[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[January 8, 1998]
[Pages 15-21]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a Democratic National
Committee Dinner in New York City
January 8, 1998
The President. First of all, let me say to Alan and Susan, it is wonderful to
be back here. I remember very well when I was here in 1992. I also
remember an event that they were part of in 1992, about 10 days before
the New Hampshire primary, when everybody said I was absolutely dead; I
had no chance to win; I was dropping like a rock in the polls. And we
showed up in New York City for a fundraiser, and there were 700 people
in this room for a dead candidate. So I said, ``I am not dead yet.''
[Laughter]
And that night was memorable for two reasons: One was that we had so
many people there, thanks to a lot of you in this room, who didn't
believe that it was over and who believed in what I was trying to do.
The other was that I had a very--what is now a very famous encounter in
the kitchen, walking to the speech, with a Greek immigrant
waiter who said that his 10-year-old
son had asked him to vote for me because of
what he'd heard me say, and he would do it if I would be more concerned
about his son's safety. He said he lived across the street from a park,
but his kid couldn't play in the park without his being there; he lived
down the street from a school, but his child couldn't walk to the
school. And he said that where he had lived, he was much poorer but he
was free.
It was a very compelling portrait of why crime and physical safety
is an important public issue. And he said, ``So if I vote for you like
my boy wants me to, I want you to make my boy free.'' And that man and
his son became friends of ours, and they've been to lots of things, and
they even went to Ohio once to an anticrime event with us.
So a lot has happened because of my friendship with Alan and Susan.
If he had said one more time that he wasn't a Democrat--I thought he was
protesting too much. [Laughter] I'm a Baptist; I believe in deathbed
conversions. It's not too late. [Laughter]
Let me say what I thought would be helpful tonight. I do have to
leave fairly soon, but before--because we've all been here and most of
you have heard me give a zillion speeches, I'd like to just talk for 2
minutes and then give you time--if you have any questions or anything
you want to talk about, I'd like to just hear from you.
Steve has already said what this
investment is about. But let me back up a little bit. In 1992, I ran for
President because I thought the country was divided and drifting, and I
believed we were on the verge not just of a new century and a new
millennium but a profoundly different time in human affairs. We now know
that this whole process of globalization and the revolution in
information in science and technology is dramatically changing the way
we live and work and relate to each other and relate
[[Page 16]]
to the rest of the world in ways that are mostly good, but have some
stiff challenges as well.
We also know that we are much more interdependent than ever before,
both within our country and beyond our borders. Today, you know, as I
met people today, it was amazing how freely the conversations went back
and forth between issues that once would have been thought of as foreign
or domestic, but all were perceived as having a direct impact on the
lives and welfare of the people with whom I was meeting today.
Now, we have tried basically to focus the country on making the
changes necessary to create a 21st century America where there will be
opportunity for everyone who's responsible enough to work for it; where,
out of all of our diversity, we will build a community that is still one
America, united and strong; and where our country will have enough
support for our continuing involvement in the world, that we can keep
leading the world toward greater peace and freedom and prosperity.
That has required a redefinition of the role of Government,
basically, that the Republican Party tried for years with great success
to simply discredit the whole enterprise of Government, and to say that
Government was the problem, and to basically position individual freedom
against Government. President Reagan was quite
brilliant at it, and he did it very graphically and compellingly. But I
think that the Democrats were not able to successfully counter, in part,
because we seemed to be defending yesterday's Government. What we tried
to do is to say that Government is the instrument of our personal
freedom and our strong community, and there are some things that we can
only do through our role as citizens. So I think the basic function of
Government in the 21st century will be to establish the conditions and
give people the tools to make the most of their own lives and build
strong families and communities and make this country strong--not to do
everything but not to sit on the sidelines. And I'm very mindful of that
because of all the obvious challenges we're facing today at home and
abroad.
Now, if you look at where we are compared to where we were 5 years
ago, basically, we've changed the economic policy, the crime policy, the
social policy, and the education policy of the National Government, I
think, to good results. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 24
years, the lowest crime rate in 24 years, the biggest drop in the
welfare rolls in history, a really serious attempt to deal with the
conflicts of family and work that people face through things like the
family and medical leave law, and a serious attempt to prove that we can
grow the economy while improving the environment.
