strong support by many Members
    in Congress, some in both parties, for ENDA is again another
    manifestation of the fact that we are continuing to try to expand the
    barriers of our American community. I think it's very important that we
    continue to do that.
        If I might just mention three other things that are very much on my
    mind tonight that you may want to talk about, or not, as we visit--I
    have done my best to try to put America in a position to continue to
    lead the world and to deal with the new security threats and seize the
    new opportunities of the new century. I intend, therefore, to continue
    to try to get fast-track authority from the Congress because I think
    that we have to sell more of our products overseas. And I think only by
    selling more and by becoming more involved with other countries will we
    have the leverage to try to elevate international economic, labor, and
    environmental standards, something that I strongly support. I think we
    have to do it in a way that our party favors, which is to do more and
    more quickly for people that are displaced here at home.
        I think we have to take a very strong position, but a realistic one
    we can get other countries to sign on to, at the climate change meeting
    in Kyoto. The Vice President is going over there to present our views. I
    think this is a huge, huge issue and will be for at least another
    generation.

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        This, in some ways, is the most difficult of all problems for a
    democracy to confront, because except if you live in a place that has
    had a lot of extreme weather in the last 5 years, you probably don't
    have any tangible evidence that the climate is warming more rapidly than
    it has in 10,000 years. But by the time we could all get tangible
    evidence, it would be too late to do much about it--first problem. The
    second problem is, this is not like the balanced budget, which will be
    done in 4 or 5 years or 6 years from the time we started. This is
    something we'll have to work on for 20 or 30 years, but we have to begin
    today. Democracies are not very well organized for this sort of
    challenge. But it is imperative that we do it. And I would implore all
    of you to do whatever you can to help us build public support for having
    an aggressive approach to climate change.
        One final issue I wanted to mention is this whole matter involving
    our dispute with Iraq. This is not about the United States and Iraq, per
    se, nor is it about an attempt to rehash the Gulf war. This is a
    question of whether we are going to establish in the world a regime that
    will limit the capacity of rogue nations and illegal groups to
    manufacture, store, disseminate, sell, or use dangerous biological and
    chemical weapons or small-scale nuclear weapons. I think it is
    imperative that we try.
        Now, you saw from what happened in the Tokyo subway with the sarin
    gas that it's hard to envision a totally risk-free world. But believe
    me, there are substantial things that can be done to minimize the chance
    that innocent civilians who travel the world and walk the streets of
    cities all across the world will be subject to that sort of thing.
        So when you see all this stuff playing out in the press, let me
    assure you that what I am thinking about is whether we can, as part of
    our responsibilities to the future, create a regime in which we will
    actually be able to say that--not that there may never be an incident of
    chemical or biological use by a terrorist group or a drug trafficker or
    something else but that we have done everything that is humanly possible
    to know where the stockpiles are, to limit them, and to minimize the
    chances that they can ever be brought into play against innocent human
    beings.
        This is a huge issue, and it will require enormous discipline by our
    country and enormous leadership by our country if we're going to
    prevail. And this is a case when--you know, I care a lot about
    economics, and I think that it's easy to demean it. The country is in
    better shape when everybody has a job who wants one. But this is one
    issue where economic interest in the short run cannot be allowed to
    override our solemn obligation to the future to try to minimize the
    chance that we'll have any of this in your future or our children's
    future.
        Now, having said that, again I say the main point I want you to
    understand is, there is a direct connection between everything I just
    mentioned and hundreds of things I didn't and your decision to be here
    supporting our party. And this is a better country today than it was 5
    years ago because of the ideas, the values, and the efforts that you
    helped to make possible.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:50 p.m. at the Renaissance Mayflower
    Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado,
    general chair, Democratic National Committee; and Jeffrey Soref and Andy
    Tobias, dinner cochairs. He also referred to the proposed ``Employment
    Non-Discrimination Act'' (ENDA). The proclamation of December 1 on the
    observance of World AIDS Day is listed in Appendix D at the end of this
    volume.