    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [February 19, 1998]
    [Pages 253-257]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 253]]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in West Orange,
    New Jersey
    February 19, 1998

        Thank you very much. I'd like to begin by thanking David and Sylvia for welcoming us
    to their humble little home here. [Laughter] This is a beautiful place.
    It was worth the trip to see you and your family and your beautiful home
    and your art and to see you here with your friends. You didn't have to
    do this tonight, and we're very grateful to you.
        I'd like to thank Senator Lautenberg
    and Congressman Pascrell for being here
    and for their support in the Congress for our agenda and our attempts to
    move this country forward. Thank you, Tom Giblin, for leading the Democratic Party in New Jersey. Thank you,
    Mayor McGreevey, for a wonderful race. I
    was honored to be a small part of it, and there will be another one up
    the road.
        I'd like to thank the leaders of our national party who are here:
    our chair, Steve Grossman; and Len
    Barrack from Philadelphia, who just took
    over as the national finance chair of the Democratic Party. I'm afraid
    that he's going to think that every day is going to be like the last 24
    hours. We've had three wonderful encounters with people around the
    country. He thinks this is no heavy lifting. [Laughter]
        You know, there are just a little over 650 days, 700 days maybe, to
    the 21st century. And I feel very good about where America is--David
    talked about a little of it. I feel very grateful to have had the chance
    to serve as President in these last 5 years. But I think that the most
    important thing I could say to you tonight is that it would be a real
    mistake for our country to be relaxed about where we are instead of to
    feel that this is an enormous opportunity for us to take care of the
    long-term needs of America and to basically shape a structure of
    opportunity and a structure of security for ourselves and our friends
    around the world that will last us well into the next century.
        They used to say when I was a boy growing up in Arkansas that the
    time to fix the roof is not when it's raining. And so I would say, I
    think--I feel that I've spent the last 5 years trying to fix things in
    America so that the country would basically work again and so that
    people would have the confidence to believe that we really could be the
    masters of our own fate, that if we worked together and did the right
    things in the right way, we actually could move forward. And I don't
    think anyone questions that now.
        So now what we should be doing is, instead of patting ourselves on
    the back for nearly now 15 million new jobs and the lowest unemployment
    rate and the lowest inflation rate in a generation, the lowest welfare
    rolls in a generation, lowest crime rate in a generation, we should be
    thinking about how we can use this moment to look to the future and to
    build it. And I think that is the most important thing I could say to
    you.
        And I'd just like to mention three or four things. With regard to
    the economy, we've changed the image of the Democrats with a bunch of
    tough votes, most importantly, the economic program in 1993, which
    reduced the deficit by over 90 percent before the balanced budget came
    in. Then we had a balanced budget bill last year, a lot of which was
    engineered by your Senator, Frank
    Lautenberg--you should be very proud of him for that--which not only
    will give us a balanced budget and a surplus in the next few years but
    will do so while giving us the biggest investment in children's health
    and education in a generation and literally opening the doors of college
    to all Americans who will work for it. That is a very, very important
    thing.
        What still needs to be done? I would argue there are two or three
    very important things that still need to be done. Number one, we have to
    recognize that there are still a lot of Americans who have not been
    caught up in this economic prosperity. They are either unemployed or
    they're underemployed, largely because they have limited skills and they
    live in areas where there is no investment. I spent a lot of time trying
    to get Americans to invest in other parts of the world--a lot of you
    invested in various parts of the world. Now we need to bring this spark
    of enterprise to our isolated inner-city neighborhoods and to rural
    neighborhoods. And it's a great opportunity for us to continue to grow
    without inflation. And

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    we have a program as a part of this year's budget to do that.
        Secondly, we need to continue to fight against the impulse to
    withdraw from the rest of the world in terms of trade. I suppose it's
    the last remaining ideological battle within the Democratic Party about
    what kind of party we're going to be going into the future. There are
    people who lose when we expand trade, but that's going to happen whether
    we have new agreements or not. Most countries have trading systems that
    are more closed than ours. We have 4 percent of the world's people; we
    have 20 percent of the world's income. If we want to keep 20 percent of
    the world's income when the rest of the world, the developing world, is
    going to grow 3 times as fast as the developed world, we--the math is
    not difficult--we have to sell more to other people. And so I hope we
    can continue to expand trade and really do more with it.
