    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [June 10, 1999]
    [Pages 916-919]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Dinner
    June 10, 1999

        The President. Thank you very much. Charlie, wait a minute. Before Chairman Rangel sits down--you know,
    Dick Gephardt got up there and said,
    ``You know, the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee is as powerful
    as the President.'' [Laughter] Bob Johnson
    said, ``That's a scary thought.'' [Laughter] And I said, ``No, no, he's
    more powerful than the President.'' [Laughter]
        You should know that among all the things we have to be grateful for
    tonight and to celebrate, tomorrow is Charlie Rangel's birthday. So I think we should sing ``Happy Birthday'' to
    him.

    [At this point, the participants sang ``Happy Birthday.'']

        Representative Charles Rangel. My only
    response is, save Social Security now! [Laughter]
        The President. That's just like we rehearsed it. [Laughter]
        Let me say to Congressman Rangel and,
    in his absence, Chairman Clyburn, Eleanor
    Holmes Norton, all the members of the
    caucus who are still here, and those who have come and gone, to the
    members of the Cabinet that are here--I saw Secretary Slater and Secretary Riley,
    there may be others here--and my former Cabinet member Jesse
    Brown, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs back
    there, I'm glad to see you. My wonderful friend from Chicago and fellow
    Arkansan John Stroger and all the others who
    did so much to make this night a possibility. I thank the chairman of
    the DNC, Joe Andrew, for being here; and
    Lottie Shackelford, others from the DNC
    who are here.
        I want to say--I have so many friends here, but there's one young
    couple here that I'm particularly pleased about being here because
    they're new Washingtonians, the newly acquired new quarterback for the
    Washington Redskins, Rodney Peete, and his
    wonderful wife, Holly Robinson Peete.
    You all stand up there and say hello. [Applause] They are a big addition
    to this community and wonderful people, and I'm glad to have them.
        I want to say a few things rather briefly tonight. First of all,
    Congressman Rangel, my wife said to tell you hello, and once again, thank
    you for your friendship. [Laughter] Secondly, I want you to know when we
    had the New York Yankees at the White House today to celebrate their
    championship last year, I called them the Bronx Bombers, and I
    emphasized ``Bronx,'' and I said I was doing it at your behest.
    [Laughter]
        Finally, let me say I was looking at Dick Gephardt standing up here, and I have known him for many years, and
    I thought he was a good man and an able man when I first met him. But I
    have watched him grow in his responsibility, in the depth of his
    understanding and his spirit. He should be the Speaker of the House. He
    should be the Speaker of the House.
        The last thing I want to say by way of introduction is, I'm
    delighted to see Lionel Hampton again. We
    had--John Conyers and I had a 90th
    birthday party for him at the White House last year, almost a year ago,
    and they actually let me play with the band. And I hadn't played in
    months, and it was really one of the nicest nights I've had in the White
    House, and I'm very grateful for that. And I'm grateful for him. If I
    look half as good at 60 as he does at 90--[laughter]--if I can hear to
    play my horn as well as he can hear to play his vibe, I will be a happy
    fellow.
        I apologize for being late here tonight. I think all of you know
    why. I addressed the people of the United States tonight about the end
    of the conflict in Kosovo. I want to say a couple of things about that
    and what it has to do with all of the things that have already been
    mentioned and all the issues we don't have time to mention tonight.
        The unimaginable horrors that were inflicted on those people, which
    led to an unprecedented

