[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.