    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 25, 1999]
    [Pages 265-271]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees
    Dinner in San Francisco, California
    February 25, 1999

        Thank you. Well, thank you very much. First of all, let me say to
    our host and his family and to all the rest of
    you, I have had a perfectly wonderful time here tonight. And I think
    that's important. I say that because a lot of you go to a lot of these
    events, and I don't know that you always have a perfectly wonderful
    time. [Laughter] But we've had a wonderful time.
        I think all of you know you're here to do something of surpassing
    importance, and I want to say that, as I was looking at the previous
    speakers and those who were introduced who hold public office, I was
    sitting here silently

    [[Page 266]]

    thinking to myself, I am very proud to be a member of my political
    party.
        I am the beneficiary, as no one else here is, of all the work that
    these Members of Congress have done. I know things about them all that
    we don't have time even to go through. I've had conversations with
    Senator Baucus about the environment or how we
    ought to relate to Asia over the long run. I've talked to Senator
    Torricelli at all hours of the night,
    usually at my instigation, I might add, about all manner of issues.
    Senator Boxer and I are members of the same
    family in more ways than one, and I was profoundly grateful that the
    people of California reelected her by such a handsome margin. And
    Hillary and I both felt privileged to be able to come out here last year
    and to campaign for her, for Gray
    Davis, for all the Democrats who were elected.
    Congressman Bonior, Congressman
    Miller, Congressman Kennedy--you know, I used to be like Congressman Kennedy,
    too young to hold office, and I looked younger than I was--[laughter]--
    but he's a marvelous leader for our Democratic House Campaign
    Committee--Congresswoman Eshoo; Congresswoman
    Lofgren, who was, I must say to all of you, a
    lion on the House Judiciary Committee and a great leader there;
    Congresswoman Woolsey.
        I want to say what Bob Torricelli said about Nancy Pelosi is right. I have been on both sides of issues with
    Nancy Pelosi; there is nothing more humbling than to have her look at
    you and tell you why you're wrong. [Laughter] You know? You just--she
    doesn't have to do like those really conservative Republicans who invoke
    God all the time. She just looks at you, and you know God is on her
    side. [Laughter] She never has to say it, you know. And if she really
    disagrees with you and she gets those--her eyes seem to get bigger and
    bigger and sadder and sadder, and you don't know whether she's going to
    cry or hit you right between the eyes. [Laughter] There are few people
    in public life I admire more for marrying their heart with their mind
    than Nancy Pelosi. You should be very proud of her, and I know you are.
    But she has really done a great job.
        And Dick Gephardt and I, 11 years
    ago, had a dinner in the kitchen of the Governor's mansion composed of
    cold McDonald's french fries, not quite as nice as the one we're having
    tonight. [Laughter] He came to visit me in Arkansas, and Jane was there. Hillary
    was there. We stayed up half the night talking. It was really the first
    time I'd ever had a chance to get to know him. And I can honestly say
    that with every passing week, every passing month, every passing year of
    working with him, my admiration and affection for him has grown.
        And he has done something a lot of people couldn't do. The Democrats
    were in the majority a long time, and I want to talk about how we came
    to be in the minority in a moment. But they were in the majority a long
    time, and psychologically it was very difficult for people who had been
    in the majority a long time to go into the minority. And a lot of
    people, frankly, just got--they just quit. I'll say this for the
    Republicans, they don't quit. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms don't quit,
    right? [Laughter] And a lot of our guys, they had a hard time, so they
    just--they resigned. They left their careers.
        And Dick Gephardt realized that
    because he believed, as did I, as did all those in this room tonight,
    that we didn't want America to look like what we thought would happen if
    the ``Contract With America'' prevailed. And we didn't agree with it.
    And we thought that in the end, the American people would support the
    decisions we've made which cost us the Congress in 1994. And so he rose
    to the occasion in a way that I think was awesome, even to people who
    had a lot of confidence in him and admired him. And I can tell you that
    after the next election, when he becomes the Speaker of the House, every
    person in this room will be very proud that you were here tonight and
    that you made a contribution to it. And I thank you.
        Now, when the mayor came in
    tonight, I told him I would be for him or against him, whichever would
    help most in his election. [Laughter] And typically, he asked for one of
    each. [Laughter] But I want to thank the mayor for always making me feel
    at home in San Francisco. I thank Art Torres for
    his leadership of our party. I thank all of you.
        I wish I could think of something to say that you can say to
    somebody else that would spread the word beyond the circle of friends we
    all have. But as I was going through this magnificent home tonight, and
    Bob Torricelli said something that I wish I could have said, because he
    said, ``All of you are here because you believe that your country will
    be better off if you help other people who have things that you already
    have--to acquire things that you already have.''

