    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [June 8, 1998]
    [Pages 911-915]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 911]]

    Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Dinner in New
    York City
    June 8, 1998

        Thank you very much, ``Mr. Speaker''--has a nice ring to it, don't
    you think? [Laughter] Let me thank the very large number of House
    Members who are here or who have been here, in addition to Congressman
    Gephardt and Congressman Frost: Congressman Rangel and
    Congresswoman Lowey and Congresswoman
    Maloney, Congressman Pallone, Congressman Nadler,
    Congressman Hinchey, Congressman
    Ackerman, Congressman Engel. And Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher is here from California, where in the California primary
    she won 55 percent of the vote against nine Republicans. That's a good
    sign for our future.
        Let me tell you, in California, for those of you who don't know it,
    everybody just runs and all the votes get added up together, and the top
    voting Democrat and the top vote-getting Republican then run against
    each other in the fall. If I were the Republican in her race, I would reconsider.
        Let me also thank Judith Hope for her work
    for the Democratic Party, and Mayor Dowden,
    thank you for coming. We have two candidates here. I don't know if they
    were mentioned earlier, but Paul Feiner from the
    20th district and William Holtz from the 1st,
    thank you for running. We can't win if we don't have candidates. And for
    all of you that had anything to do with putting this event together, I
    thank you.
        I do want to apologize to Congressman Frost's mother for comparing
    Martin to my dog, Buddy. That's not exactly
    what I did. I said if I'd been thinking clearly I would have named my
    dog Martin, instead of Buddy--[laughter]--because Martin Frost is so
    insistent, it's just like a dog biting you on the leg; you know, until
    you do what he wants to do, he will not let go of your leg. And so here
    I am, and I'm honored to be here.
        Let me say to my long-time friend Chevy Chase, that deal on the Bosnian vowels is one of the funniest
    things I've heard in a long time. [Laughter] But you have persuaded me
    that it ought to be done. [Laughter] But I do want to make an
    announcement about it. I've worked a long time to eliminate deficit
    spending, too long to change course now. I'm also against deficit
    voweling. And therefore, we are going to have to reduce our vowels in
    order to increase our gift to Bosnia. [Laughter] And Chevy, you lost the
    lottery. We are taking your vowels. From now on, your stage name will be
    ``Chv Chs.'' [Laughter] I will write your first note to that effect
    tomorrow. [Laughter]
        Ladies and gentlemen, I feel good about where our country is; I feel
    good about where our party is. I feel profoundly honored to be
    associated with all of these Members of Congress who are here tonight. I
    guess I would like to make just a couple of points.
        When I became President, I was not very interested in politics as
    usual. I had the same reaction to a lot of what goes on in Washington.
    It is so plainly and blatantly and nakedly political and so clearly
    divorced from the way ordinary people live out there in the country,
    that many of you expressed to me tonight when you walked through the
    line.
        I was, in the words of one of my distinguished opponents, ``just a
    Governor from a small Southern State.'' But I did have these old-
    fashioned ideas, and some fairly modern ones as well. I thought that,
    yes, we needed new ideas, consistent with Democratic Party's enduring
    values. But I also had this really old-fashioned idea that if somebody
    just sort of showed up in Washington and went to work every day and
    worried about how many things you could get done, at the end of a year
    or two you'd actually get a lot of things done; and that if we spent
    more time trying to pile up accomplishments for the American people,
    instead of pile up negative words on each other, we would get a great
    deal done indeed.
        And I have to say to you now, 5\1/2\ years into my Presidency, I am
    more optimistic today than I was the day I took the oath of office for
    the first time about the potential for this political system to do what
    needs to be done for the American people, to empower them to make the
    most of their lives in the 21st century, to create conditions of peace
    and security, to move us forward together. But it takes sustained
    effort.