In the last 5 years, while we've had 13 million new jobs, the air is
cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food supply is safer. We have cleaned
up more toxic waste dumps than at any comparable period in history and
put more land in trust in one form or another than any administration in
American history except the administrations of the two Roosevelts.
So I think that we would have to say the record about the philosophy
has been pretty good. In addition to that, the United States has been a
force for peace and freedom and expanded mutual trade agreements to
reinforce prosperity.
Now, as you look ahead to the future, just very briefly, what will
we be dealing with in '98? What still needs to be done before I leave
office in 2000? On the economy, first we must do no harm. We have fought
very hard. We're going to have very close to a balanced budget this
year. When I took office, the estimate was that the deficit would be
$357 billion this year. The last thing we need to do is to explode the
deficit again. So anybody who's got any kind of proposals, whether it's
for spending or tax cuts or anything else, my view is, first, do no
harm. We have fought too hard, and we see evidence all around the world
that no country is big enough or strong enough to sustain its prosperity
in the face of financial irresponsibility.
Second, we have got to do a better job of bringing the benefits of
enterprise in the modern economy to poor areas. You heard Alan talk
about how we once were interested in this. We see a real renaissance in
some urban neighborhoods, but not in most urban neighborhoods. We must
do better there.
On the environment, we have a number of challenges; I'll just
mention one. I think this agreement we made at Kyoto will prove to be a
very historic agreement. It wasn't perfect, it didn't have everything we
wanted, but it's the first time that major nations of the world ever
committed themselves to the proposition that they could grow the
economy, cut greenhouse
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gas emissions, and do it primarily through market mechanisms. And I
believe it's profoundly important, and I intend to work very hard on
implementing it this year.
We have an entitlement challenge in this country because the baby
boomers are so numerous that we have to make some adjustments in both
Social Security and Medicare if we expect to preserve them for the baby
boom generation at a bearable cost for our own children. And I think you
will see significant progress on that in the next 2 years.
In education, the fundamental problems it seems to me are--I'm very
proud of the fact that in the balanced budget act we basically make
community college free for people with the tax credits and open the
doors of college--we did more for college access than anytime in 50
years, since the GI bill. It's a stunning piece of work that, for some
reason, doesn't seem to have acquired a lot of notice in the press. But
when I talk to ordinary people about it, they think it's the greatest
thing since sliced bread. So that's a big deal.
But what we have to do now is make our schools work again. There's a
report just today saying that urban schools basically are performing
vastly below suburban schools on all national measures of testing. I've
done my best to try to promote a set of structural reforms and high
standards and rigorous testing with consequences. The report shows that
in Virginia, where they have urban schools that have done much better
than the national average, it's because they have specific, rigorous
standards; they measure the standards, and there are consequences to the
results they find. This is not rocket science. These children can learn.
Most of the teachers are fully capable of doing what they need to do.
The system is not adequate to meet what the children deserve and the
country needs, and we intend to keep working on that.
Well, there are a lot of other issues I can--yesterday we announced
the biggest child care program in the history of the country, that we
will have to pay for. I think that's a good thing. But it must be paid
for with the successful resolution of the tobacco issue, which I hope
the Congress will resolve satisfactorily. On the international front, I
hope we will approve the expansion of NATO. I'd still like to have more
trade authority. And I hope the Congress will pay our debts to the
United Nations and we can resume our global role and I think that will
help.
I do believe that we will give some gifts to the millennium. I think
you'll see a significant increase in medical research and a number of
other things that are of interest to a lot of you in this room. I think
'98, even though it's a political year, will be a good year. Some of you
asked me about political reform, I will do my best. We have a vote
scheduled in the springtime--in March, I think--and both the leadership
in both Houses has promised to vote on some kind of campaign finance
reform. They've not promised to vote on the bill that I support, McCain-
Feingold, but a vote on some kind of campaign finance reform.
