    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [January 8, 1998]
    [Pages 15-21]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a Democratic National
    Committee Dinner in New York City
    January 8, 1998

        The President. First of all, let me say to Alan and Susan, it is wonderful to
    be back here. I remember very well when I was here in 1992. I also
    remember an event that they were part of in 1992, about 10 days before
    the New Hampshire primary, when everybody said I was absolutely dead; I
    had no chance to win; I was dropping like a rock in the polls. And we
    showed up in New York City for a fundraiser, and there were 700 people
    in this room for a dead candidate. So I said, ``I am not dead yet.''
    [Laughter]
        And that night was memorable for two reasons: One was that we had so
    many people there, thanks to a lot of you in this room, who didn't
    believe that it was over and who believed in what I was trying to do.
    The other was that I had a very--what is now a very famous encounter in
    the kitchen, walking to the speech, with a Greek immigrant
    waiter who said that his 10-year-old
    son had asked him to vote for me because of
    what he'd heard me say, and he would do it if I would be more concerned
    about his son's safety. He said he lived across the street from a park,
    but his kid couldn't play in the park without his being there; he lived
    down the street from a school, but his child couldn't walk to the
    school. And he said that where he had lived, he was much poorer but he
    was free.
        It was a very compelling portrait of why crime and physical safety
    is an important public issue. And he said, ``So if I vote for you like
    my boy wants me to, I want you to make my boy free.'' And that man and
    his son became friends of ours, and they've been to lots of things, and
    they even went to Ohio once to an anticrime event with us.
        So a lot has happened because of my friendship with Alan and Susan.
    If he had said one more time that he wasn't a Democrat--I thought he was
    protesting too much. [Laughter] I'm a Baptist; I believe in deathbed
    conversions. It's not too late. [Laughter]
        Let me say what I thought would be helpful tonight. I do have to
    leave fairly soon, but before--because we've all been here and most of
    you have heard me give a zillion speeches, I'd like to just talk for 2
    minutes and then give you time--if you have any questions or anything
    you want to talk about, I'd like to just hear from you.
        Steve has already said what this
    investment is about. But let me back up a little bit. In 1992, I ran for
    President because I thought the country was divided and drifting, and I
    believed we were on the verge not just of a new century and a new
    millennium but a profoundly different time in human affairs. We now know
    that this whole process of globalization and the revolution in
    information in science and technology is dramatically changing the way
    we live and work and relate to each other and relate

    [[Page 16]]

    to the rest of the world in ways that are mostly good, but have some
    stiff challenges as well.
        We also know that we are much more interdependent than ever before,
    both within our country and beyond our borders. Today, you know, as I
    met people today, it was amazing how freely the conversations went back
    and forth between issues that once would have been thought of as foreign
    or domestic, but all were perceived as having a direct impact on the
    lives and welfare of the people with whom I was meeting today.
        Now, we have tried basically to focus the country on making the
    changes necessary to create a 21st century America where there will be
    opportunity for everyone who's responsible enough to work for it; where,
    out of all of our diversity, we will build a community that is still one
    America, united and strong; and where our country will have enough
    support for our continuing involvement in the world, that we can keep
    leading the world toward greater peace and freedom and prosperity.
        That has required a redefinition of the role of Government,
    basically, that the Republican Party tried for years with great success
    to simply discredit the whole enterprise of Government, and to say that
    Government was the problem, and to basically position individual freedom
    against Government. President Reagan was quite
    brilliant at it, and he did it very graphically and compellingly. But I
    think that the Democrats were not able to successfully counter, in part,
    because we seemed to be defending yesterday's Government. What we tried
    to do is to say that Government is the instrument of our personal
    freedom and our strong community, and there are some things that we can
    only do through our role as citizens. So I think the basic function of
    Government in the 21st century will be to establish the conditions and
    give people the tools to make the most of their own lives and build
    strong families and communities and make this country strong--not to do
    everything but not to sit on the sidelines. And I'm very mindful of that
    because of all the obvious challenges we're facing today at home and
    abroad.
        Now, if you look at where we are compared to where we were 5 years
    ago, basically, we've changed the economic policy, the crime policy, the
    social policy, and the education policy of the National Government, I
    think, to good results. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 24
    years, the lowest crime rate in 24 years, the biggest drop in the
    welfare rolls in history, a really serious attempt to deal with the
    conflicts of family and work that people face through things like the
    family and medical leave law, and a serious attempt to prove that we can
    grow the economy while improving the environment.
        In the last 5 years, while we've had 13 million new jobs, the air is
    cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food supply is safer. We have cleaned
    up more toxic waste dumps than at any comparable period in history and
    put more land in trust in one form or another than any administration in
    American history except the administrations of the two Roosevelts.
        So I think that we would have to say the record about the philosophy
    has been pretty good. In addition to that, the United States has been a
    force for peace and freedom and expanded mutual trade agreements to
    reinforce prosperity.
        Now, as you look ahead to the future, just very briefly, what will
    we be dealing with in '98? What still needs to be done before I leave
    office in 2000? On the economy, first we must do no harm. We have fought
    very hard. We're going to have very close to a balanced budget this
    year. When I took office, the estimate was that the deficit would be
    $357 billion this year. The last thing we need to do is to explode the
    deficit again. So anybody who's got any kind of proposals, whether it's
    for spending or tax cuts or anything else, my view is, first, do no
    harm. We have fought too hard, and we see evidence all around the world
    that no country is big enough or strong enough to sustain its prosperity
    in the face of financial irresponsibility.
        Second, we have got to do a better job of bringing the benefits of
    enterprise in the modern economy to poor areas. You heard Alan talk
    about how we once were interested in this. We see a real renaissance in
    some urban neighborhoods, but not in most urban neighborhoods. We must
    do better there.
        On the environment, we have a number of challenges; I'll just
    mention one. I think this agreement we made at Kyoto will prove to be a
    very historic agreement. It wasn't perfect, it didn't have everything we
    wanted, but it's the first time that major nations of the world ever
    committed themselves to the proposition that they could grow the
    economy, cut greenhouse

