    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [February 13, 1998]
    [Pages 226-230]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Reception in
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    February 13, 1998

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Martin; thank you,
    Diane. I think that it was so easy to raise
    money for this because everybody wanted to come see your place, myself.
    [Laughter] It is a truly beautiful, beautiful home, and we thank you for
    having us here.
        I thank Congressman Klink and Congressman
    Fattah and Congressman
    and Mrs. Holden for being here. And Joe
    Hoeffel, I thank you for being here and for
    having the courage to run again. This time I think you will be rewarded.
    Thank you very much.
        I've had a wonderful day in Philadelphia, and the mayor has painted a rosy picture of it, but I'd say it was
    fairly accurate. The people of Pennsylvania have been good to me and to
    my family and to the Clinton-Gore administration. The people of
    Philadelphia have been especially good. In the last election, I think,
    we won the city by more than 300,000 votes. And I am very, very
    grateful.
        I also want to thank Ed Rendell for
    always being there, for helping us raise money for Democrats across the
    country, as well as for me and for the Vice President. And I want you to
    know I really appreciate Martin Frost because
    in good times and bad times he's been willing to get out here and try to
    stick up for what he believes in and help his colleagues to be funded.
    And that's hard. And, you know, I never saw anybody any better at it
    than Martin Frost. He is just like a dog, to
    the bone, man. [Laughter] Every time--when I wake up in the morning and
    I start throwing bones to my dog, Buddy, that's the way Martin is when
    it comes to raising money. [Laughter] Martin lives in Texas. A lot of
    you know that Martin lives in Texas, and unfortunately, because our
    Coast Guard and other military personnel have gotten so good at
    apprehending drugs that used to come by air and by sea into the United
    States, more and more of the cocaine traffic has shifted overland from
    Mexico with this huge volume. And I thought to myself, if Martin Frost
    had the same sense of finding illegal drugs he has of finding campaign
    contributions, he alone could shut off the flow of illegal drugs through
    the Mexican border. [Laughter] I've never seen anything like it.
        But--so, I'm very grateful to all of you. And of course, I'm
    grateful for this turnout tonight. I'd like to just say a few words--I
    really didn't prepare any remarks tonight, but I have thought--I've
    asked myself, why was the response to the State of the Union this year,
    even more than other years, particularly strong? That is--we had 400,000
    hits on our website for information about the State of the Union, after
    the address. And I think part of it is that Americans are now--it's sort
    of sinking in that the country is working again.
        And all the Democrats here in the House will tell you, we had to
    work very hard for the first 4 or 5 years to make the country work
    again. I mean, so much was dysfunctional. When I was elected they told
    me that this year, if nothing happened, this year our deficit would be
    $370 billion. It was supposed to be $295 billion the first year of my
    Presidency. And the crime rate was going up and the welfare rolls were
    exploding. They reached an all-time high in February of 1994--all-time
    high. And we had all kinds of other real difficulties. And the country
    seemed to be dividing--and for 20 years--Ed talked about closing the
    inequality--for 20 years, average wages of people with a high school
    education or less had been dropping compared to inflation and inequality
    had been increasing among working people. And people just had the
    feeling things weren't working.
        So we brought a new approach to Washington, and we said the
    Democrats may be the progressive party, but we've got to be economically
    responsible. You have to understand, any given time more people are
    working than are

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    unemployed, you have to make the economy work for people who can take
    care of themselves if the economy works.
        So we went first for reducing the deficit. Then we said that it was
    fine for us to be an open market to other people's products, but we
    wanted to do more to open other markets to our products. Because, with 4
    percent of the world's people and 20 percent of the world's income, we
    obviously have to sell more of our products abroad if we're going to
    maintain our standard of living.
        And we recognized that no matter how much we tried to cut
    unnecessary spending to balance the budget, we still had to invest in
    our people and our future. So we worked at it for 5 years.
        Your mayor, as much as anybody in the
    country, I think, had a lot to do with passing a crime bill in 1994 that
    put 100,000 police on the street and take assault weapons off the street
    and begin to give young people something to do other than get in
    trouble. And we've just been working at it.