    [[Page 267]]

        I believe that the things, in this time at least, that distinguish
    our party are things for which this home, this city, and this State are
    metaphors. We don't know who laid this stone in the floor. We don't know
    who did the marbling work on these beautiful columns or who painted the
    walls or put the glass in the ceiling. I don't know who painted that
    wonderful painting of Nijinsky in the other room. But I know one thing:
    Every one of them--we don't know any of them--they had different gifts,
    but they were very special. And we're all better off and enriched
    tonight because they had a chance to manifest their gifts. But we're
    also better off because they had the chance to manifest their gifts
    together. The house was built by the gifts of many people, some of whom
    are completely anonymous. The magnificent furniture, the inlaid work on
    the desk, the things I saw--I don't have any idea, some of those people
    have been dead more than 100 years. But every one of them had a gift,
    and when you put them all together, you have quite a home.
        San Francisco and California, they're places where everybody can
    feel at home, where the diversity, the richness, the texture of what
    will be 21st century America is already evident, and where ideas are
    prized, no matter what their source, and where people don't fear change
    as long as the change occurs in an atmosphere of mutual respect and
    cooperation. That's basically what we think America ought to be like,
    all day, every day.
        When Nancy quoted the prayer of Saint Francis and talked about all
    the places I brought peace to, I thought, there are three places that I
    have made no progress. I've made no progress, although I've tried, in
    trying to get Greece and Turkey to get along. I've made no progress in
    trying to resolve the tensions between India and Pakistan. And I'm not
    sure I've made any progress at all in bringing peace to Washington, DC.
    [Laughter]
        But I will say this: This country knows one thing after 6 years,
    that all the things that used to be said by the other party about the
    Democrats turned out to be wrong. They said we couldn't be trusted to
    govern; we couldn't manage the economy; we couldn't deal with crime or
    welfare or foreign policy or defense. And the country is in a lot better
    shape.
        The interesting thing is that it turns out that if you believe
    everybody has got a gift to give, that the gifts will only manifest
    themselves to the maximum degree if we give them together, and that
    Government ought to be about bringing out the best in people and trying
    new ideas and moving forward, it turns out it works. It works.
        But it wasn't always evident. The reason these Democrats are in the
    minority tonight is because in 1994 it was not evident to the American
    people that the tough votes they cast for the budget bill in '93 and the
    crime bill in '94, the Brady bill, the assault weapons ban, and bringing
    the deficit down and, at the same time, saying we had to increase our
    investment in education--it wasn't apparent in 1994 that the results
    would be what they turned out to be.
        But the American people, if you give them enough time, nearly always
    get it right. That's why we're still around here after more than 200
    years. And in 1998, for the first time since 1822, the party of the
    President in the sixth year of a Presidency won seats in the House of
    Representatives, while being out-spent by $100 million, because of what
    they stood for and because of the record that together we had made and
    the progress the American people have made.
        And I'm not running for anything anymore. I might run for the school
    board some day. [Laughter] I'm here because I believe that what we stand
    for has not only helped America to come to where we are now as compared
    to where the United States and California were in 1991 and 1992 but
    because I believe that now the real question is, what will we do with
    this moment of prosperity and confidence? And I'd like to be pretty
    candid with you tonight and tell you what I have absolute confidence we
    should do and what challenges are out there that I haven't quite figured
    out exactly how to solve yet. But I am sure that having people in the
    majority who believe everyone has a gift, we have to give them together,
    and we ought to be bringing out the best in people in public life, are
    the people that ought to be mapping the path of the 21st century.
        We have to deal now with a surplus. If somebody had told you in
    1992, ``If you vote for Bill Clinton, 6 years later he'll be coming
    back, and they'll have this big fundraiser, and he'll be saying, the
    biggest challenge we've got now is how to deal with the surplus,'' you
    would have said, ``I will not vote for that man. He's nuts.'' [Laughter]
    ``He's kidding.'' But let me just ask you to think--yes, America is
    doing

