    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [June 12, 1998]
    [Pages 945-948]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Reception for Senator Barbara Boxer in San Francisco, California
    June 12, 1998

        The President. Thank you very much. First, let me say that I'm not
    sure it evidences good judgment to try to follow Barbara and Hillary to
    the microphone. [Laughter] But they certainly did a good job, and I
    enjoyed listening to them. Let me also thank, before I go too far, the
    San Raphael High School Advanced Jazz Band. They did a great job, and
    thank you all for playing.
        I thank our State Democratic chair, Art Torres, for being here, and all the candidates and officeholders
    who have come to support Barbara. When I was listening to Senator Boxer
    and the First Lady talk, and I was watching you listen to them talk, I
    said to myself, ``Well, all these people are for her anyway.''
    [Laughter] ``So what should I say that would help them get other people
    to be for her?'' And that's what Hillary was trying to do.
        Why should a farmer in the San Joaquin Valley vote for this not very
    tall sparkplug from Northern California who is supposed to be so
    liberal? [Laughter] Why should a businessman in the Silicon Valley? Why
    should a woman running a small tourist inn in the redwood forest? Why
    should someone struggling to make ends meet in Los Angeles? Why should
    someone in San Diego worried about whether there's too much pollution or
    illegal immigration or whatever on the border? Why should everybody else
    vote for her, people that aren't here today? That's the case you have to
    make, you know.
        And if you think about the nature of our political debates and the
    nature of the way the political parties behave in Washington and what
    our administration has tried to do, I think it really comes down to
    whether you want progress or politics to dominate the national arena.
        Barbara said some of this, and at the risk of being self-serving--I
    don't want to be--but I want to read this to you, because when I came to
    you in California in 1991 and '92, I said, ``Look, you guys are having a
    tough time out here, and I know this is the biggest State in the country
    and my distinguished opponent says I'm just a Governor from a small
    Southern State, but I've got a few ideas about how we ought to do things
    differently moving towards the 21st century. And we've got to break out
    of this crazy, highly partisan divisive debate we've got and start
    putting people first and start thinking about the future to create a
    21st century America where there's opportunity for everybody who's
    responsible enough to work for

    [[Page 946]]

    it; where we're coming together as a community, respecting our
    diversity, and still valuing our unity, instead of being divided and
    weakened by it; and where we're committed to preserving America's
    leadership in the world for peace, and freedom, and prosperity. And I
    have some ideas about how to do that.''
        Well, 5\1/2\ years later, unemployment in California has dropped by
    almost 50 percent. Senator Boxer said some of this, but I want to say it
    again, not for me, but for her. Listen now. This country has the lowest
    crime rate in 25 years. It has the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years
    and 16 million new jobs. It has the lowest welfare roll, as a percentage
    of the population, in 29 years. We're about to have the first balanced
    budget and surplus in 29 years, and it will be, in dollar terms, the
    biggest one we've ever had. We're going to have--we've got the lowest
    inflation in 32 years, the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, and
    the highest rate of homeownership in the history of the United States of
    America. That is the reality.
        Now, in addition to that, I'm very proud of the fact that we have
    the lowest rate of African-American unemployment ever recorded, the
    highest rate of Hispanic business ownership ever recorded, dramatic
    increases in the number of Asian-owned and other minority-owned
    businesses, a tripling of Federal Government assistance to women-owned
    businesses, an increase--excuse me, a big decrease in inequality among
    working people for the first time in over 20 years, 2.2 million children
    taken out of poverty, 5 million kids getting health insurance who
    wouldn't have otherwise have gotten it. We've opened the doors to
    college to virtually all Americans now with the tax credits, the
    scholarships, the work-study programs. We have done a lot of good things
    together because we put old-time politics aside and put people first.
        Now, we had to take on a lot of interest groups. We made a lot of
    people mad when we said tobacco is the number one public health problem
    in America; we're going to try to do something to keep kids alive. And
    they're still trying to stop us from doing it and putting out a lot of
    interesting misinformation in ad campaigns all across America. But every
    year, more people die from tobacco-related illnesses than accidents,
    murders, AIDS, cancer, combined, and a bunch of other stuff, too.
        We said, ``Look, if we're ever going to get the crime rate down in
    this country, we've got to quit talking tough on crime and do something
    that is both smart and tough.'' So we put 100,000 police on the street.
    We took assault weapons off the street, insofar as we could legally. We
    passed the Brady bill and kept hundreds of thousands of people who had
    criminal records from getting guns. And basically, the other side
    opposed us. The House of Representatives just put out a budget which
    would terminate the 100,000 police program, one of the most successful
    programs in the history of the United States of America in lowering the
    crime rate.
        So here's what I want to say to you. You have to go out and say,
    ``Look, whether you're a Republican or independent or a Democrat,
    whether you want to vote for a 7-foot tall man or a 4-foot 10-inch
    woman''--[laughter]----
        Senator Boxer. Eleven!
        The President. Eleven. [Laughter] Whether you're a--whatever your
    ethnic background, whatever you bring to this race, California is
    beginning to work; America is beginning to work; and this is not
    unrelated to the ideas. Nevermind the charisma or whether I give a good
    speech or Barbara looks beautiful up here and makes you feel good about
    all the energy and conviction she has, the country is moving forward
    because it is on a course that makes sense. And we should not change
    that course; we should speed that course up.
        I was glad to make the announcement that Barbara has been beating up
    on me for over 2 years to make today. We not only extended the
    moratorium on offshore drilling for another decade, we made it permanent
    in certain precious sanctuary areas so there can never be any drilling
    there.
        But what we want to do--we need to do more than that. We need to do
    more to try to make sure we can continue fishing without catching so
    many other unrelated fish in the nets that we're destroying the
    ecostructure. We need to do more research to see how we can reverse some
    of this pollution. We need to do a lot more to stop the pollution of the
    ocean from the land, because a lot of it is occurring from the land. We
    need to do more exploration. We now know more about the Moon than we do
    the ocean depths, and it's only 7 miles down to the ocean depths--long
    way underwater, isn't it? [Laughter] We've got a lot of things to do