        And we were able, in this last State of the Union Address, as a
    Nation--not me but as a Nation--to celebrate what had happened. The
    deficit, instead of $370 billion, would be somewhere around $10 billion
    this year. And if we can repeat what's happened--we're in the fiscal
    year that began last October 1st--if the next 8 months are like the
    first 4, we'll actually have a balanced budget or a small surplus this
    year, not even next year.
        So we're moving in the right direction. The crime rate has gone down
    every year for 5 years in all major categories. We have the lowest
    welfare rolls in 27 years. We have the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate
    ever recorded since the unemployment rate has been measured by race; the
    lowest black unemployment rate in 25 or 26 years. We have--last year we
    began to really turn around this income inequality problem--the highest
    percentage gained in income last year was among working people in the
    lowest 20 percentile of our population, which is very important, closing
    those opportunity gaps.
        But beyond that, I think the response was good because we said, you
    know, the time to prepare the future is when the sun is shining, not
    when you're up to your ears in quicksand. And so I tried to lay out to
    the American people a program to really prepare this country for the new
    century, to invest in science and technology. I came here to talk to the
    American Academy of Scientists today about the recommendations we made
    for a 21st century research fund. It was an idea that I first heard from
    Hillary, that we ought to give a gift
    to the new millennium that says we're going to imagine the future and
    respect the past. So we proposed a fund, first of all, to dramatically
    increase medical research, to focus on cancer especially, to increase
    other scientific research, as well as to preserve our most important
    heritage. We've got--believe it or not, the Star-Spangled Banner is in
    danger of total destruction. We have to save it. It costs $13 million to
    do it. We need to repair the way we maintain the Declaration of
    Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. These are very
    important things to us.
        And all over the country there are people who have their own
    treasures. In Philadelphia, where the Nation began, it may be easy to
    overlook, but every little rural county in Pennsylvania has some part of
    America's past, some part of their roots that is very much worth saving.
    And people I think see that as a way of bringing the country together
    and moving forward.
        We have important missions in education. I really do believe we have
    succeeded now with all the things we've done in opening the doors of
    college to all. And we know we've got the best college system in the
    world, but no one believes we've got the best system of elementary and
    secondary education in the world. And we have to make that the best now.
    And then we have to get these kids who come from a difficult background
    and let them know they can go on to college.
        Believe me, if you want to lower the inequality in America, the only
    way to do it over the long run is to get more kids and more adults to
    get higher levels of education. And Chaka Fattah came up with this proposal and worked with a lot of the
    rest of us, and I mentioned it in the State of the Union, where we're
    going to go into--we're going to get colleges all over America to go
    into junior high schools or middle schools, starting with seventh
    graders, and tell them, ``We're prepared to give you somebody to work
    with you for the next 6 years to make sure that you succeed in school.
    You learn, you perform, and you can go on to college, and we'll tell you
    right now, right now, in the seventh grade, how much college aid you can
    get.

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    We'll guarantee it to you if you do your part.'' This will be an
    astonishing thing. This can revolutionize what we're trying to do.
        We want to lower class size in the early grades and help cities like
    Philadelphia, where the average school building is 65 years old, to
    repair school buildings. If you're going to have smaller classes, you've
    got to have more classrooms. If you're going to have more teachers,
    you're going to have more classrooms to teach them in.
        We want to help places like the place I visited in Jupiter, Florida,
    the other day, where they've got a school building, and then out back
    they've got 17 trailers with children in classrooms. We want to help
    them. This is a place where both the urban areas and the suburban areas
    that are growing have a common interest in building a better education
    system.
        We want to continue to improve the health care system--160 million
    Americans now in managed care, and it will be more. And there are lots
    of benefits to that. Every single living American has benefited from
    lowering the inflation rate in health care--every one of us has. It's
    one of the reasons we have a stronger economy. And all the people in the
    medical profession who participated in it, trying to provide quality
    health care with lower inflation costs, deserve our thanks, and the
    responsible people in managed care deserve our thanks.
        On the other hand, we do not want to get to a position where any
    American, because of the health care plan that he or she is in, is
    having the decisions about what's best for their health care made by
    someone other than a physician based on what's best for the patient. So
    we have to strike the proper balance here, and we want to do that.