And I have said this repeatedly--I'll say it again--I think the
trick is, if we're going to have limits on soft money, then the hard
money contribution limits ought to be realistic in light of today's
cost, number one. And, number two, we ought to have access to free or
reduced air time for candidates who observe overall spending limits. The
Supreme Court has made clear that you can't control how much money
people spend on their own campaigns, because money is speech. I'm not
sure I agree with the decision, but there it is, and it's been there for
over 20 years.
What's driving the costs of campaigns is the cost of air time, the
cost of communicating directly with the voters. If there were some
standards for how that could be done, if you got the benefit of free or
reduced air time, I think you might see a big turnup in voter turnout
because you could have more, if you will, interactive air time--longer
programs, call-in programs, townhall meetings, questions and answers.
The whole thing could be changed. But we're going to have to have some
help on the expenditure side, as well as on the money raising side.
So I think it will be a good year. I'm excited about it. We've
already got more than one foot in the 21st century, but we also have
some really significant challenges. And when you think about all the
medical research that's going on, on the one hand, and the dangers of
chemical and biological warfare on the other; when you think about how
we're getting along in America with a couple of hundred racial and
ethnic groups, on the one hand, and the fights that still go on from
Africa to Northern Ireland to the Middle East to Bosnia on the other,
you see the
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two sides of the 21st century. We have to make sure that interdependence
and community triumph over anarchy and chaos. And I think we can do it
if we stay on the course we're on.
Thank you. Anybody got a--I'll answer two questions. Anybody want to
ask a question? Yes.
Projected Federal Budget Surplus
Q. [Inaudible]
The President. Well, let me say first, we shouldn't spend it
mindlessly because we have to realize that the surplus is produced in
large measure because Social Security taxes are still higher than Social
Security outlays on an annual basis. And we are now--we have under
careful review what our various options are and--I'd like to be more
candid, but I have to go through a consultative process with members of
my party and others in Congress as well before I can announce a final
position. But I've tried to make it as clear as I could that I favor
being as prudent as possible with this money.
And I also think you've got to realize, we've got to think about,
before we run off and spend all the money that is going to be generated,
number one, it has not been generated yet. I mean, we hope that we can
keep this economy going. We hope we can keep the growth going. We hope
that--but this surplus everybody is talking about is a projected
surplus. It's not a bird in the hand. So that's something you should
know.
Number two, we have not yet decided as a country what we're going to
do about Social Security and Medicare and how to handle the attendant
changes and whether there will be costs to those changes, how they will
be borne, and where the money will come from. So I'm taking a very
cautious approach and I'm going to look at all the alternatives, but the
number one thing is we've got to realize that this economy is humming
along because we got the deficit down in large measure--not entirely--
there's a lot of productivity in the American economy, millions of
people make great decisions--but we got the deficit down and people
perceive that we know what we're doing and that we're going to proceed
with discipline and prudence in a world that is full of some
uncertainty.
And the one thing I can tell you is whatever I do, I'm not going to
do anything that will make anybody think we have abandoned our
commitment to discipline and prudence and long term growth and
investment. You make room for domestic spending if you pay the debt
down; because if you pay the debt down, you reduce the percentage of the
budget going to debt service. So you have more money that way. There are
all kinds of things, I mean, there are lots of ways to look at this.
I've not reached a final decision. And even if I had, frankly, I
couldn't discuss it in great detail because I haven't finished my
consultations yet. But I'm going to do something I think is economically
prudent, that's the most important thing.
And, secondly, I want to think about the long run. We have to think
about our intergenerational responsibilities on this entitlement
business.
Q. Mr. President, one thing that I think most people--[inaudible]--
--
The President. Thank you. Yes, in the back.
President's Initiative on Race
Q. Mr. President, I'm very impressed with your initiative on race,
but I'm concerned that you seem to be the only person in America who
cares about this issue. And I wonder what you can do to have other
members of your administration--Cabinet members and other prominent
Democrats, Governors, whatever, speak out on it.
The President. Well, interestingly enough, first of all, my
Cabinet--they've all been doing things. When I did my townhall meeting
in Akron, my Cabinet that week, they were all doing different things
around America. And Andrew Cuomo has, in
particular, been very active in HUD in the last few months largely, I'm
sad to say, because there is still a lot of housing discrimination in
this country, a lot of old-fashioned discrimination in this country in
housing. And he's done a lot on it.
