[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[September 14, 1998]
[Pages 1578-1581]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Unity '98 Luncheon in New York City
September 14, 1998

    Thank you very much, all of you, for your warm welcome. Thank you, 
Denise, for having us here today and for sticking up for our party and 
for doing the work you have done in your daughter's memory and for being 
a true friend to Hillary and me. We are so grateful to you.
    I want to thank Patti and Natalie for that unusual and perfectly 
wonderful version of ``Over the Rainbow.'' One of the best things about 
being President is just being able to meet people that you've listened 
to sing or perform all your life, and then all of a sudden you get to 
know them, and then they do things like that, which are great gifts.
    I'd like to thank Steve Grossman, who has been heroic in his work 
for our party. He is indefatigable, and he's effective, and he's a good 
man. And I'm very grateful to him for his leadership.
    I want to thank the Members of Congress who are here--I look forward 
to saying to Mr. Rangel, ``Chairman Rangel''--to Nancy Pelosi, to 
Carolyn Kilpatrick. Dick Gephardt just had to leave and has done a 
terrific job of holding our caucus together and working on things 
together. I thank Tom Daschle and Bob Torricelli and Senator Kerrey, who 
just had to leave. He said he was going back to cast an agriculture 
vote. And I said, ``How are you going to vote?'' He said, ``I'm from 
Nebraska.'' He said, ``Whatever it is, I'm going back to vote for the 
farmers.'' [Laughter] And I appreciate his being here, and I appreciate 
Bob Torricelli's unbelievable work to help in this project. And I am 
very grateful for Tom Daschle's leadership in the Senate.
    You know, last Friday Hillary and I had a lot of people down to the 
White House from New York--they weren't all from New York, but a lot of 
them were--when we had a celebration for Irish-Americans, for the 
progress that's been made in the Irish peace process. And I was thinking 
about what it was that our involvement there had to do with what we've 
tried to do at home. I was thinking about all the times that Hillary has 
been to Northern Ireland on her own to help women's groups who, 
predictably, even when the men's were still acting like fools, were out 
there working across religious lines to create a peace climate.
    And I was thinking that there's something about the roots that we 
feel to Ireland--just

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as the roots we feel in the Middle East, the roots we feel in the 
Aegean, the roots we feel every place there are troubles in the world--
that bring home to the heart both the cause of peace abroad and the 
cause of prosperity at home.
    I was looking at the Vice President talking today and thinking, I 
don't know if every American knows this, but every American should know 
that whether you agree with what we have done or not, there is no 
question that far and away, beyond anyone who has ever served in that 
position before, Al Gore has had more influence over more issues and 
done more good than any Vice President in the history of the country, by 
light-years, for ordinary people. And I think that is important. And I 
am very grateful to him and to Tipper for her work on behalf of mental 
health, for all the things that we've been able to do together.
    And let me say to all of you, I'm also--I know that I speak for 
Hillary when I say we thank you for your personal friendship and your 
support. It means more now than ever, and we'll never forget it.
    I was trying to think--you know, everybody has gone through the 
issues here and the record--I was trying to think of some way to say in 
a sentence what our administration has tried to be about and why there 
are all those people out there on the street today, when a lot of other 
people have told them they shouldn't be there. And we were turning 
around the corner and Hillary said, ``Look, look, look at that person 
there.'' And there was a guy standing there holding the book that Al 
Gore and I wrote for the '92 campaign. Remember what the title was? 
``Putting People First.''
    This is a season when we will ask ourselves, what is the purpose of 
our public life, what is the role of citizenship in the electoral 
process, and when we'll decide whether we're going to put progress over 
partisanship and people over politics. And I don't think there is any 
question what most Americans want to do.
    What I want you to know is, the importance of your being here today 
is that you have given us a chance to do certain very important, 
specific things, which I will mention before I let you go, but in a 
larger sense to reaffirm the fact that the special thing about our party 
is when we gather in a fundraising event like this, we want to do a lot 
of things that will benefit people who could never afford to come here. 
And I think that's very, very important.
    For so many people, politics is about power. For me, the power of 
politics is that it gives you a chance to use the authority that comes 
from the people in a democracy to help the people that were on the 
street out here clapping when I was driving to this place. And in the 
end, no country does well--no country does well--unless those folks do 
well. It never happens.
    Let me just say, I also believe that we have one message we have to 
take to all the folks on the street that obviously didn't deter our 
fundraising event here--the adversity of the moment, I think, has led us 
to this record turnout. Why? Because people made a decision, and they 
thought they were needed and they stood up. That's not the real danger 
to the Democrats this November. The real danger to the Democrats this 
November is that history will repeat itself, complicated by good times.
    What am I talking about? If you go back to the Civil War, there has 
never been an election for midterm--congressional election--since the 
Civil War when the party of the President in power, if the President was 
in his second term, didn't lose seats--not a single time. I think we're 
going to beat history.
    But what is the real danger? The real danger is, the folks on the 
street will think, ``Well, we've got the lowest unemployment rate in 28 
years and the lowest inflation rate in 32 years and the first balanced 
budget in 29 years, the lowest percentage of people on welfare in 29 
years; things are peachy-keen. I think I'll go to the movie on Tuesday. 
Or I'll take my kid to the day-care center, and I don't have time to go 
vote.'' That is the real danger.
    The real danger is that people will think, as they typically do, our 
voters, who have to make a bigger effort to go vote because they have 
more family responsibilities, more work responsibilities, on average, 
lower incomes and more hassles in life, that things are going well and 
they don't need to go vote. That is the danger; don't misunderstand.
    Once people understand there's an issue, they show up. That's what 
the success of this incredible day is testimony to, where the people 
that sponsor this event wound up turning people away, and we raised 25 
percent more than we expected to. Once people know what's at stake,