    [[Page 268]]

    well; yes, California is doing well. But we have some big challenges.
    And if we expect to win in 2000, we have to show, number one, that in
    the next 2 years we're doing everything we can to fulfill the mandate
    the voters gave us in the '98 election and, secondly, that we are still
    looking to the future.
        We've got to deal with the aging of America, the retirement of the
    baby boomers, the fact that we're all living longer. Our life expectancy
    up over 76 years now. If you live to be 65 in America, your life
    expectancy is over 80 years now, soon to be over 85. In the year 2030
    we'll have twice as many people over 65 as we do today. We'll have only
    two people working for every one person on Social Security.
        The Democratic Party, out of its compassion and its sense of
    obligation across the generations, created Social Security and Medicare,
    and they will both be stressed mightily by the rising cost of health
    care, the fact that we're living longer and using more health resources,
    and the fact that the demographics of the baby boom retirement will put
    great stresses on us. We now project a surplus for the next 25 years.
    There is a way to deal with the aging of America that will use most of
    the surplus to save Social Security and Medicare and pay down the debt.
        We will also have to make reforms in Social Security and Medicare,
    some of which may be somewhat controversial. But if you believe that we
    have to be together, then that's what we've got to do. I was in Tucson
    today, speaking to a big community group, and person after person after
    person came up and told me that they were literally alive because of
    these programs.
        I was introduced by an 82-year-old Chinese-American woman who is, near as I could tell, about 4'8''. She
    made Barbara Boxer look like a basketball player. [Laughter] And she was
    magnificent. She was a community leader in Tucson and was born in
    Tucson--a native of Tucson, Arizona--who talked about being a breast
    cancer survivor and the mammography she got because of Medicare and
    because we had pushed that and changed the system.
        So who do you trust to change this program, and are we going to do
    it, and how are we going to do it and be faithful? We have to do it. And
    we do it not for the people on these programs now--they're going to be
    fine--but so that the baby boomers, like me--and I'm the oldest of the
    baby boomers--do not have to go to bed every night worried that we are
    bankrupting our children and undermining their ability to raise our
    grandchildren.
        And now is the time to think about it--now, years ahead of time,
    when we have the resources, when we have the ability, before the crisis
    arises, before it threatens to weaken the American economy just to find
    some sort of solution. That's the first thing we have to do.
        The second thing we have to do, as others have said, is to
    recognize, frankly, as so many of you have done in many ways, that we
    will never be the country we ought to be in the 21st century until every
    child gets a world-class education. We will never be. And I think that
    means, among other things, continuing our work for better prepared
    teachers, smaller classes, hooking up all the classrooms to the
    Internet. We're up to 50 percent, by the way.
        When the Vice President and I came here for our first NetDay a
    couple of years ago, only about 8 percent of the classrooms in America
    were connected to the Internet. We're up to 50 percent now, and we will
    make our 100 percent goal shortly after the turn of the century. And
    that's a good thing. But we need to build or modernize a lot of schools.
    We've got all these schools where the kids are going to schools in
    housetrailers, or they're going to schools in buildings so old they
    can't even be wired for the Internet. Many of our cities, the average
    age of the school building is 65 years or more. And a lot of those
    buildings are magnificent, but they take some money to modernize and to
    prepare.
        I want to end social promotion, but I don't want to declare the
    children a failure when the system is failing them. Senator
    Boxer's great passion has been getting us more
    after-school programs. We now have in this budget enough money for a
    million children to be in after-school programs in the United States if
    it passes. This is an important thing.
        We have to recognize that there is much more we have to do to
    balance work and family. Today in Arizona, three different people came
    up to me and thanked me for the family and medical leave law, the first
    bill I signed as President. But millions of workers are not covered.
    They ought to be covered.
        We ought to pass the child care initiative Senator Torricelli talked
    about. You'd be amazed how many people are out there struggling to work
    and having so much of their wages eaten up because they cannot afford
    quality child care.