        We want to continue to deal with the problem of coverage. We still
    have 40 million Americans without health care. We're trying to cover 5
    million more children. We want to let people between the ages of 55 and
    65, who lose their health insurance, just buy into the Medicare program
    at the real cost of the insurance policy or Medicare. And I believe that
    a lot of people will do this, hundreds of thousands, maybe even more
    than a million, often with the help of their children. We have a mission
    there.
        We have an environmental mission. We have got to find a way to
    continue to grow the economy and preserve the environment. We're working
    with Detroit to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other
    pollutants in cars without undermining our economy. We know now that
    there are lighting systems and glass systems and other building systems
    that are available that would enable us to build buildings, rehabilitate
    buildings, build factories, build electric generating capacity, grow the
    economy without increasing greenhouse gas emissions. We have to do that
    for our grandchildren. And we can think about that.
        I'll just mention one other thing that I think is very important. I
    said the other night--and I've gotten the strongest response across
    America, and I didn't really know what the response would be when I said
    it--that it is now projected that after running 30 years of deficits,
    we're actually going to run surpluses for several years. Now the surplus
    may go up or down depending on economic growth, but structurally we
    won't have a deficit anymore, which means in any given 5-year period,
    even if you have a recession or something, we'll have surpluses for the
    predictable future. And I said, and I will say again, I don't think we
    ought to start projecting how we're going to spend the surplus, whether
    it's in a spending program or a tax cut, until we have saved Social
    Security.
        You know, it is easy for us to forget, but it was not until 1985--
    now, think about this--in the whole history of the country, it was not
    until 1985 that senior citizens became less poor than the general
    population. In 1935, when Social Security got started, two-thirds of the
    people who were elderly in this country lived in poverty, most of them
    in abject poverty. Unless they had kids who could take care of them,
    once they were out of the work force they never made enough money to
    save. We didn't have, really, savings systems. And they were in terrible
    problems.
        Social Security helped to change that. The disability program in
    Social Security helped to help those who were disabled. Adjusting the
    income every year with the cost of living increases, although it cost
    money, helped to give dignity to people.
        Now, as the baby boomers retire--and I'm the oldest of the baby
    boomers; I was born in 1946--and for the 18 years, from the end of World
    War II, 1946, for 18 years thereafter, to 1964, that group of people is
    the largest single group of Americans in our history, ironically, until
    the group that is now in high school--in grade school and middle school.
    We finally

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    have a group of schoolchildren bigger than the baby boom generation.
        But there will be for several years--there will be, for several
    years after the baby boomers retire, a dramatic shift in the number of
    people retired compared to the number of people working. Not so long ago
    there were five people working for every person drawing Social Security.
    Now there are about four, I think. But by the time all the baby boomers
    get into the retirement system, if we retire at presently projected
    rates, there will be only two people working for everybody drawing.
        Now, I don't know a single person in my generation that wants to
    give up the elemental security of Social Security. But neither have I
    ever met a person in my generation who wants to burden our children with
    higher tax rates and undermine their ability to raise our grandchildren.
    Therefore, if we start now, since the Social Security Trust Fund is okay
    until 2029--and actually I think soon we'll be a few years beyond that--
    we can take modest steps now that will take care of Social Security for
    a long time in the future.
        Now, something else has happened that we all know. Since we're all
    earning higher incomes, hardly anybody can actually maintain their
    standard of living with Social Security alone. So in addition to
    reforming Social Security and saving it, we've been working very hard
    since 1994 to make it easier for people to save in 401(k) plans, to
    protect retirement more, to make it easier for people to carry their
    retirement around from job to job. We will have to do more of that. We
    will have to help people do more to save for their own retirement. But
    this is an incredible gift that we can give to the future. So in the
    next year we're going to have these forums around the country. Then
    we're going to try to pass legislation in 1999. Now, I think the
    American people want us to do that.