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they will show up. The real danger is that people will say, ``Things are 
going well; there's no need for my voting. I don't really know that 
anything too bad is going to happen one way or the other, or anything 
too good is going to happen one way or the other. But things are going 
well, and I'm satisfied.''
    It is our job to go out and tell people what is still at issue; not 
to take credit for what has happened--people already know what our role 
has been, I think, in all the things that the Vice President talked 
about--but to say, hey, yes, things are going well, but read the paper; 
look at all the things that are going on around the world; look at how 
things are changing every day. Remember, when things are at trouble 
around the world, it can affect us here at home. So we have to look at 
these big issues.
    And because the balanced budget is here and because we have a strong 
economy and because we have confidence in ourselves again, we have an 
obligation to deal with the big issues: to give every kid in this 
country a world-class education; to prove we can grow the economy and 
preserve our environment; to not squander this surplus until we have 
dealt with the fact that when the baby boomers retire, there will only 
be two people working for every one person retired. And it is wrong for 
my generation to retire and undermine the standard of living of our 
children and grandchildren to pay for our retirement.
    That's why we've got to save Social Security before we start 
spending this surplus in a politically popular election-year tax cut. 
That is wrong. We should not be doing that until we--first of all, it 
hasn't materialized yet. I'm just sitting around here like a--I haven't 
felt like this since the week before Chelsea was born. On October 1st, 
for the first time in 29 years, the ink will turn from red to black, and 
there are already people who don't want us to get to look at it. I'd 
say, let's just take a deep breath, realize the surplus, and say we're 
not going to spend it even if it's popular to do so, until we've saved 
Social Security and relieved our children and grandchildren from the 
burden of our retirement. I think it's important.
    These are big issues. Today I spoke here in New York at the Council 
on Foreign Relations about the present crisis in the global economy. One 
quarter of the world is having negative economic growth. Thirty percent 
of our growth as Americans in the last 5 years has come from our 
expanding trade. We cannot forever be an island of prosperity if the 
rest of the world gets in trouble. That's why people in every State and 
every community in this country ought to care about how folks in other 
countries are doing and whether we are working together with them.
    So I went to the Council on Foreign Relations to say, look, here's 
what I want to do to try to deal with the challenges of the global 
economy. Let me say very briefly, we have to, first of all, restore 
growth. That's what got us a balanced budget and 16 million new jobs; we 
had a growing economy. That's what we need in the world.
    The second thing we've got to do is to try to develop a system that 
limits these violent swings in how these countries are doing. You know, 
after the Great Depression in America, we learned how to limit the 
swings of the economy, and we haven't had another depression. And it 
stabilized things. We have to do that in the world.
    The third thing we've got to do is to make the global economy more 
humane. We have to make it work for ordinary people. And when times are 
tough and countries have to go through difficult times, we've got to 
help the innocent and make sure they don't get punished too badly. 
Otherwise, the support for free markets and democracy will erode.
    So I talked about that today, and I gave out a big plan that I 
really have worked hard on. And I pointed out that the Secretary of 
Treasury, Bob Rubin, and the head of our central bank, Alan Greenspan, 
our Federal Reserve, within the next 30 days are going to convene 22 
countries, their counterparts in 22 countries, and make recommendations 
to us about what to do over the long run to fix the global financial 
system.
    Today in London, the heads of the big industrial powers just issued 
a statement at 1:30 saying they essentially supported what we were 
trying to do and would be a part of it. This is a big deal. This is what 
the politics of America ought to be about now. If we can't keep the 
economy growing globally, it's going to be very hard to keep it 
impacting Main Street in a positive way. So that's what this is about.
    Just one or two other issues. This health care issue is a huge deal. 
We've got 160 million Americans, more than half the people in this 
country, in managed care plans. They have a

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right to know that if they get hit down here walking across the street, 
they can go to the nearest emergency room; they won't have to be dragged 
to another borough to an emergency room because their plan says that. 
They have a right to know that if they get cancer or they're horribly 
scarred and they need a specialist to help them, they can get a 
specialist to deal with their problem. They have a right to know that if 
their employer changes health insurance carriers in the middle of a 
treatment--during a pregnancy, during a chemotherapy treatment, or 
whatever--they won't be required to change doctors. They have a right to 
know that their records will be private.
    This is 160 million people. And we and our Republican friends in 
Washington are at direct loggerheads over this, something that affects 
160 million people. That's the kind of thing this election is all about.
    So what I want you to do is to know, number one, you have done a 
very good thing making this weekend possible, this event possible, 
because you are going to give us a chance to tell the people what 
putting people first means in terms of 1998. But number two, I ask you 
to go back to your homes, go back to your friends and neighbors, and 
keep talking until you're blue in the face. Remember, our problem is not 
adversity; we will rise in adversity. Our problem is complacence. Our 
problem is the burden of history. Our problem is people thinking, 
``Things are good now; I don't have to move.'' We do have to move.
    And if we talk about these big things and we remember these 
elections are never about us, they're always about those folks out on 
the street; they're always about what putting people first means; 
they're always about freedom and opportunity and reconciling Americans 
to each other across all the lines that divide us--if we do that, we're 
going to do just fine.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:03 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to luncheon host Denise Rich; singers Patti LaBelle 
and Natalie Cole; and Steve Grossman, national chair, Democratic 
National Committee.