    [[Page 917]]

    indictment of a head of state, Mr. Milosevic, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, came to
    them solely because of their ethnicity and their religious faith. And it
    is indeed ironic that here we are on the edge of a new century and a new
    millennium, with the world growing closer together, with technology
    literally exploding opportunities for all of us, with America becoming
    more and more diverse by the day, that the world is most bedeviled by
    the oldest problem of human society: people are scared of people who
    don't look like them and who worship God in a different way than they do
    and who basically come from a different tribe.
        We have learned, in ways good and bad, that our differences make us
    stronger; they make life more interesting; they make life more fun. But
    if that curious balance that exists inside all of us gets out of whack
    and our fears overcome our hopes, we can go quickly from fearing people
    to hating them, to dehumanizing them, to justifying all manner of
    repression and abuse of them.
        What the conflict in Kosovo was about at bottom is whether or not,
    after all we have learned from what happened in World War II to the
    Jewish people and others in Nazi repression and all we have seen since,
    would or would not provoke the world, especially after the agonizing
    experience we had in Bosnia and the awful experience we had in Rwanda,
    when everyone was caught flat-footed, with no mechanism to deal with
    it--whether we would say, ``Okay, from now on we don't expect everybody
    to get along. We don't think we can abolish all war. But if innocent
    civilians are going to be slaughtered and uprooted and have their lives
    destroyed and their families wrecked only because of their racial or
    ethnic background or their religious faith--if we can stop it, we intend
    to stop it.''
        The United States did not go there for any territorial gain or
    economic gain. We went there because we want there to be peace and
    harmony, first in Europe and, wherever possible, in the rest of the
    world. We went there with an Army that looks like America, an Air Force
    that looks like America. We landed a Marine expeditionary unit in Greece
    today, going into Kosovo to help those folks come home, that looks like
    America. There are people from every conceivable racial and ethnic group
    and all different religious backgrounds, bound together by what they
    have in common being more important than the interesting things that
    divide them.
        I say that because I am grateful for what they have achieved with
    our Allies. But I know, as I look toward the future, when I am long gone
    from this job, and the world grows closer and closer--but we will still
    have struggles between those who are left out and those who are included
    in the bounty of the world. We will still have to deal with terrorism
    and weapons of mass destruction and international criminal gangs and
    all, and people will always be trying to feed on the differences, to
    switch the balance from hope to fear. And it will be very important that
    the United States of our children and grandchildren be a force for
    bringing people together, not tearing them apart. And we will not be
    able to do that, over the long run, to do good around the world, unless
    we first are good at home.
        That is why--that's why I've worked as hard as I can on all the
    issues involving race; why I know we've got to get rid of this racial
    profiling; why I know we've got to do more to deal with the threat of
    violence to our children; why I have asked everybody from the
    entertainment community to the gun community, to the schools, the people
    that provide counseling and mental health services, to the parents, to
    do something--all of us to do something to give our children their
    childhood back.
        That is why I have asked the Congress to invest more in education,
    to adopt this new market initiative. I like the fact that we will give
    you tax breaks, tax credits, and loan guarantees to invest in poor
    countries around the world. I don't want to take them away. I just want
    you to have exactly the same incentives to invest in poor neighborhoods
    in inner-city America and Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and
    Native American reservations and all those other places.
        So I ask you to think about this. This is a night you can be proud
    of your country. This is a night you can be grateful for the economic
    prosperity that we have enjoyed, that we have the lowest African-
    American and Hispanic unemployment rates we have ever recorded, that
    wages are rising for people in all income groups. We can be grateful for
    that. And you have expressed your gratitude by coming here and giving
    these funds, for which I am grateful.
        But I want you to support our party not just so that Dick Gephardt
    can be Speaker and Charlie Rangel can be chairman, we can have 3 or 4
    chairmen and 19 subcommittee chairs, but for what Mr. Gephardt said:
    because if we

    [[Page 918]]

