    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 26, 1999]
    [Pages 280-283]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Saxophone Club and Women's Leadership Forum Reception in
    Los Angeles, California
    February 26, 1999

        Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you very much for the
    standing ovation. [Laughter] I want to thank Janice Griffin and Joe Andrew for their
    service and their speeches. I want to thank Trudi Loh, the Women's Leadership Forum southern California chair.
    And the Sax Club cochairs, Lara Brown and Paul
    Krekorian, thank you very much. I'd like to
    thank Kathleen Connell and Representatives
    Waters and Sanchez
    for being here, and Speaker
    Villaraigosa for being here. And I'd like to thank Governor Davis and Sharon for being here.
        You know, Governor Davis has decided that he will sort of cultivate
    this ``gray'' image. [Laughter] And it is so bogus; I can't believe it.
    [Laughter] We were standing up here--you know what he said to me when I
    came here? I said, ``Gray, that was a wonderful introduction, and I
    really appreciate it.'' And he said, ``Well good, you can give me two
    strokes the next time we play.'' [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you, first of all, a profound thanks. Thank you
    for the support of the WLF and the Saxophone Club. The Saxophone Club's
    been going now for several years, and the biggest one we have in the
    country is right here in southern California. And I thank you. I thank
    the people of California for being so wonderful to Hillary and to the
    Vice President and to me, all along the way. It has been an amazing
    journey.
        I'm thinking today about a trip I made almost exactly a week ago--I
    guess it was a week ago yesterday--to a place that superficially is very
    different from California. On February the 18th I went back to New
    Hampshire, on the 7th anniversary of the New Hampshire primary in 1992.
    And everywhere I went, it was cold and rainy and just the antithesis of
    today. And New Hampshire only has about a million people, and California
    has a few more. [Laughter] It has a lot of people living in small towns
    and in

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    rural areas. But on this cold, rainy day, everywhere I went, there were
    schoolchildren standing out in the rain and people standing there. I
    hadn't been there in a good while. They normally vote for Republicans.
    They voted for Al Gore and me twice there, and I'm very grateful for
    that.
        But the reason I was thinking about it tonight is that when I
    traveled around the country, beginning in 1991 and throughout 1992, I
    think the two places that in some ways most clearly embodied the
    anxiety, the difficulty, the frustration of America, were New Hampshire
    and California. Because while you were very different, both places were
    used to being on the cutting edge of economic progress; both places
    believed in hard work and opportunity; and both places were pretty
    devastated by what was going on.
        In New Hampshire, five of the seven biggest banks had failed. I met
    people who had their business loans called even though they weren't
    delinquent. I met children whose parents became seriously depressed,
    clinically depressed, simply because they couldn't stand coming home at
    night to dinner not being able to work and provide for their children.
    And I saw a lot of incredible things. But when I came back to see New
    Hampshire with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and a
    great deal of self-confidence, one of the things that touched me,
    because it was such a small State, is that all these people said, ``We
    want you to know, Mr. President, we're for you not only because we're
    doing better but because you did exactly what you said you would do when
    you ran for President.'' And that meant a great deal to me.
        So increasingly over these next 2 years, as I travel around America
    to events like this, I will be here advocating the agenda that I intend
    to pursue until the last hour of my last day in office. But I will also
    be reminding the American people of the ideas and the ideals, which are
    bigger than any administration and bigger than any person, that we have
    tried to bring to bear in American public life for the last 6 years.
        In 1992 I came to California and I said this country needs new
    ideas. We can't stand inaction. But these new ideas have to be premised
    on fulfilling the historic mission of America: opportunity for everybody
    who is responsible enough to work for it; a community of all Americans,
    not just some; and the leadership of the whole world for peace and
    freedom and prosperity.
        And we have been about that business, and guess what? It worked. It
    worked. And sometimes I think--and I say that in all humility. I don't
    take full responsibility for all the good things that have happened;
    neither should anyone else. America has produced this. This has been an
    American achievement.
        But I do say this: Because our administration and because our
    people--from the Vice President and the First Lady, to the Cabinet, to
    all of our people--because we believe in things that clearly distinguish
    ourselves from our friends in the other party, we have made a
    difference.
        We believe that every single person deserves a chance to live out
    his or her dreams. And we believe that none of us can be all we would
    like to be unless we recognize that all of us are part of one community
    and one family, and we have to help each other in order to make the most
    of our own lives. And we believe the purpose of political life is to
    bring out the best, not the worst, in people; to unite this country, not
    to divide it; to lift people up, not hold them back. That's what we
    believe.
        And after 6 years, with the longest peacetime economic expansion in
    history and the lowest unemployment rate in peacetime since 1957; the
    welfare rolls cut in half; homeownership at an all-time high; record
    numbers of new businesses every year; over 200,000 new jobs in
    technology areas alone in the last couple of years; half, in just 3
    years, half of all of our classrooms connected to the Internet, so we're
    going to make that goal of all of them connected by the year 2000; with
    over 90 percent of our children getting their basic immunizations for
    the first time in American history, I think we can say America is on the
    right path to the future and moving in the right direction.
        Tonight I want you to remember basically just two things. Number
    one, I believe that for our party and our supporters, the best politics
    is doing the right thing. And that means trying to get as much done as
    we can this year to take advantage of our prosperity, to take advantage
    of our confidence, and not to simply relax and enjoy it.
        California, of all places, with all the diversity and all the change
    and people here from everywhere else, aware of conflicts and troubles
    and instability in other parts of the world--this State

