[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[January 20, 1998]
[Pages 83-88]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
January 20, 1998

    Thank you very much. I want to begin by expressing my profound 
gratitude to Roy Romer and Steve 
Grossman, to Carol Pensky and Cynthia Friedman, to 
Alan Solomont and Dan Dutko, and to all the other people who have labored in this past 
year, sometimes under enormously difficult circumstances, to make sure 
that our party could celebrate this 150th anniversary year strong, in 
good shape, poised for the future, and proud of the last 5 years. They 
have done a terrific job, and I am very grateful to them.
    I want to thank Melissa Manchester 
for being here tonight. I was thinking, when I told her that Hillary and 
I used to listen to her tapes--over 20 years ago when I became attorney 
general of my State, I had a little tape deck in my car, and one of the 
tapes I used to play over and over again was ``Melissa Manchester's 
Greatest Hits,'' until it actually broke, the tape did, I listened to it 
so many times. And I looked at her and I listened to her, and I thought, 
I'm older and grayer, and she looks just like she did 20 years ago. But 
I thank her for that.
    I want to thank all of you for your loyalty, your support, your 
belief in what we're doing and where we're going. You know, I was very 
moved by what Steve Grossman said a few moments ago, because to me 
politics is about more than winning elections. Power has no value in and 
of itself. What we're here to do is to use what the American people give 
us momentarily to broaden their horizons and deepen their possibilities 
and bring us together.
    Yesterday, on Martin Luther King Day, I had the privilege of going 
to Cardozo High School here in the District of Columbia to be part of 
what was called this year a day on, not a day off, a day of service. And 
there were all these young people there, students at the high school, 
teachers, and AmeriCorps volunteers. I met a young woman from 
Pennsylvania who came right out of high school and joined

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AmeriCorps because she wanted to do community service before going to 
Colgate next year. I met two other young volunteers who just finished 
college. I met two of the students at this high school--picture of 
America--one born in Panama, the other came here 3 years ago from 
Ethiopia. I met the teacher in the classroom I was helping to paint, who 
had been a dedicated schoolteacher in the District of Columbia since 
1968, and a young man who was her student who now teaches chemistry at 
his old high school.
    It's so easy to forget in Washington, when you read the papers and 
you listen to all the political back and forth, that out there in this 
country there are all these people out there who get up every day and 
try to do something to be worthy of the citizenship that they have been 
given, to work hard to take care of their families, to serve their 
communities, to educate our children. And when I left there, I just felt 
so good about America and about the prospects for our future.
    I can't believe I've been here 5 years. It seems like yesterday when 
we flew out of Arkansas, Hillary and Chelsea and I, and then we went 
down to Monticello, to Thomas Jefferson's home, and took the bus up 
here. We walked across the bridge and rang the bells at my first 
Inauguration. And now about 60 percent of it is over, but 40 percent of 
it isn't. [Laughter] And what I'd like to do tonight is just--you can 
read in the little brochure all the details. I want to talk a little 
about the big picture.
    This country, in my opinion, has been the greatest democracy and now 
the longest lasting large democracy in human history because we found a 
way to merge our incredible practical sense with our principles in a 
Government that has permitted us to meet each new challenge and rise 
above it by growing more strong together and by widening the circle of 
freedom.
    That's what happened when George Washington and the rest of them 
decided we'd be one country instead of 13 States. That's what happened 
when Abraham Lincoln gave his life to keep us from splitting apart and 
to get over slavery. That's what happened when Theodore Roosevelt and 
Woodrow Wilson helped us to reap the benefits of the Industrial 
Revolution when people came to the cities from off the farms but also 
stood against its excesses, exploiting people, and exploiting our 
natural resources. It's what happened when Franklin Roosevelt reminded 
us that all we have to fear is fear and helped us to preserve freedom 
and come out of a Great Depression. For 50 years it has happened as we 
have built in our efforts to lift up this country in freedom, to fight 
racism, to fight the despoliation of our environment, to make our 
workplace safer, to do all the things that have happened.
    The reason I ran for President is that I felt that we were losing 
our way back in 1991 and 1992, not just because unemployment was high 
and social problems were worsening and we seemed to be kind of uncertain 
in a lot of the things we were doing around the world, but because I had 
a sense of drift and division in this country and a sense that we 
weren't being animated by a unifying vision that would take us into this 
new century, which I believe will be the best time in humanity's 
existence.
    Just think about it. We've had this explosion in science and 
technology and information, and it's changing everything--the way we 
work, the way we live, the way we relate to each other. Everybody E-
mails now. The Internet is the fastest growing means of communication in 
human history. I forget--somebody told me the other day how many 
homepages were added to the Internet every week; it took my breath away. 
And I can't remember--there were a bunch of zeros after the one; I can't 
remember how many.