    are in these positions of responsibility, we will show up for work every
    day. And we will not be interested simply in accumulating power but in
    using the fleeting power we have been given by the American people to
    advance the cause, the future, and the hopes of ordinary citizens from
    all walks of life.
        I believe--it's not fashionable to say, I guess, but politics and
    public service are noble endeavors if they are informed by a high
    purpose. I have never thought that I was going to be President for life,
    and I have never thought one bit of power I exercised really belonged to
    me. It was something that was loaned to me for a little while by the
    American people, thanks to the remarkable Constitution under which we
    live.
        And so if you give us this kind of responsibility, we will ask the
    American people to search their consciousness--and to serve their--
    search their consciences, to think and to feel what we still must do to
    deepen the meaning of freedom and widen the circle of opportunity and
    strengthen the bonds of community. That's what a lot of our fights are
    about. That's what the Patients' Bill of Rights is about. If I get sick
    tonight, I'm going to be fine. Unless God gets ready to take me home,
    I'll have the best health care in the world. I don't need it, and
    neither do most of you.
        That's why we're trying to have America join the mainstream and stop
    being the only country in the world that doesn't even have sensible,
    commonsense regulation of these handguns, to keep them out of the hands
    of criminals and kids, and to keep the assault weapons away from the
    children. The Secret Service is taking care of me; I don't need that.
    And if anything happened to me, besides, I've already had more life than
    99 percent of the people who ever lived. [Laughter] I don't have any
    gripe.
        But all those kids--Dick Gephardt reminded us, 13 kids get killed
    every day, get shot and die and don't have the life that I have had or
    the life that you have had that has brought you to this point. And I
    have been so moved by the people at Littleton and how they have
    responded, and the courage and dignity with which they have borne their
    awful fate, and the way they have asked us not to let their children die
    in vain.
        But every day, for years, 13 kids die in ones and twos, on the mean
    streets and the tough alleys in which they live. We want to do something
    about that, and we can. It's why we've tried to make college affordable
    for everybody and put a computer in every child's schoolroom. Our kids--
    we don't need that; our kids can have their computers.
        I say that not to make you feel better than our political
    adversaries, either. I say that to make this simple point. The same
    thing that makes us believe that people are better off getting along
    than they are fighting over their racial or religious differences makes
    us believe that we ought to have universal excellence in education,
    universal quality in health care, a strong economy that includes
    everyone. But because we know down deep inside that that's being smart
    selfish, we know that we'll be better off and our children will be
    better off and our country will be stronger if we're not just sailing
    along alone.
        If you ask me what the single most significant difference between
    the two parties is today and why it is so important that you're here and
    why we had the historic victory we had in 1998, even though we were
    outspent by $100 million, it is because we believe, truly, that we are
    all God's children, that none of us inherently is better than any other,
    and that we don't believe, even if we are in the elite, in just the
    elite and their welfare. And this is not about class warfare, either.
    This is about whether you believe that individuals and families and
    businesses are better off when they're part of a fabric of a strong
    community, where everybody's trying to give everybody else a hand up.
    And if we ever do it right, there will be no more handouts. If we had
    enough hand-ups, there would be no more handouts.
        So I want you to leave here being proud of what you did tonight, but
    I don't want you to quit. It's a long road between now and 2000. And
    we're not getting much encouragement from most of our friends on the
    other side of the aisle in campaign finance reform, because they figured
    if they outdid us by $100 million in '98, maybe they can have a $200
    million advantage in 2000.
        But one thing we showed them in 1998, partly thanks to a record
    African-American turnout, one thing we showed them: It doesn't matter if
    they have more money than you do if you have enough to be heard. If you
    have enough to be heard, if you have enough to make those telephone
    calls and to get those doors knocked on and to send those letters out
    and to put

    [[Page 919]]

    those ads on and to be heard if you stand for something, if the power is
    not an end in itself but to be used as a gift, given for a limited
    period of time by the people to strengthen the common life of our
    country, we've proved that great things can happen.
        You have done a good thing tonight for your country. I want you to
    think about it and continue to speak for it. And when people ask you why
    you were here tonight, I hope some of the words that we have said will
    give you an answer: because you want us to go forward together.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:12 p.m. at the National Museum for Women
    in the Arts. In his remarks, he referred to Robert L. Johnson, chairman
    and chief executive officer, BET Holdings, Inc.; musician Lionel
    Hampton; John Stroger, president, Cook County Board of Commissioners,
    Chicago, IL; Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, and Lottie Shackelford,
    vice chair, Democratic National Committee; and President Slobodan
    Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).