We're trying to do more and more visible things. But let me say,
we're trying to achieve--let me tell you what we're trying to achieve
with the race initiative. First, we're trying to make sure that there is
an honest dialog in every community--community-based approach to this--
about how each community is going to deal with whatever their racial
composition is and whatever the challenges of working together are. And
the evidence is clear that the answer is to get people to work together,
learn together, and serve together in the community.
The second thing we're trying to do is to catalog promising
practices of really exhilarating
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things that are going on around this country now, put them on our
homepage, and make them widely available. And we now have a lot of them
at our website, and we have huge numbers of people tapping into that and
then getting in touch with others around the country to learn what they
can do in their own community.
The third thing we're trying to do is to recruit leaders. I sent a
letter to 25,000 student leaders and asked them to get involved in the
race initiative, and we've gotten literally hundreds of replies from
young people telling us exactly what they're doing. Some of them are
fascinating, including a young white football player, star football
player, who involved athletes in an interracial initiative in the
Washington, DC, area.
And the fourth thing we're trying to do is to identify specific
governmental policies that will help to not only address race problems
that disproportionately affect minorities but will do it in a way that
will bring people together, like the initiative we had to give
scholarships to people who go teach in inner-city schools.
So we'll keep trying to turn it up. But I think it's been quite a
productive thing, and I think the American people are actually quite
interested in it. You know, people know--they pick up the paper every
day. They see that there are tribal warfares in Africa. They know that
we're still having trouble resettling the Croatians and the Muslims and
the Serbs in Bosnia. They know that the Irish just had another round of
killings, right on the verge of breaking through the Irish peace
process. They know that there's still trouble in the Middle East. And
they know there's still trouble in America. In the Washington papers,
we've been living through the efforts of a Muslim school that wants to
expand trying to find a location in a community that feels comfortable
accepting it. And a Muslim symbol was defaced on the Capitol during the
Christmas season, and Jewish leaders came out and condemned it--
interesting.
So we're trying to work through this stuff. I think being explicit
and open about it is helping us to get it right. In some ways the most
important thing--if we can prove that along with all of our economic
strength and our native political system that we can figure out how to
be bound together and still celebrate our differences, but say what
unites us is more important, that may be the most important meal ticket
to the 21st century we have.
Asian Economies
Q. Mr. President, how bad do you see the situation in Asia right
now? What are your nightmare concerns----
The President. Well, I hope you will understand that because of the
fact that what is going on in Asia is the function of markets and they
operate on perceptions, that I should be very careful about what I say
about that.
Let me tell you what I think. I think that the United States has an
interest in a stable and successful Asia. I think there's an enormous
amount of productive capacity in those countries. And I think if we can
get the policies right, we'll get through this. And I'm working as hard
as I can to try to get it right. And there are some encouraging signs
and some troubling signs, and it's a complex thing; we have to work it
hard. I can say this, I think we've been very well served to have Bob
Rubin and Larry Summers and the other people we've got at the Treasury Department
working on this. I think they're making about the best stab at it
anybody could. And we have worked very long hours for some extended
period of time now on it, and we're just going to keep at it and try to
make it come out okay.
Middle East Peace Process/Iraq
Q. [Inaudible]
The President. Well, on the Middle East peace process, I'm going to
see Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Arafat in the next few days and try to move the thing forward
a little bit. And I think it really depends upon whether the recent
change in Israel, political change, is seen as a spur to action or a
break on action, and whether we can find a way to keep this thing going
forward.
The real problem with the Middle East peace process is it's like a
living organism that gets sick if it doesn't move, you know. It's got to
move. You've got to just keep something happening, even if it's not
ideal--you've got to keep something happening. So we're working very
hard on that, and I'm very hopeful about it.
With Iraq, keep in mind what happened. We've already achieved a not
insignificant portion of our objective. Saddam Hussein's goal was to say, ``I'm going to throw all these
inspectors out and leave them out until you drop some or all of the
sanctions.'' And we said, ``You don't understand. We'll leave the
sanctions on until
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hell freezes over unless you let the inspections go forward.''