    In the scientific revolution, we confront all these incredible 
prospects that we may be able, for example, to heal people with spinal 
cord injuries. We may be able to uncover the secret of what causes 
Alzheimer's and reverse it. We've detected the gene that causes or at 
least makes women strongly predisposed to breast cancer. We may be able 
not only to cure it but prevent it. When the human genome project is 
finished, we'll be able to send babies home with a genetic code. It may 
be troubling in a few odd cases when the children are overwhelmingly 
likely to have something tragic happen to them, but for most people it 
will enable them to raise their children in ways that will lengthen 
their lives and increase the quality of it.
    We're exploring the heavens in partnership with other countries. 
We're working increasingly in partnership with other countries in a 
globalized world that goes far beyond commerce. It's a very exciting 
time. But it's like every other new time; you can't just sort of wade 
into it and expect to have it come out

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all right. And if we're going to widen the circle of freedom and success 
in America and strengthen the bonds between us, we have to recognize 
that there is also an explosion of diversity in the world that can be 
positive but can lead to conflict.
    We have to recognize that just like when we changed from an 
agricultural to an industrial society, now that we're going to an 
information age, we're going to have to work real hard to see that 
everybody has a chance to win, because people, for example, without a 
good education are having a very tough time in this economy ever getting 
a raise, if they can get a job.
    We have to recognize that there are new common strains on the 
environment of this old Earth that we must meet together, chief of which 
is climate change. We have to recognize that the most important job in 
every society is not getting rich, or even working hard to make somebody 
else rich, but raising children. And now that we have the highest 
percentage of Americans ever in the work force, the number one family 
problem many families face is how to balance their responsibilities as 
parents and as workers--not confined, I might add, to people who can't 
afford child care. Nearly every parent I've ever talked to, even people 
with quite comfortable incomes, has felt instances of genuine gnawing 
conflict.
    We look at a world in which we hope to build a great community of 
peace, in specific places like Bosnia and Ireland and the Middle East, 
and generally through efforts like the Chemical Weapons Convention and 
strengthening our efforts against biological warfare and continuing to 
reduce the nuclear threat and expanding NATO and unifying Europe and 
working out new partnerships with China and Russia--all these things. 
But we also see an almost primitive resurgence of racial and ethnic 
hatreds and religious hatreds around the world, which, interestingly 
enough, the very technologies that should be bringing us together can 
also facilitate.
    So what I tried to do was to say, ``Let's back up, and let's see if 
we can't make some sense of what's going on and figure out how to do 
what Americans always do when everything changes. How can we get the 
benefits of change and deal with its challenges in a way that 
strengthens our unity and broadens the circle of freedom and 
opportunity?'' And that's what we've been trying to do.
    So the words that I have used so many times, they may seem trite to 
the people who cover my speeches or those of you who have to listen to 
them all the time: opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a 
community of all Americans. That means something to me. I think about it 
every single day. And every day I say, ``Have we expanded opportunity? 
Have we reinforced responsibility? Have we done something to strengthen 
our American community and our community of partnership with like-minded 
people throughout the world?''
    All of the specific things we've done have been things that flowed 
out of that. And there were two specific changes that I sought to make, 
which the future will have to judge better than the rest of us here. One 
is, it seemed to me that the argument that was going on between the 
Republicans and the Democrats in Washington over the role of Government 
was pointless and ultimately destructive. I mean, since 1981, we've 
been--the Republicans essentially had argued that the American people 
should distrust and dislike their Government; that Government was the 
problem, holding Americans back, and if we just didn't have any of it, 
everything would be hunky-dory. Well, for us Democrats, that was an easy 
target, but it was too easy a target because we spent too much time 
arguing that they were wrong, and we could just do more of the same. But 
when things change, you can't do more of the same. And what we tried to 
say is, okay, we need a new Government. It ought to be smaller; it ought 
to be less bureaucratic; it ought to work in partnership with the 
private sector more. But it has certain essential functions.
    First, it has to create the conditions and give people the tools to 
make the most of their own lives, in a world where, increasingly, people 
have independent access to information and have to make their own 
decisions about are they going to get an education, for example. That is 
why I predict to you 30 years from now when they look back on this time 
and see that we finally opened the doors of college to every American 
who would work for it and say, this may well be the most profound thing 
that happened in terms of giving all Americans the opportunity they need 
to succeed.
    Next, we have to be a catalyst for new ideas and experiment, because 
at a time of change nobody has all the answers. But if you work at it, 
even things that look little may have a

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big impact. There was an unbelievable article in a newspaper someone 
sent me the other day about how hardly any schools had school uniform 
policies until I went to Long Beach, California. And now 20 percent of 
the school districts with over 30 percent of the students in all of our 
public schools in America have schools with school uniform policies, and 
attendance is up, achievement is up, dropouts down, violence is down, 
disruptions down. It's moving the country forward. That's a little 
example.