    [[Page 269]]

    We've seen the welfare rolls drop in half, but the truth is that there
    are some people who are off the rolls who aren't working, and others who
    would leave the rolls gladly if they could only afford the child care.
    And we have a child care initiative that we ought to pass.
        Balancing work and family will be one of the signal issues of the
    21st century. More and more, two-parent families will be working. More
    and more, single parents will have to work. We owe it to America, those
    of us in positions of responsibility, to lead a country where every
    person who wants to work or has to work and who has children can succeed
    as a parent and a worker. If we ever get in a position where we accept
    the proposition that anybody in this country ought to have to choose,
    then we have lost, because we are diminished by either choice. And yet,
    every day, people do choose. And every day, people who are working who
    have children are making choices sometimes they're not even aware of.
    And it erodes the fabric of our common society, and we have to do a
    better job.
        We have to have a commitment in the 21st century that we manifest
    now to bring this economic recovery to people in places that haven't
    seen it. There are cities in this country now that still have huge
    census tracts with double-digit unemployment, rural areas with double-
    digit unemployment, Native American reservations where, even though we
    now have the lowest unemployment rate in the entire industrial world,
    there has been no new investment, and there have been no new jobs.
        I have given the Congress an economic package which will provide
    incentives to create new investments and new markets here at home. We
    ought to do that. Every one of you ought to want every American at least
    to have a chance to participate in this recovery. Now, when our economy
    is the strongest in at least a generation, if we can't bring economic
    opportunity to people who haven't had it now, we will never get around
    to it. If we can't prove that free enterprise can work in places it
    hasn't reached now, we will never be able to prove it. And I hope you
    will support that.
        We talked a little about the remarkable sense of community you have
    here. One of the things that I want to do--and I was met by someone from
    the chamber of commerce at the airport who is an architect, who had a copy of a publication the Vice President put out on our new livability initiative--$1
    billion to help communities deal with traffic problems, the need for
    green space, the need for managed development, $1 billion to set aside
    lands in perpetuity.
        We have gotten ourselves tied in knots too often in our country
    trying to make the choice between our economic growth and the
    preservation of our environment and the quality of life. We have decided
    to try something different--to put some money out there to acquire some
    land that's available on the market and to help communities figure out
    how to grow and preserve green space, how to grow and deal with traffic
    congestion, how to deal with these things. I think this is very
    important.
        So, these are some of the things that are on the agenda for us in
    this year, along with the very important peacemaking work I hope we will
    be continuing to do in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Kosovo,
    and in the places I mentioned where we've had no progress, including
    Washington, DC. [Laughter] There are two challenges I want to ask you to
    think about, because there are people in California that I think are
    uniquely qualified to do it.
        In order to keep the American economy growing over the long run, we
    have got to restore growth to the global economy. For the 6 years I've
    been President, in the first 5 years, 30 percent of our growth came from
    sales of American products overseas. Now, last year, we had very good
    growth, but it didn't come from overseas. We were able to generate
    enough activity within our borders and basically hold our own in our
    sales. But because of the economic downturn in Asia, the terrible
    financial crisis there, and the impact it had in Latin America and the
    slowdown there, we had some real difficulties. Our farmers, our steel
    industry, our aircraft people had some real problems.
        I believe that it is imperative that the United States take the
    lead--and we have been working hard on this for a year--in trying to
    figure out how to create a financial and trade architecture for the 21st
    century that will benefit ordinary people everywhere, that will put a
    human face on the global economy, that will enable people who follow
    responsible policies and honest and open investment practices to
    actually participate, and that will avoid the kind of horrible, wild
    swings we've seen in the last 2 years that turned people who worked for
    a generation to make

    [[Page 270]]