    [[Page 17]]

    gas emissions, and do it primarily through market mechanisms. And I
    believe it's profoundly important, and I intend to work very hard on
    implementing it this year.
        We have an entitlement challenge in this country because the baby
    boomers are so numerous that we have to make some adjustments in both
    Social Security and Medicare if we expect to preserve them for the baby
    boom generation at a bearable cost for our own children. And I think you
    will see significant progress on that in the next 2 years.
        In education, the fundamental problems it seems to me are--I'm very
    proud of the fact that in the balanced budget act we basically make
    community college free for people with the tax credits and open the
    doors of college--we did more for college access than anytime in 50
    years, since the GI bill. It's a stunning piece of work that, for some
    reason, doesn't seem to have acquired a lot of notice in the press. But
    when I talk to ordinary people about it, they think it's the greatest
    thing since sliced bread. So that's a big deal.
        But what we have to do now is make our schools work again. There's a
    report just today saying that urban schools basically are performing
    vastly below suburban schools on all national measures of testing. I've
    done my best to try to promote a set of structural reforms and high
    standards and rigorous testing with consequences. The report shows that
    in Virginia, where they have urban schools that have done much better
    than the national average, it's because they have specific, rigorous
    standards; they measure the standards, and there are consequences to the
    results they find. This is not rocket science. These children can learn.
    Most of the teachers are fully capable of doing what they need to do.
    The system is not adequate to meet what the children deserve and the
    country needs, and we intend to keep working on that.
        Well, there are a lot of other issues I can--yesterday we announced
    the biggest child care program in the history of the country, that we
    will have to pay for. I think that's a good thing. But it must be paid
    for with the successful resolution of the tobacco issue, which I hope
    the Congress will resolve satisfactorily. On the international front, I
    hope we will approve the expansion of NATO. I'd still like to have more
    trade authority. And I hope the Congress will pay our debts to the
    United Nations and we can resume our global role and I think that will
    help.
        I do believe that we will give some gifts to the millennium. I think
    you'll see a significant increase in medical research and a number of
    other things that are of interest to a lot of you in this room. I think
    '98, even though it's a political year, will be a good year. Some of you
    asked me about political reform, I will do my best. We have a vote
    scheduled in the springtime--in March, I think--and both the leadership
    in both Houses has promised to vote on some kind of campaign finance
    reform. They've not promised to vote on the bill that I support, McCain-
    Feingold, but a vote on some kind of campaign finance reform.
        And I have said this repeatedly--I'll say it again--I think the
    trick is, if we're going to have limits on soft money, then the hard
    money contribution limits ought to be realistic in light of today's
    cost, number one. And, number two, we ought to have access to free or
    reduced air time for candidates who observe overall spending limits. The
    Supreme Court has made clear that you can't control how much money
    people spend on their own campaigns, because money is speech. I'm not
    sure I agree with the decision, but there it is, and it's been there for
    over 20 years.
        What's driving the costs of campaigns is the cost of air time, the
    cost of communicating directly with the voters. If there were some
    standards for how that could be done, if you got the benefit of free or
    reduced air time, I think you might see a big turnup in voter turnout
    because you could have more, if you will, interactive air time--longer
    programs, call-in programs, townhall meetings, questions and answers.
    The whole thing could be changed. But we're going to have to have some
    help on the expenditure side, as well as on the money raising side.
        So I think it will be a good year. I'm excited about it. We've
    already got more than one foot in the 21st century, but we also have
    some really significant challenges. And when you think about all the
    medical research that's going on, on the one hand, and the dangers of
    chemical and biological warfare on the other; when you think about how
    we're getting along in America with a couple of hundred racial and
    ethnic groups, on the one hand, and the fights that still go on from
    Africa to Northern Ireland to the Middle East to Bosnia on the other,
    you see the