    For 20 years we've had something called the Community Reinvestment 
Act, which requires banks to invest money in communities that are 
traditionally overlooked--for 20 years. Eighty-six percent of the total 
investment made in our inner-city communities under that act has been 
made in the last 5 years. It works. It works. The unemployment rate in 
our cities--our 50 biggest cities--it's higher than the national 
average, but not as much as you would think. It's 6 percent now. It was 
about 12 percent when I took office. So we're moving forward.
    And the last thing that we believe is that Government has a 
responsibility to help the helpless and to empower the disadvantaged. 
Now, we've been able to do that and cut 90-some percent of the deficit, 
give you the smallest Federal Government since President Kennedy, and in 
1998, 3 years ahead of schedule, I'm going to give the Congress the 
balanced budget, and I believe they'll pass it. And it will be a big 
thing.
    The second thing I tried to change people's minds about, I must say 
with a mixed record of success, is to make us understand how 
interdependent we are with the rest of the world and how it just really 
doesn't make sense anymore almost to talk about foreign and domestic 
policy. Take the crisis in the Asian financial market. Some people say, 
``Why is the President messing with that?'' Well, an enormous amount of 
our exports in the last 5 years have gone to Asia--enormous amount. A 
third of our economic growth in the last 5 years has come from exports. 
If their currencies collapse, what does that mean? It means they don't 
have as much money to buy our exports because everything we sell over 
there all of a sudden becomes more expensive. Parenthetically, 
everything they compete with us in other markets for gives them an 
advantage because all their exports to other markets become cheaper. So 
it's not just something there, it's something here.
    Well, you say, what about Bosnia? Well, what if it spread beyond the 
borders of Bosnia and ethnic hatreds engulfed a lot of the Balkans and 
other places, compelling us to send huge numbers of American soldiers 
later to die. That's a big problem for America. And if we don't stand up 
against ethnic hatred around the world, can we preserve harmony at home 
when we have our Christians and Jews and Orthodox Christians and Muslims 
here, just like they do there? That, to me, is the essence at the heart 
of the trade argument.
    Interestingly enough, the differences we have there have, in my 
view, rarely been accurately interpreted. I believe the Democratic 
Party--all of our members--believe that economics cannot, in effect, 
take precedence over everything else in life and that we should try to 
lift the labor standards of the countries with which we trade, because 
if other folks get richer and they get their fair share of a nation's 
wealth, then they will buy more American products and they'll have more 
stable societies, they'll be better democracies. And besides that, it's 
just the right thing to do.
    I believe that we should seek to have common efforts in the 
environment, because we know that an environmental problem in another 
part of the world can now affect us. And if we are irresponsible, we can 
adversely affect others.
    I believe when we expand trade, most people are big winners, but 
there are some losers, and we have to do a better job of getting those 
people back on the winning track. We should give them more and better 
training more quickly. We should give them more support. We should do a 
better job. But the answer is not to try to pretend that the world is 
not integrating economically and to run away from the opportunities that 
Americans manifestly have to trade and, in trading, to build support for 
democracy and build partnerships and build people who will want to work 
with us in other ways. And I hope you will help me continue to do that 
over the next 3 years. The United States must continue to lead, but lead 
in partnership with other countries. And the Democrats ought to be on 
the forefront of that.
    Now, all this has worked pretty well, I'd say, for the last 5 years. 
We've got the lowest unemployment rate in 24 years, the lowest inflation 
rate in 30 years, the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the highest rate of 
homeownership in history, the highest percentage of people in the

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work force in history, declining rates of teen pregnancy and divorce, 
declining rates of drug use. Finally, even juvenile crime is coming 
down. But this is not a time to sort of sit back and say, ``Gee, that's 
great.'' I didn't come here tonight for a pat on the back. I came here 
to ask you to renew your dedication to keep this country moving forward. 
If this direction is working now, you know as well as I do we still have 
unmet challenges before we really can say we have built our children a 
bridge to the 21st century they can all walk across. And until we can 
say that, we have no business giving ourselves a pat on the back. We've 
got lots of time left, lots of work to do, and I want you to leave here 
with your energy renewed for the fights, the struggles, and the issues 
of 1998 and beyond.
    The evidence of the last 5 years is all the evidence you need to 
know that we need to keep on going. The first thing we need to do is 
balance the budget. Everybody is talking about what to do with the 
surplus. You know, nobody else would talk like this; only Government 
people could talk about what to do with a surplus when we've had a 
deficit every year since 1969, we quadrupled the debt since 1980, and we 
don't have a balanced budget yet. So it may be sort of old-fashioned, 
but if I might modestly suggest, let us balance the budget first, and 
then we can talk about the rest.