    [[Page 947]]

    that directly affect how our children and grandchildren will live. You
    heard Barbara talking about some of them.
        We now have dramatically expanded preschool education, and we've
    made access to college virtually universal. But no one believes that our
    public schools, K through 12, are as good as they ought to be.
    California is doing a very good job, I think, now--the people of
    California and the grassroots movement--with things like the charter
    school movement. There was one charter school in America when I became
    President. When I started talking about them, most people thought that
    it had something to do with teaching people to draw maps. [Laughter] And
    our budget would take us up to over 3,000 over the next 4 years.
        Our budget would make sure we finish the work of connecting every
    school, classroom, and library to the Internet by the year 2000. Our
    budget would give communities enough funds to build or rehabilitate
    5,000 schools so we can have smaller classes, when we put the 100,000
    teachers in, that work.
        Our budget attempts to fund an initiative, along with some of the
    other legislation we have, to make our schools even safer, to deal with
    these horrible instances we've all had our hearts broken about in the
    last few months in our schools and other things that aren't so severe
    but are still very troubling, by not only dealing harshly with people
    who do wrong but by trying to prevent these things from happening in the
    first place. And we know that there are certain early warnings that come
    out in a lot of these instances that our schools are not organized to
    deal with, that our parents sometimes are not even attuned to.
        We also know that if we had children who are from difficult
    backgrounds, who live in difficult neighborhoods, in and around the
    school more hours a day, they would get in less trouble. Our budget
    provides, as Barbara Boxer said, for a huge increase in after-school
    programs and summer school programs.
        Let me just tell you one story. Hillary is from Chicago, and she
    will tell you that when we were serving in Arkansas, most people thought
    the Chicago schools were the worst big-city schools in America. And they
    had a strike there every year whether they needed to or not. [Laughter]
    They're not known for their teacher strikes anymore. They're known for
    their parent councils in every school. They're known for the fact that
    they have tens of thousands of children who now get three meals a day in
    the school. They're known for the fact that their summer school--they
    have mandatory summer school for people who don't score at a certain
    level from grade to grade. Their summer school is now the sixth biggest
    school district in the entire United States of America. And guess what?
    Juvenile crime has dropped through the floor, because they're taking
    care of kids and giving them something positive to live for and building
    them up. And that's what we want to do.
        We have a lot of other things to do in the environmental area. We
    have a lot of other things to do in the health care area. This health
    care bill of rights, I heard you cheering for Barbara when she talked
    about that. I'm telling you, every hour in America--and I say that as
    somebody who has not been opposed to the managed care movement in
    principle. We couldn't have continued the way we were going, where
    inflation in health care was going up at 3 times the rate of inflation
    and income in America; that was unsustainable. But we can't continue the
    direction we're going now, where the only thing that controls health
    care decisions for people in HMO's is too often the bottom line. That is
    crazy. We cannot allow it, and we need a health care bill of rights to
    protect patients, to protect people, to make sure they get the care they
    need. You can have good management and still put quality health care
    first.
        So there's a huge agenda out there. What I want you to go out there
    and say to your friends and neighbors and fellow Californians, who have
    been so good to me and the First Lady and the Vice President, is, ``Look
    where we are now. Look where we were in 1992. Don't just look even at
    the budget surplus or the economy; look at all these things.''
        Ideas drive action and get results, good or bad. Now, we all have
    things happen that are beyond our control, and I don't claim full credit
    for every good thing that's happened in America. You and the other
    American people deserve most of the credit. You get up and lead your
    lives every day, and you've done things that make sense and do good. But
    you know as well as I do that we wouldn't have elections and give people
    authority to make decisions if the decisions didn't amount to anything.
    It matters.
        So the first thing I want you to say to somebody who says, ``Well,
    I'm too conservative to vote for Barbara Boxer,'' or, ``I'm a
    Republican,''

    [[Page 948]]

    or ``I'm this,'' say, ``Look, you're a Californian. You're an American.
    Look where you are now. Look where you were then. Their ideas were
    right. They put them in; they had good consequences. And they've got
    good ideas for the future. This is about progress over politics.''
        Then you ought to talk about these things that Barbara talked about
    for the future and ask people to vote as American citizens in this
    election, for their children and their grandchildren. And if you do
    that, she will have a great victory, California will have a great
    victory, and it will certainly be the right thing for America.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:10 p.m. at the Fairmont Hotel.