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    two sides of the 21st century. We have to make sure that interdependence
    and community triumph over anarchy and chaos. And I think we can do it
    if we stay on the course we're on.
        Thank you. Anybody got a--I'll answer two questions. Anybody want to
    ask a question? Yes.

    Projected Federal Budget Surplus

        Q. [Inaudible]
        The President. Well, let me say first, we shouldn't spend it
    mindlessly because we have to realize that the surplus is produced in
    large measure because Social Security taxes are still higher than Social
    Security outlays on an annual basis. And we are now--we have under
    careful review what our various options are and--I'd like to be more
    candid, but I have to go through a consultative process with members of
    my party and others in Congress as well before I can announce a final
    position. But I've tried to make it as clear as I could that I favor
    being as prudent as possible with this money.
        And I also think you've got to realize, we've got to think about,
    before we run off and spend all the money that is going to be generated,
    number one, it has not been generated yet. I mean, we hope that we can
    keep this economy going. We hope we can keep the growth going. We hope
    that--but this surplus everybody is talking about is a projected
    surplus. It's not a bird in the hand. So that's something you should
    know.
        Number two, we have not yet decided as a country what we're going to
    do about Social Security and Medicare and how to handle the attendant
    changes and whether there will be costs to those changes, how they will
    be borne, and where the money will come from. So I'm taking a very
    cautious approach and I'm going to look at all the alternatives, but the
    number one thing is we've got to realize that this economy is humming
    along because we got the deficit down in large measure--not entirely--
    there's a lot of productivity in the American economy, millions of
    people make great decisions--but we got the deficit down and people
    perceive that we know what we're doing and that we're going to proceed
    with discipline and prudence in a world that is full of some
    uncertainty.
        And the one thing I can tell you is whatever I do, I'm not going to
    do anything that will make anybody think we have abandoned our
    commitment to discipline and prudence and long term growth and
    investment. You make room for domestic spending if you pay the debt
    down; because if you pay the debt down, you reduce the percentage of the
    budget going to debt service. So you have more money that way. There are
    all kinds of things, I mean, there are lots of ways to look at this.
    I've not reached a final decision. And even if I had, frankly, I
    couldn't discuss it in great detail because I haven't finished my
    consultations yet. But I'm going to do something I think is economically
    prudent, that's the most important thing.
        And, secondly, I want to think about the long run. We have to think
    about our intergenerational responsibilities on this entitlement
    business.
        Q. Mr. President, one thing that I think most people--[inaudible]--
    --
        The President. Thank you. Yes, in the back.

    President's Initiative on Race

        Q. Mr. President, I'm very impressed with your initiative on race,
    but I'm concerned that you seem to be the only person in America who
    cares about this issue. And I wonder what you can do to have other
    members of your administration--Cabinet members and other prominent
    Democrats, Governors, whatever, speak out on it.
        The President. Well, interestingly enough, first of all, my
    Cabinet--they've all been doing things. When I did my townhall meeting
    in Akron, my Cabinet that week, they were all doing different things
    around America. And Andrew Cuomo has, in
    particular, been very active in HUD in the last few months largely, I'm
    sad to say, because there is still a lot of housing discrimination in
    this country, a lot of old-fashioned discrimination in this country in
    housing. And he's done a lot on it.
        We're trying to do more and more visible things. But let me say,
    we're trying to achieve--let me tell you what we're trying to achieve
    with the race initiative. First, we're trying to make sure that there is
    an honest dialog in every community--community-based approach to this--
    about how each community is going to deal with whatever their racial
    composition is and whatever the challenges of working together are. And
    the evidence is clear that the answer is to get people to work together,
    learn together, and serve together in the community.
        The second thing we're trying to do is to catalog promising
    practices of really exhilarating