    [[Page 912]]

        Now, I look back on the last 6 years, and here is the story we can
    say--and if someone had told me this on Inaugural Day, I would have
    said, I'll take it proudly--because today we have the lowest crime rates
    in 25 years, the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years and 16 million new
    jobs, the lowest percentage of our people on welfare in 29 years, the
    first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years, the lowest inflation rate
    in 35 years, the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, and the
    highest homeownership rate in the history of the United States. That is
    the record of the Democratic Party at the eve of the 21st century.
        Now, yes, it is true, as Mr. Gephardt said and I've never hesitated
    to say, that Government did not do this alone. But in each case,
    Government had a role to play that was indispensable. The American
    people deserve the ultimate credit for anything that's achieved in this
    country; that is, first of all, in the nature of the democracy, and
    secondly, in the nature of essentially a private economy and a private
    society. But there is a role to play here.
        And it is critical to point out, if you go back to 1993, I don't
    believe any serious observer believes the economy would have come back
    as much as it has if we hadn't passed the economic plan, without a
    single vote from the other party and without a vote to spare. I don't
    believe any serious analyst believes that the crime rate would have come
    down as much as it has if it hadn't been for the economy coming back and
    for the passage of the crime bill and a commitment to put 100,000 police
    on the street and ban assault weapons.
        And I could go through the whole litany. So I'm very proud. As a
    Democrat, to be able to stand up here and say that this country is now
    working for ordinary Americans, based on these numbers, is very
    important to me. We have last year--it's working for all kinds--we have
    a record number of new Hispanic-owned businesses, the lowest black
    unemployment rate ever recorded. Last year, for the first time in
    history, there was statistically no difference between the African-
    American high school graduation rate and the graduation rate of the
    white majority.
        These are stunning indicators of forward progress, and I'm proud of
    that. I'm proud of the fact that along the way we were also able to pass
    the Family and Medical Leave Act. And we cut taxes for families with
    modest incomes of under $30,000; it took 2.2 million children out of
    poverty.
        I'm proud of the fact that we reformed the adoption laws, the child
    support laws, and the pension protection laws, helping tens of millions
    of Americans. I'm proud of the fact that we put a record amount of money
    into research, especially into medical research; that we opened the
    doors of college to everybody willing to work for it, with tax credits
    and scholarships and work-study programs.
        I'm proud of our national service program, AmeriCorps, that's given
    almost 100,000 young people a chance to serve in their communities. I'm
    very proud of the fact that, according to our Interior Secretary, Bruce
    Babbitt, we have now protected more land in
    perpetuity for the American people than in any other administration in
    the history of the country except those of Theodore and Franklin
    Roosevelt. All of those things are things we can be proud of.
        And what I am here to tell you tonight is we could do a lot more if
    we all start rowing in the same direction. No one can seriously say of
    the Democratic Party now, ``They are not a party of fiscal
    responsibility.'' No one can seriously say of the Democratic Party now,
    ``They are not a party that believes in the primary value of work and
    family.'' No one can say we don't believe in public safety. No one can
    say that we can't be trusted with the foreign policy of the country and
    the national security of the country. All the negative things that our
    adversaries said about us for years and years and years have no currency
    in life at the present state of affairs.
        Now we have a chance and, I would argue, a profound obligation as a
    people, and for those of us who are Democrats, as a party, not to just
    try to coast along through this good time but to say, ``Hey, it's been a
    long time since we had a time like this. And no time lasts forever.'' We
    have a special obligation to take this moment of high confidence and
    real possibility to deal with the remaining challenges that the people
    of the United States face, the real long-term challenges.
        That's why I thank Mr. Gephardt and
    our entire caucus for saying that we should not spend the surplus we
    expect to accumulate this year until we first have developed and passed
    a plan to save the Social Security System, so that the baby boom
    generation doesn't bankrupt

    [[Page 913]]