        The third thing we have to do is to continue to work until we have
    the finest education system in the world. One reason Americans all over
    the country were thrilled--I could see it; I could feel it when I was
    giving the State of the Union Address and I was going through the list
    of things that the Congress has already done: the $1,500 tax credit for
    the first 2 years of college; credits for the junior and senior year and
    for graduate school; bigger Pell grants; more work-study positions;
    cheaper loans that are easier to repay; IRA's for education. One reason
    everybody is so excited about that is that no one in America doubts that
    we have the finest system of higher education in the world, and that if
    you can access it, whether it's at a community college or an Ivy League
    school, whether it's undergraduate or graduate school, that you will not
    only be more fulfilled and be a better citizen, but you'll have a better
    life. No one questions that. By the same token, I don't think any of us
    can say with a straight face that we believe we have the best system of
    undergraduate education in the world--I mean, elementary and secondary
    education in the world. You know that it's not the best system in the
    world, and you know that the quality varies dramatically. That's why
    I've been working for national standards. That's why I've been working
    to connect every classroom in the country to the Internet by the year
    2000. That's why we have a program now to lower class sizes in the first
    three grades to an average of 18 students. If we can pass this program,
    it will dramatically change the future of education.
        All the educational research shows that children who come from
    difficult backgrounds who have a chance to get personal attention from
    teachers and to work with their fellow students because the classes are
    small enough in those early grades have a big leg up in the rest of
    their learning careers. So I think all of that is very, very important.
    And I hope you will support that. That's going to be a big part of what
    we're trying to do. We want to rehabilitate or build 5,000 more schools,
    and we have a program to do that.
        So those are the things that I would like to work on in the economy:
    Give us a world-class system of elementary and secondary education; give
    us an economic system where free enterprise can reach the areas that
    have been left behind; and keep reaching out to the rest of the world--
    an economy based on opportunity.
        What do we have to do with our society if we want it to be a truly
    responsible society where every citizen does his or her part and we work
    together? Let me just mention two or three things there. I think the
    most important thing we can do, more important than anything else, is
    helping every citizen to reconcile the competing pressures of work and
    family. Most parents work now. Most parents with children under the age
    of 5, or 4, or 3, or 2 work now. And most of them have to do that.
        That's why I supported the family and medical leave law and why I'd
    like to see it extended to cover more firms. All the research shows that
    small firms have had just as easy a time as larger firms in meeting the
    family and medical leave law. And giving people a little time off when
    their babies are born or their parents are sick bolsters the morale of
    families and makes people more productive in the workplace. I think it's
    important.
        That's why I think we ought to raise the minimum wage again.
    Finally--finally--we are seeing income gains among people in the lower
    40 percent of the earners. For 20 years, our incomes began to split
    apart in America, from about the mid-seventies on. Those of us with good
    educations tended to have our incomes grow more than the economy as a
    whole, and people who didn't have as much tended to have their incomes
    not grow at all or even fall behind. Inflation--that's beginning to turn
    around again.

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        But no one who works 40 hours a week and raises kids should be in
    poverty in this country. We shouldn't tax them into poverty. And one of
    the things we did in 1993 that David mentioned was with the earned-
    income tax credit. The average family now with an income of $30,000 a
    year or less that has at least two children is paying $1,000 less in
    taxes than they would have paid under the old system before 1993. I
    think that's important.
        I think it's important that we implement this child health program
    to extend health insurance to 5 million more kids. There's nothing
    more--every parent in this room has known what it is like to worry about
    your child's health. There's not a single, solitary parent here who
    hasn't had at least one sleepless night at some time during your
    children's childhood over your child's health. Imagine how much worse it
    would be if you didn't think you could afford to take your kid to the
    doctor or if you thought the only way you could do it would be to show
    up at the emergency room and then you would be bankrupt. So I think this
    is important. I think it is terribly important.
        I think it's important that our child care initiative pass, which
    will make child care more affordable to millions of Americans--and
    safer. And I think that it's important that we pass this comprehensive
    tobacco settlement that will give us the tools we need to protect our
    children from tobacco. Every year--still the biggest public health
    problem in America--every day, 3,000 kids illegally start to smoke; a
    thousand of them will die sooner because of it. It dwarfs the threat of
    cancer. It dwarfs the threat of alcoholism. It dwarfs the threat of
    getting killed in a car when you get your driver's license. It dwarfs
    everything. It will cost more young people bigger parts of their future
    than anything else. So we're going to try to pass that this year. And if
    we do, it will open up a whole new vista. That's very important.