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    things that are going on around this country now, put them on our
    homepage, and make them widely available. And we now have a lot of them
    at our website, and we have huge numbers of people tapping into that and
    then getting in touch with others around the country to learn what they
    can do in their own community.
        The third thing we're trying to do is to recruit leaders. I sent a
    letter to 25,000 student leaders and asked them to get involved in the
    race initiative, and we've gotten literally hundreds of replies from
    young people telling us exactly what they're doing. Some of them are
    fascinating, including a young white football player, star football
    player, who involved athletes in an interracial initiative in the
    Washington, DC, area.
        And the fourth thing we're trying to do is to identify specific
    governmental policies that will help to not only address race problems
    that disproportionately affect minorities but will do it in a way that
    will bring people together, like the initiative we had to give
    scholarships to people who go teach in inner-city schools.
        So we'll keep trying to turn it up. But I think it's been quite a
    productive thing, and I think the American people are actually quite
    interested in it. You know, people know--they pick up the paper every
    day. They see that there are tribal warfares in Africa. They know that
    we're still having trouble resettling the Croatians and the Muslims and
    the Serbs in Bosnia. They know that the Irish just had another round of
    killings, right on the verge of breaking through the Irish peace
    process. They know that there's still trouble in the Middle East. And
    they know there's still trouble in America. In the Washington papers,
    we've been living through the efforts of a Muslim school that wants to
    expand trying to find a location in a community that feels comfortable
    accepting it. And a Muslim symbol was defaced on the Capitol during the
    Christmas season, and Jewish leaders came out and condemned it--
    interesting.
        So we're trying to work through this stuff. I think being explicit
    and open about it is helping us to get it right. In some ways the most
    important thing--if we can prove that along with all of our economic
    strength and our native political system that we can figure out how to
    be bound together and still celebrate our differences, but say what
    unites us is more important, that may be the most important meal ticket
    to the 21st century we have.

    Asian Economies

        Q. Mr. President, how bad do you see the situation in Asia right
    now? What are your nightmare concerns----
        The President. Well, I hope you will understand that because of the
    fact that what is going on in Asia is the function of markets and they
    operate on perceptions, that I should be very careful about what I say
    about that.
        Let me tell you what I think. I think that the United States has an
    interest in a stable and successful Asia. I think there's an enormous
    amount of productive capacity in those countries. And I think if we can
    get the policies right, we'll get through this. And I'm working as hard
    as I can to try to get it right. And there are some encouraging signs
    and some troubling signs, and it's a complex thing; we have to work it
    hard. I can say this, I think we've been very well served to have Bob
    Rubin and Larry Summers and the other people we've got at the Treasury Department
    working on this. I think they're making about the best stab at it
    anybody could. And we have worked very long hours for some extended
    period of time now on it, and we're just going to keep at it and try to
    make it come out okay.

    Middle East Peace Process/Iraq

        Q. [Inaudible]
        The President. Well, on the Middle East peace process, I'm going to
    see Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Arafat in the next few days and try to move the thing forward
    a little bit. And I think it really depends upon whether the recent
    change in Israel, political change, is seen as a spur to action or a
    break on action, and whether we can find a way to keep this thing going
    forward.
        The real problem with the Middle East peace process is it's like a
    living organism that gets sick if it doesn't move, you know. It's got to
    move. You've got to just keep something happening, even if it's not
    ideal--you've got to keep something happening. So we're working very
    hard on that, and I'm very hopeful about it.
        With Iraq, keep in mind what happened. We've already achieved a not
    insignificant portion of our objective. Saddam Hussein's goal was to say, ``I'm going to throw all these
    inspectors out and leave them out until you drop some or all of the
    sanctions.'' And we said, ``You don't understand. We'll leave the
    sanctions on until

