    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 2, 1999]
    [Pages 149-152]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in New York City
    February 2, 1999

        Thank you very much. If I may, with all respect to
    Caroline, borrow a line from
    President Kennedy, it looks to me like--that it is highly likely that I
    will increasingly be known as the person who comes with Hillary to New
    York. [Laughter]
        I want to, first of all, say to all of you how grateful I am to
    Steve Grossman for the great work he has done
    as our chairman. Nobody wanted to be head of the Democratic Party when
    it was $18 million in debt--[laughter]--but Steve Grossman, he thought
    it was just a minor irritant that we could do away with. And I said
    today--you know, Hillary came to New
    York today, and I went to Boston--and I'll tell you more about that in a
    minute; I had a great day in Boston. She said, ``Now, tell me again what
    you're doing in Boston.'' I said, ``Well, I'm going to go up to Boston,
    and we're going to canonize Steve Grossman.'' And she said, ``Bill,
    don't say that. It's the wrong religion.'' [Laughter] So I did it
    anyway. I introduced him to his hometown crowd today as the first person
    of the Jewish faith ever to be called Saint Steven. [Laughter] And they
    liked it in Boston. At least, the Irish and the Italians liked it, which
    is a big part of the crowd. [Laughter]
        We had a great day. I want to thank Len Barrack for the work he's done, and Governor Romer, all the staff folks. I want to thank Joe Andrew and Beth Dozoretz for
    being willing to serve. I want to thank Judith Hope for doing a great job here in New York. And I cannot
    tell you how grateful I am to Jerry Nadler,
    Carolyn Maloney, and Nita Lowey. They are treasures. They do a magnificent job for New
    York, but they stand up for what's right for America, and you should be
    so proud that our party is represented by people like them in the United
    States Congress.
        I want to thank Congressman Klein and Speaker
    Silver and all my pals from Indiana who are
    here tonight. [Laughter] Joe Andrew, this is a good sign. You're going
    to spoil us; you know, when we go to Washington State, I'm going to be
    looking for the five people from Indiana. When we're in south Texas,
    I'll be looking for the five people from Indiana. [Laughter] We're going
    to open every meeting with ``Back Home in Indiana.'' [Laughter] We'll
    all sing it.
        You know, I could tell when Hillary was talking to you about the
    women with whom she met today that it touched you. But you have to know
    that I think that politics only works if you have certain principles and
    values, you have ideas about how to implement them, and then you have
    some sense of what the human impact of what you do is. I mean, if this
    doesn't make any difference to anybody's life, why did you come out here
    tonight? You could have eaten downstairs for less money--[laughter]--
    which, with all respect to the owner at this restaurant, is saying
    something. [Laughter] And you could have done that.
        So I'm getting ready for my next life. I'm going to be the comic
    that closes the show--[laughter]--my standup life. I just want to tell
    you two stories, too, that really mean a lot to me. The other day--well,
    let me back up and say I believe there are two things which distinguish
    the two parties today on almost every issue of major significance. There
    may be 200, but I think there are two, for sure.
        First is, what is the role of Government in making the America of
    our dreams in the 21st century? The first thing is, we ended the old
    debate that nearly wrecked this country and quadrupled the national debt
    and got us in a terrible hole in the 1980's, where, you know, the
    argument was always: Is Government the

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    solution, or is Government the problem? And my argument was always that
    Government is neither, that the role of Government is to create the
    conditions and get people the tools to make the most of their own lives.
        The second and, I think, fundamentally even more important
    difference is our idea of community. Our idea of community goes way
    beyond just saying you believe in the same things. I think most of us,
    in the very fiber of our being, believe that we are all interconnected,
    that we are an interdependent people in an increasingly interdependent
    world, that when you strip away all the layers, nobody is any better
    than anybody else, and that we cannot find personal or family or
    business--economic--fulfillment without some decent concern for the
    ability of others to find the same. I believe that.
        And I was raised with those values and had a fresh reminder
    involving New York City the other day, from a strange source. I have a
    60-year-old cousin who runs the local HUD
    office, the housing project in the little town in Arkansas where I was
    born, and the other day she called the White House. And we've been
    friends--she was the best rodeo performer in Arkansas when she was 16
    years old. [Laughter] I used to watch her barrel race and rope cows
    and--I mean, the calves and all that stuff; she was fabulous. And she
    still looks like she could do it after all these years.
        But she called and said she was coming to
    Washington for a HUD conference and wanted to spend the night, and she
    spent the night. And I got up, and we had breakfast in the morning. She
    still gets up real early, like I used to do when I lived there. And so
    we were talking, and she said, ``I'm really worried about something.''