        Now, the other thing I want to talk about a little on this is the
    future of health care. Hillary had an
    idea that we should basically give a gift to the country, that our
    generation should give a set of gifts to the country for the millennium.
    And we thought basically of two things. One was that--literally a
    millennial trust, which she helped to put together with all the rest of
    our people, with the theme of ``Remembering the past, and imagining the
    future.'' And so one of the things that we're trying to do is to put
    some of the money, if we can get a tobacco settlement, put a big chunk
    of the money into a research fund that will double funding for the
    National Cancer Institute, have a huge increase in funding for the
    National Institutes of Health, have a big increase in funding for the
    National Science Foundation, support the international space station,
    just do a whole range of things that will help to prepare the future for
    our people.
        In addition, we want to, with public and private money, save the
    Star-Spangled Banner, which, by the way, is in tatters and needs $13
    million to be saved. And our precious documents, all of which--the Bill
    of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution--all of
    them need serious work. That's a very important part of building the
    kind of society we want. We have to both respect our past and always be
    investing in the future.
        The second biggest thing we can do, I think--and this leads to the
    last topic I wanted to mention. I've done everything I could in a world
    which is constantly being torn apart by people's differences to build
    one community in America. I have tried to take the venom out of
    political life, with mixed results. [Laughter] I have done my best to
    bring people together across racial and religious lines.
        And I've also tried to bring us together across generational lines.
    And the most important proposal that we have on the table for this year
    is the proposal that we couldn't even have imagined even a year ago. It
    looks like we're going to balance the budget this year if the economic
    difficulties of Asia don't slow our growth too much. If it does, we'll
    still balance the budget next year. And it is then projected that we
    will have a structural surplus for quite a long time. That is, the
    economy will go up and down, and some years we may have it, and some
    years we may not. But over any multi-year period, if we stay with the
    discipline we have now we're going to start running big surpluses.
        And this is an election year so it's tempting for people to say,
    ``Well, here's what I'll promise you with my surplus, I'll give you a
    tax cut,'' or ``I'll give you a spending program'' or whatever. I think
    it is a terrible mistake. I don't think we should spend a penny of the
    surplus until we have secured Social Security for the 21st century.
        And everybody knows--there are surveys which show that young people
    believe it is more

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    likely that they will see a UFO than that they'll ever draw Social
    Security. [Laughter] But it's not a big, mysterious problem. When Social
    Security was set up, you couldn't draw until you were 65, and the
    average life expectancy was less than 65. Now the average life
    expectancy for Americans is way up in the seventies. For a young girl
    born today, it's about 80. And for people who live to be 65, it's into
    the eighties today. The fastest growing group of Americans are in their
    eighties.
        Meanwhile, the baby boomers, and I'm the oldest of the baby boomers,
    meaning when I retire, from that year, for 18 years after when people my
    age retire, will be the biggest group of retirees ever put into the
    system. The people coming along behind us in the 18 years thereafter are
    a much smaller group. The people behind them are a smaller group. Only
    now do we have people in school, in kindergarten through the 12th grade,
    that are a bigger group than the baby boomers for the first time ever.
    But it's going to take a while before all of them are in the work force.
    So this is arithmetic. In 1959 there were five people working for every
    one person drawing Social Security. In 2019 or 2029, there will be two
    people working for every person drawing Social Security unless we all
    start working a lot longer or there's a huge influx of immigrants or
    something unforeseen happens.
        But if we make small changes now, and if we husband our money now,
    and if we look at some options for what we can do to make sure we're
    getting the best possible rate of return as long as it's a secure and
    safe return, then we can look at people like the people who have served
    us here tonight who are going to work their whole lives and say, ``You
    may be young, but at least you'll have this basic thing for security
    when you retire.''
        The other thing we have to do, though, is to level with people.
    People retiring now--almost nobody retiring now can maintain their
    standard of living on Social Security. So we also have to do more to
    help people save for their own retirement and to be honest with them and
    level with them and say, ``You're going to have to do this, but here is
    an attractive way to do it,'' and make it as easy as possible. I think
    that's very, very important. We should save Social Security before we go
    about spending this surplus that hasn't even materialized yet. We were
    in a financial wilderness for 30 years; we're out of it. Let's not get
    back in it just because it's election year.
