    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [March 19, 1998]
    [Pages 406-409]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner
    March 19, 1998

        Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by thanking
    all of you, not only for your warm welcome in this magnificent Women's
    Museum, which I always love to visit and which is a real treasure of our
    National Capital, but for being here to support the Senators who are
    here and those whom we hope to add to their ranks.

    [[Page 407]]

        I thank Senator Torricelli not only
    for his friendship and his kind words but for his fighting spirit. He
    has the heart of a lion. And when others feel weak, he feels stronger,
    and we are stronger because of what Bob Torricelli has done. And I thank
    him.
        I thank Senator Kerrey, my longtime
    friend. We used to be Governors together, and we used to lament the
    condition of our country in the eighties, and the escalating deficits
    and what we saw as the irresponsibility of decisionmaking here. Bob
    Kerrey did cast the deciding vote on that budget bill, and I thank him
    for that. But in a real sense, so did all the other Democrats, because
    we didn't have a single Republican vote. And Al Gore even had to vote.
    And as he says, ``Whenever I vote, we win.'' [Laughter]
        But imagine how different the last 6 years would have been--5 years
    and 3 months--if we hadn't done that. And I want to thank Senator
    Kerrey for being willing to do this job for
    2 years. It's not easy. It's easy to give the speeches. You know, he
    just asked me to show up every now and then at these events and smile
    and take a few pictures, see people I enjoy visiting with anyway, and
    give a talk. But he's had to go across the country and do all the work
    and see all of you and ask you to help. And it's often a thankless task.
    And when he took it, it was certainly a thankless task because we were
    down and our numbers were depleted. But he took it on, and I predict a
    stunning and historically unpredicted result in November of 1998. And
    you will have a lot to do with it, Senator Kerrey. We thank you very
    much.
        Finally, I want to say that it would be impossible for me to do my
    job if it weren't for Tom Daschle. He is a
    magnificent leader of our Democrats in the Senate. Yes, let's stand up
    for him. [Applause]
        I want to talk very briefly about what I believe to be at stake.
    First, just a little picture on the past. It is wonderful to stand up
    and say that these are good times for America, that we have the lowest
    unemployment rate in 24 years and the lowest crime rate in 24 years and
    the smallest welfare population in 27 years and the lowest inflation in
    30 years and the highest homeownership in history. That's wonderful to
    say. But we forget how hard it was to do.
        Before the Balanced Budget Act ever saved a dollar, the deficit had
    been reduced by 92 percent because of the votes solely of Democratic
    Members of Congress in 1993. The crime rate is down in part because we
    moved beyond the hot rhetoric of tough talk to put 100,000 more
    community police officers on the street, to give our children something
    positive to do in their leisure hours, and to take assault weapons off
    the street. And many of our people gave up their jobs on those two
    votes.
        And so I say to you, I am proud to be a member of my party, and I'm
    proud of every Senator and every Congressman who cast those votes. And
    the people who lost their jobs because they did it can at least go to
    sleep tonight knowing that this is a better, stronger, safer country
    because they were in the Democratic caucus, and they did what was right
    when the chips were down. And I'm grateful to them.
        After a year of real, harsh partisan fighting back and forth in
    which the majority party in the Congress today shut the Government down,
    and we didn't shut down--and so the ``Contract With America'' was
    abandoned, and we moved on to bipartisan cooperation.
        We passed a balanced budget bill. That bill did a lot to keep our
    recovery going, and I thank every Republican who supported it. But that
    bill had the biggest increase in child health care since 1965. It will
    add 5 million people--children to the ranks of those with health
    insurance. It had the largest increase in aid to education since 1965.
    It opened the doors of college to all Americans by giving a $1,500 tax
    credit for the first 2 years of college; further tax credits; education
    IRA's; 300,000 work-study positions; finally, tax deductibility for the
    interest on student loans. Those education provisions and those health
    care provisions, you know who put them in the Balanced Budget Act: the
    Democrats in the United States Senate and in the United States House of
    Representatives. And I thank them for it.
        And more importantly, I ask you to look to the future. We have a lot
    of challenging decisions. Senator Kerrey said we've got an ambitious
    agenda; we do. We now have virtual consensus in Washington that before
    we spend a surplus that hasn't even materialized, we should save Social
    Security for the 21st century and not allow the baby boomers to bankrupt
    their children or to live in abject poverty because

