    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 18, 1999]
    [Pages 206-212]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a State Democratic 100 Club Dinner in Manchester,
    New Hampshire
    February 18, 1999

        Thank you. I want to thank you for a typically reticent Yankee
    welcome tonight. [Laughter] It is wonderful to be back. I have very much
    enjoyed being with Governor Shaheen and with
    Bill today, and we've had a lot of time to
    visit. I want you to know that it gives me an enormous amount of
    pleasure and pride to see the Governor at her task, to know the
    victories that you have given her, to know that now she has a Democratic
    State Senate for the first time in 86 years and that you made a lot of
    gains in the House and that the Democratic Party is moving in the right
    direction.
        I thank Jeff and Sophia and all the other officers of the Democratic Party,
    all the legislators and other people who are here. I am glad to be back.
    I'd like to thank the people from New Hampshire who have been a part of
    our administration. I'm not sure I can remember all of them, so many
    have been. But I would like to thank Joe GrandMaison and Stephanie Powers,
    Ricia McMahon, Terry Shumaker--I talked to him today; I called Terry
    Shumaker and said, ``It's just like the Caribbean up here in New
    Hampshire; you ought to be here''--[laughter]--George Bruno, Dick Swett, so many others.
        I want to thank--I brought four people back here tonight who slogged
    through the snows of New Hampshire with me in '91 and '92, Michael
    Whouley, Jeff Forbes, Paul Begala, and
    Bruce Lindsey. And they are glad to be here,
    and we thank you.
        You know, the last time I was in this building, I believe, was at
    the Democratic Convention in the campaign of '92. And I remember there
    were--the center aisle was open, and everything was crowded, and all the
    candidates got to have a little demonstration. And in my demonstration,
    there were a bunch of students who carried a banner down the middle
    aisle for me; I'll never forget it. And to see this vast crowd here
    today, celebrating the successes of our party and our Nation and your
    State, is wonderful.
        You know, I didn't know exactly what I was going to say today when I
    got here. I remember when I first started coming here, people kind of
    laughed at me when I said that New Hampshire was a lot like my home. All
    the experts

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    expected you to send me home. [Laughter] Instead, you made me feel at
    home, and I still do. I love it.
        In 1992, when I came here, when Hillary came here, amidst all the economic problems and
    personal turmoil, people whose businesses had been closed because their
    loans were canceled, in some cases, people who had never missed a
    payment; elderly people who were having to choose between food and
    medicine; young working families who couldn't buy health insurance
    because their children had been sick--I remember a young girl who talked
    to me about the pain in her family because her father could not get over
    the fact that he was unemployed, and he could no longer take care of his
    family,
        In the middle of that difficult time the people of New Hampshire
    came out to see me and Hillary and listen to what we had to say. You
    took us into your homes. You shared your struggles and your dreams. And
    in so many ways, the story of America in 1991 and 1992 was, for me, the
    personal histories I heard in New Hampshire.
        I saw a lot of people today that I met then, that I've tried to keep
    up with on all the times I've came back here since then. I think, of all
    the things that were said to me today, the things that meant the most
    were--well, there were really two things: First, to know that people are
    doing better and feel better about their lives, their children's future,
    our country's future.
        I got to check in today with Ron and Rhonda
    Lee Machos, and I made them the poster
    family for my struggle for health care access because their oldest
    child, Ronnie, was born with a heart problem.
    Today I saw Ronnie and Tristen, his little
    brother, and mama's about to have a third son. But I got a letter from
    the dad the other day who said, ``Little Ronnie is doing exceptionally
    well. No problems with his heart. Looks like he needs no further
    surgery. He scored two goals and got one assist in his last hockey
    game.'' That's a long way from being born with a hole in your heart.
    ``Younger son Tristen is 7 this year, and quite a pistol''--I saw him
    today--``and more startling news, Rhonda Lee is pregnant with our third
    child.'' Listen to this; this is the point. ``One thing we will
    experience for the first time is health insurance in pregnancy.'' Those
    are the kind of stories I wanted to hear after we had a chance to work
    together to make America a better place.