    And I said, ``What is it?'' She said, ``Well, you know, I come from
    about the smallest place represented at this conference.'' She said,
    ``Most of these people are from New York or Los Angeles or someplace
    like that.'' And she said, ``They tell me there are 20,000 to 30,000
    children a year in foster care that turn 18 and are just turned out.
    Their parents don't get any more money, and some of them are foster
    parents who can't afford to take care of them. And a lot of these kids
    are just on the street when they ought to be going to college.'' So I
    said, ``Well, I think we're trying to do something about that, and I'll
    get back to you.''
        Four days later, Hillary did an
    event about part of our budget that she has been crusading for for
    years, to provide funds to places like New York City to support those
    children, to give them a decent place to live, to give them a chance at
    going to college, to give them a chance to go on with their lives.
    Twenty thousand to thirty thousand people in a country of 260 million is
    not all that many. But if it's your life, it's the biggest number in the
    world.
        And I thought to myself, my cousin, raised by the people on my
    mama's side of the family who had all the same values, was really
    worried about those kids in New York City, and I was very proud to be
    related to her. And I am proud to be related
    to all of you because I think we care about that, and I think it
    illustrates what our party stands for.
        Now, today I went up--while Hillary was having a good time in New
    York, I was in Boston--[laughter]--having a good time at the Mann
    Jackson Elementary School. It's a great school, and I won't bore you
    with all the details, but they had the choir singing for me. And then I
    met with the choir afterward and a bunch of the students. And gosh,
    there were Irish kids and Italian kids and Jewish kids, and there were
    Arab-American kids, and there were Hispanic kids from a bunch of
    different countries, and there were Chinese kids, Japanese kids, Thai
    kids, kids from the Indian subcontinent, both Indians and Pakistanis.
    They were all there. And it was amazing. And I thought, you know, this
    is this bewildering kaleidoscope that is America.
        So they're going to ask me all these questions, right? And they're
    all going to be very ethnically distinguishable. ``What's your favorite
    food?'' [Laughter] Chinese-American kid says, ``Why do you live in such
    a big house? You've got more room than you need.'' [Laughter] And I
    said, ``Well, it's not really my house. It's sort of a museum, and I
    live in a few rooms.'' And I said, ``Well, why don't you just come down
    and see it?'' ``Do you like your job?'' I said, ``Now, I have to be
    honest.'' [Laughter] And I told them the truth; I said, ``Every day!
    Even the bad days--every day.''
        Then there was this incredibly touching child who was quite large for his age, 9-year-old child, who
    was blind, who was either Indian or Pakistani; he didn't tell me, and we
    didn't have time to talk. And he came up, and he says, ``I've got a song
    I learned, and I want to sing this song''--barged up to the front of the
    line. And I said, ``Well, just sing ahead.'' And it was an environmental
    song about not polluting.

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        And the point I want to make to you is that what these children had
    that was different about them is part of what makes America interesting
    and will make us a more interesting country in the future. But what they
    had in common was self-evident and profound. And that's the other thing
    that means a lot to me.
        So I am very glad that I had the chance to serve as President. I'm
    very glad that we got a chance to put the ideas that I brought to the
    country in 1991 and 1992 into effect. I'm glad I had incredibly gifted
    people like the Vice President and Hillary and so many other people on
    our team to make it work, not the least of whom, as all of you know, is
    my great Secretary of the Treasury from New York, Bob Rubin.
        But what matters to me is the lives that changed. You know, if you
    say, ``Well, we've got the lowest peacetime unemployment rate since
    1957,'' that's an applause line. But the real applause line is what it
    does to the lives of the people. You say, ``We've cut the welfare rolls
    nearly in half.'' How did it change people's lives? If we have the
    lowest crime rate in 30 years, what difference does that make? That
    means a whole lot of people are walking around who wouldn't be even
    walking around otherwise. These are the stories, the songs of life, the
    texture of America.
        And I would like to say, in much briefer and more, sort of,
    impressionistic language, the point I tried to make at the State of the
    Union, which is: Yes, I'm very glad for the economic record that has
    been amassed. And I'm glad that most of you have done very well in this
    economy and can do this and still send your kids to college--be here
    tonight. [Laughter] But what I would like to say is, I believe that we
    shouldn't be celebrating; we should be thanking the good Lord that we
    have this opportunity.
        I mean, I think about past Presidents, past Members of Congress,
    past Governors, past you-name-it, people who had public
    responsibilities, who would have killed to have the circumstances that
    we have now, to have the freedom to face the long-term challenges of
    America.