    our children and their ability to raise our grandchildren.
        Over the next 2 years, we have to face the challenges that Social
    Security and Medicare present us. We had a very gripping conversation
    around our dinner table tonight about the enormous financial pressures
    on the health care delivery system here in New York, occasioned by the
    growth of managed care, the tightness of Government budgets, and the
    declining percentage of Americans who get health insurance with their
    work. We have to deal with these challenges. And you have to pick a
    party. The American people have to pick a party to deal with them in the
    next 2 years.
        We have continuing education challenges and huge debates in
    Washington where the Democrats have been strong in support of our agenda
    of smaller class sizes, higher standards, connecting every classroom to
    the Internet, better trained teachers, more after-school programs to
    keep kids out of trouble in the first place. Dick Gephardt is right: Yes, we have to punish people who
    misbehave; yes, we have to be tough on the gangs. We can't jail our way
    out of this crisis. We have got to find these children before they get
    in trouble and save more of our kids. And we know what to do about it.
    The question is, are we going to take this opportunity to do it? We have
    the means to do it, and we know what to do. The question is, will we do
    it?
        We're just finishing a huge rough period, and we have a few more
    weeks to go, of El Nino, where the fires have been raging in Mexico; the
    fires have been raging in South America and in other places. There's a
    big story in the morning paper that, based on the first 5 months of this
    year, if present trends continue, 1998 will be the hottest year ever
    recorded since we have been measuring temperatures. Already we know that
    the 5 hottest years since 1400 have occurred in the 1990's. This climate
    change business is not just some--as some would have you believe--some
    academic theory.
        Now, on the other hand, there are some who would have you believe
    that we can't deal with the problem of climate change and global warming
    without essentially shrinking the economy. That's not true either, and
    that's a Hobbesian's choice we don't have to make.
        I am committed to dealing with this issue to prove we can improve
    the environment; we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions; we can stop the
    rapid pace of global warming and continue to grow the American economy
    if we do it in a responsible way. And if you have from now to midnight,
    I could give you 50 examples to win that argument.
        But the answer is not, as our adversaries on the other side do, to
    call these hearings in Congress and attack administration witnesses and
    attack environmental specialists and claim that global warming is some
    big academic conspiracy designed to break the economy of the United
    States. I'm telling you, the 5 warmest years since 1400 have occurred in
    this decade. We have lots of evidence.
        But the good news is, this is just like buying an insurance policy.
    We don't lose anything. If we change our course in a responsible way, we
    can continue to enjoy high rates of growth with less destructive energy
    practices. And I am committed to doing that.
        Let me just mention one or two other things. I want very badly to
    pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. The American Medical Association is
    supporting us; consumer groups are supporting us. On balance, the
    managed care movement was coming to America and, on balance, it started
    out as a very good thing, and it has done a lot of good things. We could
    not sustain an economy with medical costs going up at 3 times the rate
    of inflation every year forever; it was an unsustainable pattern.
        But any management technique that gets divorced from the underlying
    purpose of the enterprise will eventually get you into trouble. I don't
    care what your enterprise is; when you get technique over principle,
    you're going to get in trouble. And because of the things I mentioned
    earlier, we have a crisis there. And I think I can speak for every
    American, or nearly every American, that we want people who are sick or
    whose illnesses can be avoided to get whatever the appropriate amount of
    medical care is.
        We don't want to waste any money. We want the tightest management
    possible. But we cannot afford to see this great country where life
    expectancy has been going up, where the quality of life has been
    improving, where we now see laboratory tests on animals that are
    actually restoring severed spines and getting movements in lower limbs
    of animals, and where we identified two of the genes that are very
    important in forming breast cancer, and where we're just about through--
    in the next 2 years, we'll finish this gene-mapping project so we'll
    actually be

    [[Page 914]]