        The other thing I heard that made me feel so good today was that any
    number of people in various ways said, ``We stuck with you because you
    came to us with a detailed program, and you did exactly what you said
    you would do, and it worked.'' Well, today--I didn't do it. We did it.
    You did it.
        Don't ever forget--I was in Dover today, you know, where I coined
    that now famous line that ``if you would stick with me, I would stick
    with you until the last dog died.'' And the people of Dover had any
    number of humorous things to say about that. [Laughter] ``We've seen a
    lot of dogs killed, but at least the last one is still living.''
    [Laughter] ``This dog is limping but still going.'' I heard it all.
    [Laughter] I heard it all.
        Here is the point: If you had listened to the political experts, the
    dog would have died. [Laughter] But instead you held out a lifeline. You
    decided that the election should go on. You decided that these ideas,
    that this new direction for our country deserved a fair hearing among
    the American people. You embraced our cause.
        People ask me all the time, ``Well, what if this, that, or the other
    thing had happened, and you hadn't become President?'' All I know is, I
    have never forgotten--as anyone who has worked for me in the White House
    will tell you--the kindness and the toughness, the humanity and the
    determination of the people of New Hampshire who would not let our
    campaign and what we wanted to do together for America die. And I never
    will.
        Now, the point of all that is that every time you hear about
    something good that's happened in America, you ought to say, ``I was
    part of that.'' This is a journey we have taken together. In America,
    there is not a difference between the Government and the people, between
    those who govern and those who let them govern. You gave me permission
    to do this based on a contract I made with you and the rest of the
    American people. And it's been quite a wonderful journey.
        When I came here--7 years ago today, we had the New Hampshire
    primary. The unemployment rate was 7.3 percent. Today, it's 2.9 percent.
    In the 4 years before I took office, you lost 41,000 jobs here. In the 6
    years since, you've gained 77,500. In 1992, business failures were
    increasing by 44 percent every single year. In the last 6 years, they've
    dropped by nearly

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    three-quarters. In 1992, your welfare rolls were among the fastest
    growing in the country. Today, they are half what they were on the day I
    took office.
        We have seen--as a lot of your police officers said to me today, we
    have seen new police officers, new teachers, AmeriCorps volunteers,
    people benefiting from the earned-income tax credit, from the HOPE
    scholarship--which about 26,000 New Hampshire students will take
    advantage of this year; 32,000 more are taking advantage of the lifetime
    learning tax cut to pay for their college education, and on and on. This
    is what campaigns are really about.
        And the test is, do we use the authority and the power and the
    responsibility given to us by the people to advance their cause? I said
    over and over and over again in New Hampshire in 1992 and I say again
    tonight, I was raised to believe that no person can sit on the sidelines
    and knowingly permit any of his or her fellow citizens to live under
    burdens that do not permit them to live up to the fullest of their God-
    given capacity. I always believed if we could create a country in which
    there was opportunity for every citizen responsible enough to take
    advantage of it and if we could convince people that we really have to
    be one community, that we will never be all that we could be unless we
    care about our neighbors and work together and realize that our welfare
    is caught up in the welfare of those who may seem very different from
    us, but underneath it all the diversity of America is our greatest
    strength, as long as we recognize that what unites us is more important
    than anything that could divide us. I believe that, and I still believe
    that tonight.
        What I want to say is I believe the reason the Democratic Party is
    coming back all over America is that more and more Americans believe
    that--including independents and Republicans--that we ought to be about
    opportunity, responsibility, and community. We ought to be looking for
    ways to put people over politics, to put unity over division.
        It is not an accident that we've gone from a $290 billion deficit to
    a $70 billion surplus with a bigger one coming this year, that we have
    the longest economic expansion in peacetime in the history of the
    country and the lowest peacetime unemployment rate since 1957. This is
    not an accident. It happened because people like you believed in and
    embraced certain ideas and then went out and worked like crazy when the
    chains were taken off of you to make America work again.