        And I believe that as a political party, we have a solemn
    responsibility to go out and tell the American people, ``Look, if you
    want to give us a pat on the back for being right in 1993 and bringing
    the deficit down, getting the interest rates down and for being right
    about family leave and right about the Brady bill and right about the
    crime bill, that's fine. We'd be honored to have it. But what we want
    you to do is to think about what, as a country, we can do with these
    times and this prosperity, what our responsibilities are, how many new
    good stories we can create out there.''
        And this country--even though we're doing very well, we have huge
    challenges. And I just--the aging of America; the children of America,
    who are poorer than the seniors; the continuing challenge to reconcile
    work and family; the difficulty of maintaining our own economic
    expansion when there are places in America and in this city that have
    not felt any of the economic recovery; and when there is such
    instability and uncertainty around the world about the global financial
    system and the global trading system, where more and more ordinary
    citizens, not in this country even as much as other countries, have real
    questions about whether they will be personally benefited if we continue
    to expand trade, and when we know it's the only way to keep economic
    growth going--these are huge questions.
        How can we continue to grow the economy and seriously manage the
    problem of global warming? A lot of people don't think about that. I
    have to tell you that I am--Al Gore was
    showing me those carbon charts 5 or 6 years ago, but for the last 24
    months, it's been my cause, too. I am sold; I am convinced this is a
    huge deal. And the good news is that it is obvious that the technology
    is there to deal with this issue and continue to grow the economy,
    probably at a more rapid rate, and not only for us but for countries
    like China and India and Pakistan and Argentina and other developing
    countries as well.
        Now, these are huge things. So what I was trying to say in the State
    of the Union is, we, as Americans, have a special responsibility from
    which it would be easy to walk away, because we're doing fine. But it's
    a very dynamic world. And the women that Hillary talked to today and the
    kids that I spoke with today, they deserve better. They deserve better,
    and so do you, and so do your children and your grandchildren.
        We may never have another opportunity to prove that we can find ways
    to put billions and billions of dollars of private capital into inner
    city and rural neighborhoods that haven't had any new investment in this
    recovery and in the process keep our own economy going.

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        We will never have a better time to deal with Social Security and
    Medicare by setting aside the lion's share of this surplus to do so or
    to provide for all Americans to have the opportunity to save, to invest,
    to create a share of wealth, something most Americans can't afford to
    do, even with the enormous improvement in the stock market.
        And this is also for our children. I said yesterday--I want to say
    again, if we buy in the privately held debt and obligate the repayment
    of the bonds to the Social Security Trust Fund and to Medicare, we will
    reduce publicly--debt held by the private citizens to the lowest
    percentage of our economy since 1917, before World War I. In 15 years--
    today, when your Members of Congress vote on the budget, they'll have to
    set aside over 13 cents of every dollar you pay in taxes to pay interest
    on the debt. In 15 years, that Congress will only set aside 2 cents on
    the dollar, if we do this.
        Can you imagine what our successors will be able to do with 11
    percent of your tax money? If we have a slowdown in the economy, they'll
    be able to afford a tax cut. If we have a crisis in education, they'll
    be able to deal with it. If we need to dramatically increase our
    investment in medical research or if we have some new security threat,
    they'll have the money to invest in it, and we'll still be strong. And I
    could go on and on and on. That's what this is all about, and it will
    change the stories. It will change the future of the country.
        So I ask you to keep your energy level high, to keep your sights
    high, to realize that rarely do a whole people get a chance to help make
    the world their children and grandchildren will live in and to make it a
    better place. And in the process, recognizing humbly that we cannot
    begin to foresee everything that they will face, we will at least be
    giving them the tools with which to face the challenges we do not know.
        That is our obligation. It is perhaps fortuitous, perhaps fated,
    that it occurs at the end of this century and the end of this
    millennium. But Hillary's theme for
    this occasion, ``Honoring the past and imaging the future,'' both
    require us to take these steps. That's what your presence here will
    enable us to do.
        So I ask you to leave here with confidence, I ask you to know that
    the President and the First Lady feel a gratitude to the people of New
    York, the city and the State, that is inexpressible. But the only way we
    know how to express that gratitude is to seize this moment, and I want
    you to help us do it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:40 p.m. at the Le Cirque Restaurant. In
    his remarks, he referred to Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg; Steve
    Grossman, national chair, Leonard Barrack, national finance chair, Gov.
    Roy Romer of Colorado, general chair, Joseph J. Andrew, national chair-
    designate, and Beth Dozoretz, national finance chair-designate,
    Democratic National Committee; New York State Democratic Chair Judith
    Hope; former Congressman Herb Klein; Sheldon Silver, speaker, New York
    State Assembly; Myra J. Irvin, section 8 rental assistance program
    manager, Hope, AR, Housing Authority; and elementary school student
    Gerald Mejia.