    The second thing I'd like to say is, we have some new proposals that 
we think will help people deal with the challenges of the next 
generation. One is, since we've got more people than ever before in the 
workplace, but since raising a child is the most important thing, we 
need to do more to make quality child care, safe child care, affordable 
for more Americans. That's what is at the heart of our child care 
initiative. It's so people can know their kids are okay when they're at 
work. And it is very important.
    The second thing we're going to do, and this is completely paid for 
in the budget, and I hope Congress will adopt it, is to say to the 
people who are in their later work years but not yet eligible for 
Medicare, they ought to be able to buy into Medicare if they're 55 or 
over and they get laid off and they can't get another job; or if they 
take early retirement from a company that promised them health insurance 
and then won't give it to them; or if they're married to an older spouse 
who quits work, goes on Medicare, and they're not eligible for it and 
they can't get health insurance anywhere. Now, a lot of these people 
will get help from their children in buying these policies, but they 
can't get policies now. I say do that.
    What is the moral argument behind denying people access to a policy 
that is paid for that will not increase the deficit or wreck the 
Medicare Trust Fund? It is the right thing to do. It's a Democratic 
program within the constraints of fiscal discipline. And I hope you will 
support that. [Applause] Thank you.
    There are a lot of other great things that are going to happen. And 
I ask for your support. But the main thing I want you to--if you leave 
here tonight and you think, ``I'm proud to be a Democrat; these past 5 
years were right; we've got the right philosophy for America; we're 
pulling America together,'' then I want you to leave committed to keep 
on doing it, because we need you badly.
    Let me just leave you with this story. Today I had one of those 
wonderful experiences that comes to you when you're President. I 
bestowed the Congressional Medal of Honor on someone. And you say, well, 
we're not in a war now. Well, let me tell you this story. I bestowed the 
Congressional Medal of Honor on a retired marine major general who was 54 years ago a corporal on the island of 
Okinawa in the bloodiest battle of the war in the Pacific. And his job 
was to take a mountain called Sugar Loaf. And they got into a crater--a 
big kind of shell crater--he and his squad. His whole squad was wiped 
out. For 3 days--2 nights and 3 full days--he stayed awake, often alone. 
He lost all his men; they were either all killed or wounded. He left two 
or three times to take other wounded people to safety, always returning 
when he could have just stayed away, always going back to his post. He 
repelled assault after assault after assault after assault after 
assault. In the end, only one wounded marine was there helping him. For 
3 solid days he stayed awake, and when finally they rescued him, there 
were 100--100--enemy casualties all around him.
    The paperwork for his Medal of Honor was lost. Somehow, you know, a 
lot of records got lost at the end of World War II. Later, he went to 
Korea, where he won two Silver Stars for valor in combat. Later, he went 
to Vietnam, where he won another Silver Star for valor in combat. After 
three wars, he had six Purple Hearts. And so everybody in the Marine 
Corps

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wanted to put him up for the Medal of Honor because they had misplaced 
his records, and he ordered them not do it. He said it was not the right 
thing for a man who is a general in the Marine Corps to permit his name 
to be elevated in that way. So it took him until he had spent nearly 40 
years in the Marine Corps and retired as a major general and moved to 
California, until this could be done. It was an awesome event.
    Why am I telling you this? Because every one of you must be just as 
moved as I was by the story. Not everyone could have been on Okinawa; 
not everyone could have done that. But everyone can be what he was: a 
loyal, good-serving citizen. Everyone could be in a school like the 
school I was in yesterday. My staff did some research and concluded that 
if everybody in the American phone books with the last name of Clinton 
or Gore would volunteer 2 hours a week, we could paint every classroom 
in every high school in America by Martin Luther King's next birthday. 
Now, that's a funny thing to say, but you think about it. You think 
about it.
    This is a great country, and we have met every challenge. I am so 
grateful for these last 5 years. I am so pleased that America is doing 
so well. But remember, no one--no one--could have anticipated the scope 
or the pace of the changes through which we are going. And believe me, 
no one can see the end of it. There is no visionary that has imagined 
the future completely. We are not finished. We have a lot of work to do.
    We have work to do to reform the entitlements so they'll be there 
for our children without bankrupting our grandchildren. We have work to 
do to preserve the environment. We have work to do to spread economic 
opportunity to all of our people. We have work to do to lift the 
academic standards and the educational opportunities of all of our 
children. We have work to do in this world to make it a safe world, not 
a dangerous world, for our kids in the 21st century. We have work to do. 
So celebrate the last 5 years by making the next 3 even better.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:02 p.m. in the Main Atrium at the 
Corcoran Gallery of Art. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Roy Romer 
of Colorado, general chair, Steve Grossman, national chair, Carol 
Pensky, treasurer, and Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, 
Democratic National Committee; Cynthia Friedman, national cochair, 
Women's Leadership Forum; Dan Dutko, chair, DNC Victory Fund; and 
entertainer Melissa Manchester.