    able to develop software to analyze all of our genetic problems and
    solve Lord only knows what other health problems--this is the last time
    we want to get into the business of basically stripping from our
    physicians and other health care professionals the ability to give basic
    care in a decent, humane, caring way. We can surely figure out how to
    manage as well as possible without doing that.
        Look, I could go through a lot of other issues. The bottom line is
    this--I do want to talk a little about two other issues--but the bottom
    line is this: We Democrats have an agenda. We're not trying to sit on
    these good times. There's not a single person here asking you to vote
    for them just because they've done a good job. If you think about it,
    that's pretty remarkable.
        There are people in New York City that care about the fact that the
    unemployment rate in America that's highest are on Native American
    reservations out in the high plains. There are Democrats from suburban
    districts with 3 percent, 2 percent unemployment that want to pass
    Secretary Cuomo and the Vice President and our urban empowerment zones to get investment
    back in the inner-cities and get the unemployment rate down in the
    highest unemployment areas of New York.
        Why? Because we have an agenda, because we believe that this is a
    time that comes along once in a generation. And if we just sit on our
    laurels and enjoy it, we'll be paying for it for a generation. This is a
    time when we have the confidence and the means and the knowledge to face
    the long-term challenges of America to guarantee that this will be the
    greatest country in the world for the next 50 years. That's what we're
    about.
        And I just want to close with two issues. The first is the fact that
    the Democrats are committed to making a virtue of our diversity. We know
    that in an increasingly shrinking world, the fact that we come from
    everyplace, represent all religions, all races, all ethnic groups, all
    different kinds of cultural experiences and understandings, that if we
    can be bound together by a common set of American values, our diversity
    is the greatest asset we will take into the 21st century.
        And the second thing I would say is that we believe we have to be a
    force for peace and freedom and security. Chevy mentioned the speech I
    gave at the U.N. conference on drugs today. There were 40 heads of state
    there--this would have been unheard of just a few years ago--people
    saying, ``Nobody's big enough to solve this problem alone, and no nation
    is too small to make a difference. We're going to work together.''
        I ask you to support the decision I've made to go forward with my
    China trip. I hope you will support the efforts we're making to move
    India and Pakistan back from the nuclear brink. They are great nations.
    They can have a great future. We can work this out. But the answer is
    not to start another nuclear arms race on the Indian subcontinent. The
    answer is to find another, more constructive, secure way for both
    nations to be great nations and successful with their people and in the
    world.
        I ask you to continue to support our efforts to fashion a peace in
    the Middle East and to assure you that the people there are still
    working on it, and we are moving. I thank those of you who helped me
    over 5 long years, with the result we celebrated with the Irish election
    in the last few days. I thank you for doing that.
        But this is the last point I want to make. We cannot go into this
    new world alone. You know, you may not agree--some people didn't agree
    with me when I sent the troops into Bosnia. Some people didn't agree
    with me when I went into Haiti. Some people didn't agree with me when I
    extended credit to Mexico--they turned out to be a pretty good risk, I
    might add--paid us back early with a big profit. And I haven't been
    right on every decision. But I am confident that the big decisions are
    right.
        We need an alliance with Asian countries where we work not only for
    greater prosperity but for greater security and greater freedom. We need
    an alliance with our neighbors in the Americas where we work to make
    sure that this increasing prosperity lifts the fate of all people
    together. We need an alliance with Russia to build a democratic Russia
    that is also prosperous. We need to keep working in constructive
    partnership with the Chinese so that they will define their greatness in
    the 20th century in a more constructive way than many nations did in
    the--in the 21st century they will be more constructive than many other
    nations were in the 20th century. We need to bring Africa into the
    family of nations.
        In New York you think about these things. This is an argument we
    have to win in Main Street America. We are 4 percent of the world's

    [[Page 915]]

    population; we have 20 percent of its wealth. We exercise sometimes far
    more than 20 percent of its influence in matters of foreign affairs. We
    cannot continue to do it unless we are responsible members of the world
    community. We have to cooperate as well as lead.
        And that's what this is all about. It's about what your children and
    your grandchildren will live like in the 21st century. It's about what
    the world they have will be like. Those of you who are at least as old
    as I am, and those of you--a few of you are a little older--understand
    what I'm saying. A time like this comes along just every now and then.
        Chevy Chase mentioned the 30th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's
    death. This weekend I had the privilege of going to Congressman Joe
    Kennedy's home in Boston to gather
    with his mother and many of his brothers and
    sisters and Senator Kennedy. And we had a
    lunch with a lot of the people who worked for Robert Kennedy in his
    Senate office and his Presidential campaign. And I gave my weekly radio
    address on Robert Kennedy. For those of us who were just coming of age
    when he was killed, there were stunning parallels between what he sought
    to do and what we are now in the process of trying to do: bringing
    people together across racial and ethnic lines, trying to lift the poor
    up on a combination of self-reliance and decent support for successful
    parenting and childrearing, trying to be engaged in the world, but on
    terms that are consistent with American values. It's almost as if we've
    been given the opportunity to redeem the promise of our party and, in a
    larger sense, of our Nation, that kind of strayed and was divided for
    quite a long time.
        That's what this election is about. I'm telling you, we've got good
    ideas; we've got a good track record. We're not asking anybody to elect
    us because the status quo is fine. We believe we can do better in the
    21st century, and we want you to get out there and help us win these
    elections and win that House back so we can do that for America.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:45 p.m. at the Waldorf Astoria. In his
    remarks, he referred to Judith Hope, chair, New York State Democratic
    Party; Mayor James T. Dowden of Bridgewater, NJ; and comedian Chevy
    Chase.