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    knows that we have to look to the long-term challenges facing our
    country. And that is why I have asked the Congress to join me now in
    dealing with the challenges that the baby boomers will present as we age
    and solve and save Social Security and Medicare for the 21st century.
        That is why I've asked the Congress to join me now to keep this
    economic recovery going by doing three things: Number one, I have
    proposed a new markets initiative in recognition of the fact that in Los
    Angeles County, in New York City, in rural areas in the Mississippi
    Delta and Appalachia, on Native American reservations all across the
    country, there has been no economic recovery. If we cannot, through tax
    incentives and loan guarantees, get free enterprise investment into the
    poorest areas of America and make them part of our prosperity now, we
    will never get around to it. Now is the time to bring opportunity to all
    Americans.
        The second thing we ought to do is save about three-quarters of this
    surplus of ours for the next 15 years to fix Social Security and
    Medicare, and in the process, pay down the debt. If you pay down the
    debt--now, this is not something any of you ever thought about--if I
    told you in '92, vote for me and I'll come back here in 6 years and tell
    you I'll pay down the debt after it had quadrupled, you would have said,
    ``That man is too unstable to be President; we can't have him here.''
    [Laughter]
        But I want the young people here to listen to me. You don't know
    what's going to happen in other parts of the world. I am doing my very
    best to stabilize the global economy, to put a human face on the global
    economy, to avoid the kind of churning disruptions we've had in Asia and
    the threats to Latin America so we can continue stable growth.
        But let me tell you this: If we pay down that debt, in 15 years,
    debt will be the smallest percentage of our income it's been since
    before we got into World War I. We'll only be spending 2 cents of every
    dollar you pay in taxes servicing our debt. Interest rates will be
    lower. Business loan rates will be lower. Home mortgage rates, car
    payments, credit card payments, student loans will all be less
    expensive. There will be more investment, more jobs, and higher incomes.
    If we have tough times around the world, America will have it better. If
    we have good times, America will have it great. Help me to convince the
    American people all to tell the Congress to secure our economy for the
    next 15 years.
        A lot of you younger people, you've brought young children here
    tonight. One couple came through about to have their first child--maybe
    before I finish this speech. [Laughter] That's not a comment on how long
    the speech is going to be. [Laughter] But one of the things that worries
    me about the 21st century is one of the things that I joy in. And that
    is that more and more people are going to work, more and more people are
    having the opportunity to work, and I want that. But the most important
    work of any society is raising the children well. And we have to find a
    way to do better in the United States in helping people balance the
    demands of childrearing and work.
        That's why I fought so hard for the family leave law. It's why I
    think it should be expanded. It's why I have given a child care
    initiative to the Congress that would help another million children get
    affordable quality child care while their parents go to work. And it's
    why we need to more vigorously enforce the law when it comes to equal
    pay for equal work for women and for men.
        I want us, in the 21st century, to live in real community, not only
    with our neighborhoods in our State but around the world. That means we
    have to protect the environment, whether it's dealing with traffic
    congestion and green space and clean air and clean water or the
    challenge of climate change. It means that we ought to give more people
    the chance to serve, whether in the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, here at
    home. It means that we ought to make sure that no person is subject to
    unfair discrimination, which is why I am determined to pass the
    ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act'' this year. These are the kinds of
    things we need to be pushing, that all of you need to support.
        And finally, let me say, in San Francisco this morning, the place
    where the United Nations was launched, I gave a speech saying that the
    United States still had to care about peace in Kosovo, in the Middle
    East, in Northern Ireland; that the United States still had to care
    about the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, even if they
    were at most risk in other countries far from our shore; that the United
    States still had to care about poverty from Africa to the Caribbean,
    about democracy in Central America; that we cannot say we love

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    to get on the Internet and talk to people around the world, we love to
    sell our products in Asia and Latin America, and pretend that economic
    globalization will take care of all the problems in the world.
        The inexorable logic of our growing closer together is that we are
    in an interdependent world. And just as we as Americans cannot fulfill
    our own dreams and destinies unless we work together, we cannot fulfill
    the dream and destiny of America unless we reach out to our friends and
    neighbors around the world.
        And so I say to you, these are the basic ideas for meeting the
    biggest challenges the United States faces. We've come a long way in the
    last 6 years. We've had a good time. We've had a better time, year-in
    and year-out, because there have been fewer people subject to abject
    anxieties. And I want to get off the stage and bring back Big Bad Voodoo
    Daddy. And I thank them for playing.
        But if you don't remember anything I say, you remember these two
    things: Number one, the best politics is to do the right thing by the
    American people. That's why we're where we are tonight, and we need to
    take advantage; we need to take advantage of these good times to deal
    with the big long-term challenges we face. And number two, if somebody
    asks you why you're a Democrat, why did you come here tonight, tell
    them, because that's the party that believes that no matter where you
    come from and what your circumstances, you ought to have an equal chance
    to live out your dream. That's the party that believes that no matter
    what our differences, what unites us is more important than what divides
    us, and we want an American family. And that's the party that believes
    that the purpose of our public life is to elevate the spirits and the
    vision and the heart of the American people.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:55 p.m. in the Los Angeles Room at the
    Century Plaza Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Janice Griffin,
    national vice chair, Women's Leadership Forum; Joseph J. Andrew,
    national chairman-designate, Democratic National Committee; Lara Brown
    and Paul Krekorian, Los Angeles chapter cochairs, Saxophone Club; State
    Controller Kathleen Connell; State Assembly Speaker Antonio R.
    Villaraigosa; and Gov. Gray Davis of California and his wife, Sharon.