    themselves middle-class people in Asia into abject poverty. There were
    Asian cities where doctors and nurses had to start sleeping in the
    hospitals because they lost their homes when this collapse occurred.
        Now, I can't run all their policies. No President could. And some of
    their problems were of their own making. But I want you to know that I
    have gotten in touch with the people that I believe are the best minds
    in the world on this subject. We are working very hard. I am going to
    work very hard for the next year to try to get the countries of the
    world to agree on a framework within which steady, solid growth can
    occur in a way that will benefit Americans but also fulfill our
    responsibility to help others lift themselves out of difficulties. And
    if you have any ideas on that, don't be ashamed to present them to me,
    because I don't think there is a person in the world that has got the
    answer to this issue today.
        The second thing I'd like to ask you to think about is an
    environmental issue, and that's the issue of climate change. There's no
    question in my mind that the world is changing and that the climate is
    warming. I was out on the Monterey Peninsula not very long ago, with Sam
    Farr, and I think George Miller was there. We had this oceans conference. And
    Anna was probably there. We went out on the--
    and Barbara was there, I think. We went out on
    Monterey Peninsula, and these graduate students took me out into the
    bay. And we were walking out into the clear water, and this graduate
    student said, ``Mr. President, reach down there and pick up a handful of
    the stones and the marine life.'' And I did. And the graduate student
    pointed to this little elemental form of marine life and said, ``You see
    this? Twenty years ago, you could not find this any further north than
    50 miles south of here. That is how much the water has warmed up in 20
    years''--this small species, moving 50 miles north.
        I've been working real hard--you probably don't know much about
    this--but to avoid an outright salmon war between Washington, Oregon,
    Canada, and Alaska, because all the fish keep moving further north. So
    now, Canada, Washington, Oregon don't have enough, and Alaska's got more
    than they know what to do with, because of the changing nature of the
    climate.
        Yet, oil prices are very low, and it looks like they're going to
    stay low for 2 or 3 years, which makes things like electric cars and
    substitute technologies relatively less economically attractive. And we
    have a majority in the House of Representatives--and Dick
    Gephardt will tell you--that caused this
    administration to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars last year
    appearing before subcommittees to explain why our efforts on climate
    change, which include no regulation and no taxes but tax incentives and
    research and development for new technologies--were not some great
    conspiracy to bankrupt the American economy.
        Now, California is a place that thinks about the future and lives
    with the future and has to live with the constant tension of dealing
    with these things. And you've adopted all of these tough clean air
    standards. So I say to you: I am determined before I leave office to
    build a national consensus to tackle this problem in a consistent,
    disciplined way for the next 10 years, and I believe the technology is
    there to actually promote more economic growth while doing the right
    thing with greenhouse gas emissions and turning this situation around.
        But if you can give me some ideas about that, as well as contribute
    your money to the Democratic majority, I would be grateful. These are
    two great challenges that will shape the way our children will live for
    the next 50 years, and I want your help.
        Now, the last thing I'd like to say is, I thank you for your
    citizenship and your concern, especially now. I think that it's fair to
    say in light of the events of the last 6 years and the election of '94
    and the success that has come to our country that we're all grateful for
    and none of us, including me, can take full responsibility for, the
    American people have the achievement. But I think we really know now
    that it matters if we give everyone a chance to develop his or her gift.
    It matters if we believe we're stronger if we become one community and
    one America.
        It matters if we believe the purpose of politics is to bring out the
    best in people. It matters. That's what this next election is about.
    That's what your contribution is about. Even if we fix Social Security
    and Medicare and do all I want to do in education and bring this
    economic initiative to distressed areas of the country and make peace
    everywhere I'd like to make it, problems will never go away. And the
    world is changing very fast, and no one can foresee all the
    developments.

    [[Page 271]]

        So the best thing to do is pick the right people with the right
    values, the right philosophy, and the right approach. The last 6 years
    entitled the Democratic Party to the benefit of the doubt. And I believe
    that the last 6 years and the debates of the last 6 years put us in a
    position to make a very compelling case that we are now not only the
    party of Jefferson and Jackson, Roosevelt and Kennedy, but the party of
    Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt as well. And we need you. We need
    your support.
        So I want you to think about this. This is a long way from November
    of 2000. But it will pass in the flash of an eye. Hillary said the other
    day--we were talking, fixing up a room at the White House--it's part of
    her project to try to leave the house in a lot better shape than we
    found it--and she said--no, it was in good shape when we found it. Don't
    laugh like that. I didn't mean it like that. [Laughter]
        But we wanted to do some things for the house, and we were up
    putzing around, putting stuff around, you know, and she said, ``Can you
    believe we've been here 6 years?'' It doesn't take long to serve a term
    or live a life. And ultimately, we will be judged by what we leave for
    our successors. I think we want to be judged well. I know you can trust
    the people who are here with me tonight to carry on the legacy you
    believe in and to build the kind of America our children deserve. You
    have helped them to do it, and I am very grateful.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:25 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Gov. Gray Davis of California; Jane Gephardt,
    wife of Representative Richard A. Gephardt; Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr.,
    of San Francisco; Art Torres, chair, California State Democratic Party;
    senior citizen Esther Don Tang of Tucson, AZ; and Sylvia P. Kwan,
    member, board of directors, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.