        And you should take pride in that, pride not only in your own work
    but pride in the work you did as citizens, in the work you did in
    campaigns, in the work you did in talking to your friends and neighbors.
    This is what makes America work--when the people are put first, when the
    dreams and the hopes of the American people are put first, and when the
    problems are tackled instead of just talked about. That's politics at
    its best, and that's what this building, that convention, all those
    years ago and this night will always mean to me.
        Now, I want to get off this rather passionate political note and say
    something completely dry and academic, something completely factual,
    purely historical, wholly nonpolitical. Nobody had more to do with the
    decisions we made and success we've enjoyed than Vice President Al
    Gore. I understand he may have been around
    here recently. He wasn't with me in '92, until I became the nominee. But
    in '93, as he never tires of telling me, he cast a decisive vote on the
    economic plan that began to bring our country back. And as he always
    says, whenever he votes, we win. [Laughter]
        I do want to say, you know, I have been very fortunate in the people
    who have served in our Cabinet. I once had a group of Presidential
    scholars at the White House, and a gentleman who taught at Harvard said,
    ``Mr. President, one of the reasons your administration has been
    successful is that you have the most loyal Cabinet since Thomas
    Jefferson's second administration.'' It was an amazing statement. He
    said, ``I'm a historian. I know.''
        We have all these people who work in the White House every day, day-
    in and day-out, whose names you don't know, who never get any glory, who
    deserve a lot of this credit. We also have a great team of people around
    the country working. But I have been very blessed by the work especially
    of the First Lady and the Vice
    President, and you all know it.
        So I came here tonight to say thank you, to reminisce just a little
    bit, to thank you for Hillary and for me and for all of our
    administration but not just to say, thank you. Because if you remember
    in '92, every event we did, every home we visited, every townhall
    meeting we had that were bursting at the seams--that's the first time I
    knew I had a chance to get elected President, actually. I went to Keene,

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    and they said, ``We put you in a place that will hold 150, and if 50
    people show up, don't be embarrassed. It's a good turnout. It's New
    Hampshire, nobody knows who the heck you are.'' [Laughter] And 400
    showed up and I said, ``Holy moly, something's going on.''
        Oh, by the way, Mayor Pat Russell
    and her husband, Ron, are celebrating
    their 49th wedding anniversary tonight. Let's give them a hand there.
    Happy anniversary. [Applause]
        So I wanted to do that. But remember this: We were really worried
    about making New Hampshire and America and the lives of ordinary
    citizens work again. I mean, people just wanted things to work. Do you
    remember, five out of the seven biggest banks had failed? I mean, people
    wanted things to work.
        Okay, things are working now. So here's the most important thing I
    came here to say. I came to deliver on what I really owe you tonight.
    When things start working and people have been through all that you have
    been through, the temptation is to stop at what we've already said and
    done, pat yourself on the back, feel good about it, kick back, relax,
    wait for something else to happen. And I came here to tell you tonight
    that that would be wrong. That would violate the ideas and the
    principles on which we campaigned, you and I, in 1992 and upon which we
    were returned to office in 1996.
        Why? Because, yes, America is working, but we are living in a very
    dynamic world where things that happen beyond our borders can affect how
    you live in every community in New Hampshire and throughout this
    country, and when, you know as well as I do, that we have large, long-
    term unmet challenges facing us in the century that is now less than a
    year ahead.
        And so I ask you to think tonight about what we must do not only to
    celebrate what's been done and think about the next election, but we
    need to think, if we want to retain the support of the American people,
    from the Presidency, if we want to get it back in the Congress, if we
    want to keep the Democratic Party moving in the right direction in New
    Hampshire, we have to do a good job for the American people and the
    people of this State every day for the next 2 years. That is the best
    politics, to do what is right.