    [[Page 408]]

    we failed to do it. It was because of the unanimous support of the
    Democrats in the Senate and in the House for that position that it is
    now the position of the entire United States Government. And that's
    another thing that the future will be able to thank Tom Daschle and all the other members of this caucus who are
    here tonight for, and I thank them for it.
        We also have to save Medicare. We're going to have an election this
    year, and we're going to have a report at the end of the year to deal
    with Medicare changes and Social Security changes. Who do you trust to
    make those changes for the 21st century? Think about that when you think
    about how much support you're going to give Senator Patty Murray, for
    example. I think it's clear what the answer is: the Democratic Party.
        We're in the middle--we have some money now, finally, at long last.
    And I have asked the Congress to put the money primarily into education
    and into research for the 21st century, to medical research and
    scientific research; but in education, to go down to a class size all
    across America that averages 18 kids a class in the first 3 grades, to
    rehabilitate 5,000 schools, and hire 100,000 more teachers.
        In the Senate, the majority party voted to cut $400 million this
    year out of education. We don't agree with that. We think that the
    American people should be heard on that. And we believe they will agree
    with Tom Daschle and the members of the
    Democratic caucus and the people who will be running in the Senate
    elections this November. That's important. We need to stand up for that.
        I could give you the same argument on the environment. You know as
    well as I do that the environment will be a more important issue 10
    years from now than it is today. You know it will be. Who is more likely
    to stand up for responsible action that will permit us to preserve our
    environment, indeed to enhance it, as we continue to grow the economy?
        You just go through these issues. Child care: Most American parents
    are in the work force, and I promise you that hundreds of thousands,
    even millions of them, go to work every day worried sick that their
    children do not have access to quality, affordable child care. We have a
    proposal to address that, to increase the child care tax credit for
    middle class families, to increase the support we give to lower income
    working families. That support, today at least, is not supported; that
    program is not supported by the majority party in the Senate.
        I believe the American people agree with us, and every single Senate
    election will be a referendum on whether we really believe it when we
    say that parenting is our most important job, and everybody ought to be
    able to succeed at home and at work at the same time.
        Let me close with a story. Beyond all the policies, there really is
    a question of whether we are committed to putting the interests of all
    our people first. Yesterday I went out to Las Vegas to meet with the
    executive committee of the AFL-CIO. But before I did that, I went to
    this wonderful training program that the carpenters union runs out there
    for people who are basically entry-level carpenters, trying to give them
    higher levels of skill. And in addition to the on-site, on-the-job
    training, they also have classroom time in which they try to make sure
    that all the working people understand what their health insurance is
    and how it works, what their retirement plan is and how it works, and
    how it all fits in and how they can manage their own finances better.
        So I met with all these people; most of them I'd say were between 28
    and 35 years old, very young by my standards. And the first question
    was, in this class--this young man said, ``Well, I see I've got a good
    retirement, but have you people in the Government done what you should
    to protect it?'' And I was able to proudly say that in 1994, when we
    were still in the majority, we passed a plan to reform the Pension
    Benefit Guaranty Corporation; we saved 8\1/2\ million pensions that were
    underwater; we stabilized 40 million more. And yes, we had done
    everything we responsibly could to protect the integrity of the pension
    systems of the country.
        Then the next young man said--and this is what made me so proud of
    all these young people and proud to be a member of my party--the next
    young guy said, ``Look up there at all of our fringe benefits, because
    we belong to the union and because we're working here in a State and a
    city with low unemployment and a lot of prosperity.'' He said, ``Do you
    realize there are people who do what we do for a living who don't make
    as much per hour as we get in fringe benefits?'' He said, ``Mr.
    President, how are those people living? I think they ought to have
    health care, too. How are they

    [[Page 409]]

    going to save for their retirement? How are they going to educate their
    children?''
        And all of a sudden, all these other people, all these young people
    started saying, ``Yes, we think in Washington you ought to be looking
    out for those people. You ought to be doing everything you can to make
    sure that anybody that's working as hard as we are, whether they are in
    a union, whether they make the kind of money we make, or not, at least
    have the basic things they need to succeed in raising their children and
    educating them and having a chance to own a home and succeed and live
    the American dream.'' And I thought to myself, this country is in pretty
    good hands. These people were there, grateful for their prosperity, but
    thinking about others.
        This country has always done best at every time of change and
    challenge when we've tried to do three things. I say this over and over
    again, but I want you to think about this: When you go home tonight, ask
    yourself why you came here, and ``Bob Torricelli made me'' or ``Bob
    Kerrey made me'' is not an acceptable answer. [Laughter] Now, you ought
    to try this; try this on for size: Go home tonight, and before you go to
    bed--I'm dead serious--I'm dead serious--go home tonight and ask
    yourself, why did I go to that dinner tonight? And get out a piece of
    paper and a pen and write down an answer. Imagine you went home, and one
    of your children asked you, ``Why did you go there,'' and you had to
    give an answer.
        This country has met every challenge of the last 220 years because
    at every time of challenge and change we've done three things: We have
    widened the circle of opportunity; we have deepened the meaning of
    freedom and extended it to more people; and we have strengthened the
    bonds of our Union.
        We are moving into an age where the volume of knowledge is doubling
    every 5 years, a global society where we're drawing closer to people
    around the world and where all of our neighbors are more than ever
    likely to be from all around the world. We have to learn to live in ways
    that we never imagined, with people we couldn't have possibly understood
    just a few years ago. But what we have to do is what we've always had to
    do: widen the circle of opportunity, deepen the meaning of freedom,
    strengthen the bonds of our Union.
        And when you go home tonight, you think about that. And you ask
    yourself, which party is more likely to do that? I rest my case.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:48 p.m. at the National Museum of Women
    in the Arts. In his remarks, he referred to Senator J. Robert Kerrey,
    chair, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.