        And the last point I would like to make is this: The United States
    has an unbelievable opportunity to sort of sail against the tide of all
    the ethnic and racial and religious conflict that seems to be dominating
    the world now, as the cold war recedes to a distant memory and the world
    is not divided into big blocs. You know that people used to worry
    about--little countries used to worry about being treated like little
    specks of metal. And the United States and the Soviet Union were the big
    magnet, and they were all going to be swallowed up into some bloc. Now
    we have to worry about disintegration. You know, everybody wants to be
    separate.
        What we have worked for here in this country always, with increasing
    levels of success, is a way of appreciating the differences between
    people and still being united because we were able to articulate values
    that were more important to us than the differences. So we could
    celebrate our differences because we all knew we were still Americans.
        Now that's become more important than ever before. There are--in the
    school district which is across the river from the White House in
    Virginia, in Alexandria--Fairfax County school district--there are
    people from 180 different national and ethnic groups speaking over 100
    different languages, in one school district.
        The world is coming into America. If we can figure out a way to
    continue to strengthen our Union, to be one America, to celebrate all
    these differences and say, but here are the things that we all agree
    to--read our Constitution, read our Bill of Rights--this is what we all
    agree to, then we are going to have an enormous leg up in the global
    society of the 21st century.
        How much time have we spent around here at the table tonight talking
    about the Middle East or the travails of my people in Ireland and other
    places around the world? But I'm telling you, we're on the right side of
    history, and we have to keep fighting for these things.
        Just today we had the new leader of the Republic of Srpska, the new
    premier, in Washington. And here's a man
    leading the Serbs saying, ``We have to find a way to reconcile the
    different ethnic groups. We have to come to grips with the war crimes.
    We have to do all these things.'' Unheard of--no one could have imagined
    it just a year ago. We are on the

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    right side of history, and we have to keep fighting for these things.
        And the last point I want to make is this: I have tried to change
    the Democratic Party, to modernize it. I have tried to create what you
    might call a new Democratic Party. And I have caused a little bit of
    controversy along the way in doing that. But I have to tell you that the
    longer I go on in this job and the more time I spend reading American
    history, as well as trying to think about the future, the more I realize
    that there are two or three basic functions that a political party has
    to fulfill at every point in our history.
        If you go back through the whole of American history, I believe you
    will conclude, as I have, that there are three great challenges that
    confront the American people at every moment of real change. And the
    party which serves the American people best is the party which embraces
    those challenges and pushes them hardest.
        Now, if you go back to the beginning, you look at that, you look at
    the Civil War, you look at the industrial revolution, you look at all
    the crises of the 20th century, you will see that at every point in time
    we have been asked for ourselves--and increasingly in the 20th century
    for people around the world--to do three things: to widen the circle of
    opportunity, to deepen the meaning of freedom, and to strengthen the
    Union.
        The Republican Party, in fairness, was born out of a desire to save
    the Union. And Abraham Lincoln gave his life to save the Union and to
    make the Constitution mean something when it came to freedom for black
    Americans. And they were the party of the Union and of widening the
    circle of opportunity and of deepening the meaning of freedom all the
    way from Abraham Lincoln through Theodore Roosevelt. And our party had a
    pretty weak record in that period, I'm ashamed to say, and not so good
    in the years just before.
        But if you look at the beginning and if you look at our record from
    Woodrow Wilson forward, I think you would have to conclude, we weren't
    always right on everything, but on balance our party has the stronger
    record when it comes to widening the circle of opportunity, deepening
    the meaning of freedom, and standing up for a stronger Union.
        And that, in a fundamental way, is what my administration has been
    all about--looking toward the 21st century. I'm proud to be a Democrat.
    I'm proud of your support. And I thank you for your help tonight.
        God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:57 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts David and Sylvia Steiner; Thomas P.
    Giblin, chairman, New Jersey State Democratic Committee; Mayor James E.
    McGreevey of Woodbridge, NJ; Steve Grossman, national chair, and Leonard
    Barrack, national finance chair, Democratic National Committee; and
    Prime Minister Milorad Dodik of the Republika Srpska, Bosnia-
    Herzegovina.