        Now, I will not keep you through a whole recitation of my State of
    the Union Speech--[laughter]--but I want you to know that I worked hard
    on that for months, and it reflects the thinking that I have brought to
    this job for years. I prayed in the early years of the Presidency when
    we were bailing water out of the ship that we would one day right
    ourselves and America would be working again, and as a people we could
    be called to think about these large, long-term challenges. And we would
    be making a terrible mistake as a political party if we played politics
    with them, looked only to the next election, and forgot that all of us
    are charged with the responsibility now that America is working to have
    America moving forward.
        What are those challenges? I'll just mention two or three: The aging
    of America; the challenge of balancing work and family, as more and more
    people go into the work force and more and more parents are working; the
    challenge of giving every child a world-class education; the challenge
    of dealing with our environmental difficulties while continuing to grow
    the economy and living more at harmony with ourselves and our neighbors
    on this planet; and the challenge of dealing with America's obligations
    to lead the world toward greater peace and freedom and prosperity.
        I met a lot of people here with Irish roots tonight, like me, who
    thanked me for the role that I have been honored to play in the Irish
    peace process. We are struggling today to keep a new conflict form
    breaking out in the Balkans. We are struggling today to deal with the
    challenges of chemical and biological weapons so that our children won't
    have to face them. We are struggling today to help our friends in
    democratic Russia keep their democracy alive and restore their economic
    health.
        And one of the things that I did when I was in New Hampshire that I
    tell you I believe more strongly today than I did then is to say,
    ``Folks, there is no longer a dividing line between domestic policy and
    foreign policy.'' The person in the remotest, smallest village in
    northern New Hampshire cannot be unmindful of America's responsibilities
    and opportunities in this great wide world. We have to fulfill them, and
    the Democratic Party should lead the way.
        So what does that mean? Let me just mention two things. Let's talk
    about aging and education, the old and the young. The number of people
    over 65 is going to double by 2030. People are living longer. The
    average life expectancy in America now is already over 76. By the time
    the young people in this room who are under

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    30 tonight reach their later years their life expectancy, in all
    probability, will be somewhere in the mid-eighties.
        Now, what does all that mean? First of all, let's not kid ourselves,
    this is a high-class problem, and the older I get, the better this
    problem looks. [Laughter] So I don't understand all this handwringing;
    this is a good deal, you know? This is a high-class problem. It is a
    tribute to our health system, to healthier behaviors, to scientific
    discovery, and also a fact of the baby boom.
        Now, what we have to do is to figure out how, when the baby boom
    retires and medical costs escalate in the Medicare program, which will
    happen before the baby boom retires, we can preserve our obligation to
    our seniors without bankrupting their kids and grandkids. This is an
    issue which affects everyone, the aging of America. More and more people
    will take care of their parents as they get older and may need some help
    doing it. More and more people, if we don't do our job, will feel the
    squeeze between their parents' retirement needs and their children's
    education needs.
        That's why I have said my first priority in dealing with this budget
    surplus we have waited for 30 years, and we have worked for 6 years,
    after 12 years in which they quadrupled the debt of the country--my
    first priority is to save Social Security and Medicare and pay down the
    debt to strengthen America for the 21st century. [Applause] Thank you.
        Now, we will have a real policy debate with our friends in the
    Republican Party on that issue. They will agree with us that we should
    save the surplus necessary for Social Security, and then they'll
    disagree with us on what the best way to spend it is. And that's good.
    That's a high-class problem. That's the kind of honest political debate
    we ought to have. But they will not agree that we should also save that
    portion of the surplus necessary to deal with Medicare, even though it
    is going to run out of money in 10 years. And we have to save it, reform
    it, but also, in my judgment--I'll never forget the people I met in New
    Hampshire who told me this: We ought to add a prescription drug benefit
    to the Medicare program for the elderly people who need it.
        Now, I believe the Democratic position, which is embraced by the
    leaders of our party in both Houses of Congress, as well as by our
    administration, is the right one. If we save 77 percent of this surplus
    over the next 15 years, we can do two things. We can prepare to save
    Social Security and Medicare; we'll also pay down the national debt.