Now, I have not ruled out--or in--any further action of any kind
because there are still all kinds of unresolved questions about the
integrity of the inspection process, and we're working on that. But keep
in mind, Iraq's capacity to do damage to its neighbors has been
dramatically eroded because of the sanctions process. There are a lot of
countries that would like to relax it because they would benefit from
that relaxation. But we have an obligation to try to limit the
vulnerability not only of Americans but of the rest of the world to
chemical and biological warfare.
This is not about refighting the Gulf war. It's not about Kuwait or
anybody else. It's about--there's a reason those U.N. resolutions passed
and a reason the world is rightfully concerned about trying to contain
the damage of chemical and biological warfare.
So we're going to stay firm, and I'm not ruling in or out anything,
but we're being vigilant. But keep in mind, what he tried to do didn't
work. What he wanted was a relaxation of the sanctions in return for
just going back to business as usual, and that strategy failed. And
therefore, his capacity to do more harm is not materializing.
Federal Funding for Medical Research
Q. [Inaudible]
The President. Well, let me basically say, I think you will see a
significant increase in medical research coming out of this Congress.
It's one thing we have bipartisan agreement on. It is something we know
we have to do to try to offset the cutbacks to our health institutions
that have come not only from the HMO's but from our attempts to save
money in the Medicare and Medicaid programs which indirectly, at least,
funded a lot of the teaching and research hospitals of the country. And
I think you will see a big step forward there.
Support for the Arts
Q. [Inaudible]
The President. She asked if we saw any future in national support
for the arts. I think that we have defeated the effort coming from the
Republican right to destroy the National Endowment for the Arts and the
National Endowment for the Humanities. I don't think that will be
revived; I don't think it will. I think the real question is--since in
some cases it's life or death; in other cases it's largely symbolic
support. It says that we think this is important, an important national
purpose.
What I have looked at is whether or not there was some way we could
institutionalize and make permanent more of a genuine endowment on the
arts--and we're batting that around and asking for ideas around the
country--in a way that would take it out of the annual political debate,
which would be helpful to some of our Republican friends who really do
want to help, want to be supportive. I personally think it's very
important, and I think that there will not be the onslaught there has
been in the past to kill it. The question is whether we can
institutionalize it maybe even at a higher level and make it permanent.
Go ahead.
Cuba-U.S. Relations
Q. [Inaudible]
The President. Well, I hope so. But that's up to Cuba. You know, we
were making real progress in our relations with Cuba, and even in the
Cuban-American community there was ample evidence of changing attitudes
and an attempt to change within Cuba, reciprocated by change in the
United States. That was the concept of the Cuba Democracy Act, which
passed before I became President. The Democratic Congress passed it;
President Bush signed it; I supported it
strongly, and I used it. And it was a series of carrots and sticks
designed to say, as Cuba opens, we will open to Cuba, like two flowers
coming to bloom at the same time.
And then they murdered those people. They shot those people out of
the sky, in international waters. And it would not have been legal for
them to shoot them down if they had been in the territorial waters of
Cuba or flying right over Havana, for that reason, under the Chicago
Convention to which Cuba was a signatory.
So innocent people were killed. That put a deep chill on our
relationship. It led to a new and more rigorous act being passed, which
would prevent me from lifting the embargo without the support of
Congress, among other things.
But my position, however, is the same as it has always been: I think
there ought to be a reciprocal relationship here where, as Cuba shows
more support for human rights and democracy, we should open up. We
should try
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some reciprocal effort. But it has to be reciprocal. We can't--I don't
think, after what happened to those people, I don't think that--I don't
have any confidence that a unilateral gesture would have any success.
Now, I would be interested to see how the Pope's visit goes and what happens there. I'm very encouraged
that he's going. I was encouraged that the Cuban people were permitted
to observe Christmas. And we'll just see what happens. I've got--the
Pope is a very persuasive fellow and he, after all, is the voice of God
to those of us who believe that. And we hope that he does well.
I've got to run. I'm sorry. Thank you.
Note: The President spoke at 8:18 p.m. at a private residence. In his
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Alan and Susan Patricof; Greek
immigrant Dimitrious Theofanis and his son, Nick; Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel; Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian
Authority; President Saddam Hussein of Iraq; and Pope John Paul II.