        Now, let's get down to the political purpose of tonight. In every
    election in the 20th century, in off years, and especially in the second
    term of a President, the President's party always loses seats in one
    House of the Congress in an off-year election. We have a chance to beat
    that trend this year, and I honestly believe there is quite a good
    chance, not just a 30 percent chance, a very good chance that Martin
    Frost is right, that we could have a Democratic
    majority, that Mr. Gephardt could become
    the Speaker, that we could go forward--a very good chance. Why? Because
    for one thing, this is not a typical second term. That was not a rest-
    in-the-shade agenda that I gave the American people. [Laughter] And I
    don't believe in resting in the shade. I intend to work till the last
    minute of the last hour of the last day in January of 2001. I intend to
    be hitting it. I don't believe in that.
        Audience member. That sounds like something our mayor said.
        The President. And if we can stay united, as we are, and if we can
    be positive and if we can not play politics--that is, I think it is
    imperative that we do everything we can to work with the Republicans to
    pass every single thing we can this year, because we know that in good
    faith, no matter how hard we work with them, no matter how hard they
    work with us in good faith, there will be enough honest disagreements in
    this agenda I've outlined, that by November, Joe
    will still have something to campaign on. [Laughter]
        But we have to recognize that people elect you to govern. So, if we
    can stay together, we've got a good agenda; we've got good candidates;
    the only other thing we have to do is to make sure that we are properly
    funded. In the last 2 weeks of the last election, when we were 11 seats
    short of taking Congress, in the 20 closest races our people were
    outspent about four to one--about four to one in the last 2 weeks--in
    the closest races. We are determined to see that that won't happen this
    time. And you are helping. But I believe that we are best served by a
    positive campaign, working, bringing out the best in the American
    people, and getting people to look to the future.
        Everybody knows that this new approach is working. All the things
    they used to say about the Democrats are not valid anymore--our
    opponent. They can't say we're fiscally irresponsible because we
    balanced the budget. They can't say that we are weak on crime because
    we've had policies that were in effect written by the law enforcement
    community, implemented, and are working. They can't say that we don't
    care about work over welfare because we've moved record numbers of
    people from welfare to work and still tried to do more to support their
    children.
        So a lot of these hits that used to be put on the Democrats don't
    hold water anymore.

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    Now we are free to debate the future, to envision the future, to work
    for the future. And if we'll do that, we can achieve it.
        Let me just leave you with this last point. I spent a lot of time in
    the last year reading the history of the 19th century, because I came to
    realize that, like most Americans, I knew a fair amount about our
    founding and what happened in Philadelphia, I knew a fair amount about
    Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and I knew a fair amount about what
    had happened from Theodore Roosevelt forward. Most Americans don't know
    much about what happened after Andrew Jackson until Abraham Lincoln, and
    what happened after Abraham Lincoln until Teddy Roosevelt--they just
    don't.
        And what I got out of that study was a more unified picture of the
    history of America. And if you go back to our founding and study the
    history of America, I think you'll see that, at its best, our progress
    through time has always been about three things: widening the circle of
    opportunity, deepening the meaning of our freedom and our liberty, and
    strengthening our Union, our sense of national union.
        Thomas Jefferson's greatest achievements--well, he wrote the
    Declaration of Independence. He changed us from being a colonial country
    to a continental country when he bought Louisiana--giving me a chance to
    become President, thank you very much--[laughter]--sending Lewis and
    Clark on their great expedition.
        Abraham Lincoln strengthened the Union and deepened liberty. But
    also--a lot of people forgot about it--he signed the bill in the middle
    of the Civil War to establish the system of land grant colleges,
    widening the circle of opportunity.
        In the 20th century our party--we haven't always been right, as I've
    said, we've been wrong from time to time, and we haven't always been up
    to date, but we have always, from the time of Woodrow Wilson forward,
    been in the vanguard of widening the circle of opportunity, deepening
    the meaning of freedom, strengthening the Union of the United States.
    And if we will do that all year, on the stump, but also at work, then I
    believe that the chances that the American people will say, ``We like
    this, and we will elect people who believe this,'' are quite
    extraordinary. And you have made it possible for us to have a chance to
    do that.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Mayor Edward Rendell of Philadelphia; dinner
    hosts Martin and Diane Weiss; Gwen Holden, wife of Representative Tim
    Holden; Joe Hoeffel, candidate for Pennsylvania's 13th Congressional
    District; and Representative Martin Frost, chairman, Democratic
    Congressional Campaign Committee.