        When I took office, the national debt was one-half our annual
    income. It had quadrupled in 12 years. I had to spend, the first year I
    put together a budget, over 14 cents of every dollar you pay to the
    Federal Government in taxes just to make interest payments. Well, now
    the debt is down to 44 percent of our annual income. But if you do what
    I'm recommending here, if the Congress will go along and we save 77
    percent for 15 years, we will take it down to 7 percent of our income;
    the debt service will be 2 cents on your taxes; the rest will go to real
    things. And within 18 years, the United States of America will be out of
    debt. This is what we should do.
        Now, in addition to saving Social Security and Medicare, we have
    other health responsibilities. In my balanced budget there's a long-term
    care tax credit. We have to make sure that we pass a national Patients'
    Bill of Rights to support what Governor Shaheen is trying to do here in New Hampshire. We have to pass
    a bill sponsored by Senators Kennedy and
    Jeffords to make sure people with
    disabilities can take full-time jobs without losing their health
    insurance.
        And we ought to, while we're helping, deal with the problem of
    family and work by broadening the number of people eligible for the
    family and medical leave law. I met people today who said they took
    advantage of it and what a difference it made for their families.
        We ought to raise the minimum wage, and we ought to pass the
    initiative I have offered to give $15 billion in private sector capital
    to rural areas and urban communities who have not yet felt our economic
    recovery. If we can't fix the poorest areas of America with free
    enterprise now, we will never get around to doing it.
        Now, we also have to remember our children. I'm proud of the fact
    that we have more people in Head Start, kids in Head Start than ever
    before, that we have 90 percent of our children immunized against
    serious childhood diseases for the first time, that in the balanced
    budget law of 1997, 5 million children became eligible for health
    insurance, and thanks to what the Governor
    has done here with the child health program in New Hampshire, we are
    finally reaching those children.

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        But we have more to do. I'm proud of the fact that we have opened
    the doors of college to everyone with these tax benefits, and greater
    student loans and work-study programs. No serious person believes that
    our elementary and secondary education in every State, in every
    community, in every school, is what is necessary to give a world-class
    education to what is the most diverse student body our country has ever
    had.
        Now look, this diversity is our meal ticket to the future. In a
    global economy, the idea that we have children in our schools from every
    country on Earth, from every culture on Earth, from every religious
    faith on Earth, all learning what the basic rules of American
    citizenship are in action every day and being given a chance to be
    responsible and to participate in our country and to learn to relate to
    each other--in a world that is being torn asunder all across the globe,
    from Bosnia to the Middle East to the tribal wars of Africa, over
    differences of race and ethnicity and religion--what we are trying to do
    is a godsend for our future, economically, politically, and frankly in
    terms of just the quality and richness of our lives.
        But we have to do better with education. We have got to do better
    with education. We have to finish the job we started last year of hiring
    100,000 teachers. We have to pass the bill Congress turned down last
    year to build or modernize 5,000 schools. I'm tired of going to these
    schools that can't even be hooked up to the Internet because they're so
    old.
        We have to finish the job of hooking all our classrooms and
    libraries up to the Internet. And thanks to the E-rate that the Vice
    President and I fought so hard for, a
    billion dollars in discounts will be available this year to our schools,
    so every school, even poor schools, can afford for their children to
    hook up to the Internet.
        And I believe we have to bring a revolution of accountability to our
    schools. For over 20 years now, I have spent a lot of time in
    classrooms. I've listened to teachers; I've listened to principals; I've
    listened to students; I've listened to parents. I can tell you that
    every challenge in American education has been met by somebody,
    somewhere, and that we still, on the edge of a new century, this so-
    called information age where people learn what everybody else is doing
    with blinding speed, we are still not very good at copying from others.