    [[Page 20]]

    hell freezes over unless you let the inspections go forward.''
        Now, I have not ruled out--or in--any further action of any kind
    because there are still all kinds of unresolved questions about the
    integrity of the inspection process, and we're working on that. But keep
    in mind, Iraq's capacity to do damage to its neighbors has been
    dramatically eroded because of the sanctions process. There are a lot of
    countries that would like to relax it because they would benefit from
    that relaxation. But we have an obligation to try to limit the
    vulnerability not only of Americans but of the rest of the world to
    chemical and biological warfare.
        This is not about refighting the Gulf war. It's not about Kuwait or
    anybody else. It's about--there's a reason those U.N. resolutions passed
    and a reason the world is rightfully concerned about trying to contain
    the damage of chemical and biological warfare.
        So we're going to stay firm, and I'm not ruling in or out anything,
    but we're being vigilant. But keep in mind, what he tried to do didn't
    work. What he wanted was a relaxation of the sanctions in return for
    just going back to business as usual, and that strategy failed. And
    therefore, his capacity to do more harm is not materializing.

    Federal Funding for Medical Research

        Q. [Inaudible]
        The President. Well, let me basically say, I think you will see a
    significant increase in medical research coming out of this Congress.
    It's one thing we have bipartisan agreement on. It is something we know
    we have to do to try to offset the cutbacks to our health institutions
    that have come not only from the HMO's but from our attempts to save
    money in the Medicare and Medicaid programs which indirectly, at least,
    funded a lot of the teaching and research hospitals of the country. And
    I think you will see a big step forward there.

    Support for the Arts

        Q. [Inaudible]
        The President. She asked if we saw any future in national support
    for the arts. I think that we have defeated the effort coming from the
    Republican right to destroy the National Endowment for the Arts and the
    National Endowment for the Humanities. I don't think that will be
    revived; I don't think it will. I think the real question is--since in
    some cases it's life or death; in other cases it's largely symbolic
    support. It says that we think this is important, an important national
    purpose.
        What I have looked at is whether or not there was some way we could
    institutionalize and make permanent more of a genuine endowment on the
    arts--and we're batting that around and asking for ideas around the
    country--in a way that would take it out of the annual political debate,
    which would be helpful to some of our Republican friends who really do
    want to help, want to be supportive. I personally think it's very
    important, and I think that there will not be the onslaught there has
    been in the past to kill it. The question is whether we can
    institutionalize it maybe even at a higher level and make it permanent.
        Go ahead.

    Cuba-U.S. Relations

        Q.  [Inaudible]
        The President. Well, I hope so. But that's up to Cuba. You know, we
    were making real progress in our relations with Cuba, and even in the
    Cuban-American community there was ample evidence of changing attitudes
    and an attempt to change within Cuba, reciprocated by change in the
    United States. That was the concept of the Cuba Democracy Act, which
    passed before I became President. The Democratic Congress passed it;
    President Bush signed it; I supported it
    strongly, and I used it. And it was a series of carrots and sticks
    designed to say, as Cuba opens, we will open to Cuba, like two flowers
    coming to bloom at the same time.
        And then they murdered those people. They shot those people out of
    the sky, in international waters. And it would not have been legal for
    them to shoot them down if they had been in the territorial waters of
    Cuba or flying right over Havana, for that reason, under the Chicago
    Convention to which Cuba was a signatory.
        So innocent people were killed. That put a deep chill on our
    relationship. It led to a new and more rigorous act being passed, which
    would prevent me from lifting the embargo without the support of
    Congress, among other things.
        But my position, however, is the same as it has always been: I think
    there ought to be a reciprocal relationship here where, as Cuba shows
    more support for human rights and democracy, we should open up. We
    should try

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    some reciprocal effort. But it has to be reciprocal. We can't--I don't
    think, after what happened to those people, I don't think that--I don't
    have any confidence that a unilateral gesture would have any success.
        Now, I would be interested to see how the Pope's visit goes and what happens there. I'm very encouraged
    that he's going. I was encouraged that the Cuban people were permitted
    to observe Christmas. And we'll just see what happens. I've got--the
    Pope is a very persuasive fellow and he, after all, is the voice of God
    to those of us who believe that. And we hope that he does well.
        I've got to run. I'm sorry. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:18 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Alan and Susan Patricof; Greek
    immigrant Dimitrious Theofanis and his son, Nick; Prime Minister
    Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel; Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian
    Authority; President Saddam Hussein of Iraq; and Pope John Paul II.