        The Founding Fathers would be disappointed that school districts
    still seem to believe that they can't learn as much from others as they
    ought to. They set up the States as the laboratories of democracy. When
    I was a Governor for 12 years--as I told your Governor, back when I had
    a life--when I was a Governor for 12 years and I could actually stay
    here and sit around and talk around this table half the night and drink
    coffee with you, I was proud of the things that my State did first, but
    I was prouder of the things my State did second.
        We have got to install, somehow, the best practices in education
    that educators tell us work. That's why I believe, based on what I've
    seen in some of the toughest urban school districts in America, we ought
    to say when we reauthorize all this Federal aid this year, ``You can
    have it, but you've got to stop social promotion. But you can't tell the
    kids they're failures when the system is failing them. You have to turn
    around the failing schools. And you have to give the children summer
    school and after-school programs and whatever they need.''
        Look, our kids rank at the top of the world in fourth grade tests in
    math and science. Then the drop down to the middle in eighth grade
    tests. And then by the 12th grade, they're ranking near the bottom. Now,
    the same kids start out--they didn't get dumber as they traveled through
    life. That is telling us something about ourselves. We can do better. We
    have to have higher expectations, higher standards, higher
    accountability for everyone. But we can't tell the kids that they're
    failing if the system is failing them. We're not doing them any favor
    passing them along, but we have to lift them up and give them the
    support they need.
        So I ask you to embrace the education agenda, to embrace the saving
    Social Security, saving Medicare, paying down the debt agenda, to
    embrace the agenda of bringing economic opportunity to our distressed
    areas and expanding health care access and doing more to help people
    balance work and family and dealing with the environmental and other
    challenges I have outlined. I ask you to do it because the best
    politics, as has been proven over and over and over again, is doing the
    right thing for the American people, saying what you're going to do, and
    if you get elected, doing it, and dealing with the emergencies as they
    come up, dealing with the challenges as they come up.

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        In 1998, for the first time since 1822, the party of the President
    in the sixth year of his Presidency gained seats in the House of
    Representatives. Now, I believe with all my heart it was because our
    party went out there with a simple message. They said, ``Our concern is
    you; our commitment is to your future and your children. Vote for us,
    and we will save Social Security first, before we squander this surplus.
    Vote for us, and we will modernize those thousands of schools. Vote for
    us, and we will pass that Patients' Bill of Rights. Vote for us, and
    we'll get interest rates down, pay the debt down, keep this economy
    going. We have an agenda. And it's an agenda that will deal with the
    long-term problems as well as the short-term problems of America.''
        That's what the Democratic Party represents now: opportunity for
    all, responsibility from all, a community of all Americans. We no longer
    have a country, as I said 7 years ago, where I worry about me, you worry
    about you, they worry about them. I didn't want that then, and I don't
    see that today. We know--we know--we are all in this together. We know
    that we'll all do better if we do the responsible thing, if all our
    neighbors have opportunities and if we live together as citizens in one
    community.
        You have all helped to make that the new reality of 21st century
    America. I want you to be proud of it but not to rest on it. Help your
    Governor. Help your legislators. Realize the
    dreams of your children. Don't run away from the work of governing. Stay
    with the real things that real people care about and the politics will
    take care of themselves.
        Thank you, God bless you, and on to tomorrow. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:23 p.m. at the Armory. In his remarks, he
    referred to Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and her husband, Bill;
    Jeff Woodburn, State chair, and Sophia Collier, State finance chair, New
    Hampshire State Democratic Party; J. Joseph GrandMaison, Director, Trade
    and Development Agency; Stephanie Powers, Director, School-to-Work
    Initiative, Department of Education; Patricia McMahon, Director,
    Community Outreach and Liaison, Substance Abuse and Mental Health
    Administration; Edward E. (Terry) Shumaker III, Ambassador to Trinidad
    and Tobago; George C. Bruno, former U.S. Ambassador to Belize; Richard
    N. Swett, Ambassador to Denmark; political consultant Michael Whouley;
    and Mayor Patricia T. Russell of Keene, NH, and her husband, State
    Representative Ronald G. Russell.