    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 22, 1999]
    [Pages 235-239]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Democratic Governors' Association Dinner
    February 22, 1999

        Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm
    welcome. I thank Governor O'Bannon for his
    kind introduction. I thank him and Governor Patton for their leadership of the Democratic Governors. I am
    delighted that all of them are here tonight, and I want to pay a special
    compliment to Tom Carper for his leadership
    for the National Governors' Association this year. And I might add, a
    special compliment to all the Democratic Governors who showed up here in
    Washington with an agenda for the NGA to put the children of this
    country first and put education on the front burner and not let it get
    mired in the partisan politics. They deserve an enormous amount of
    credit, and I thank them.
        I want to thank Katie Whelan, Jennifer
    Rokala, Mark Weiner
    for their work for the DGA. And I'd like to thank the leaders of our
    national party who are here tonight: Governor Romer, Mayor Archer, Congresswoman
    Sanchez, and Joe Andrew--whom we stole from Indiana; thank you very much. I
    thank the Members of Congress who are here: Senator Akaka, Senator Bayh, Senator Dodd, Congresswoman Mink,
    Congressman Hoyer, and goodness knows who
    else is here; former Democratic Chairman Don Fowler and all the former Governors who are here: Governor
    Waihee, Governor Miller
    of Nevada, Governor Bayh--a twofer.
        Let me also say one other thing by way of introduction. I am
    profoundly grateful to the NGA for putting together, courtesy of my good
    friend Frank Greer, that magnificent film on
    Lawton Chiles, one of the best, ablest people I ever knew, and I thank
    you for that.
        When Rutherford B. Hayes became Governor of Ohio, he described his
    position in this way: ``Not too much hard work, plenty of time to read,
    good society, et cetera.'' Hasn't changed much, has it? [Laughter] After
    he became President he said, ``I am heartily tired of this life of
    bondage, responsibility, and toil.'' Well, I don't think he was right
    about either job. And I'm proud of the work you do and grateful for the
    role that all of you played in giving me a chance to serve you as
    President. It is not bondage or toil, although it is responsibility.
        Nearly everybody who has had this job has written something like
    that. And it makes you wonder if they complain about it so much why they
    work so hard to get it. There is no place on Earth, I think, as
    President Kennedy once said, where a person is called upon to reach deep
    into what you believe and what you think should be done, and then given
    the opportunity to marshal the resources of the country to move forward.
    But I think it is clear to all of you who have worked with me in the
    past that much of the success that this country has enjoyed,

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    that we were a part of--and I certainly don't claim responsibility for
    all of it--but whatever success we have been able to enjoy in this
    administration is in no small measure the result of the fact that I had
    a chance to serve as a Governor for a dozen years. And I thank the
    people of my State for giving me that chance and all the Governors who
    worked with me.
        In 1992 we said that we were bringing a New Democratic philosophy to
    the country. All it really meant was that we were going to bring
    Democratic ideals of opportunity for all, and a community of all
    Americans, and the Governors way of work--putting new ideas over old
    ideology and putting people over old-fashioned Washington politics. It
    turned out to be a pretty good theory.
        All of you know that we've gone from a record deficit to a record
    surplus, that we have the longest peacetime expansion in history, the
    lowest peacetime unemployment rate since 1957, now the lowest
    unemployment rate of any industrial country in the entire world. We have
    opened the doors of college to all Americans who are willing to work for
    it, provided immunizations for over 90 percent of our children for the
    first time in history. We're in the process, with your help, of
    providing health insurance to 5 million of the 10 million children in
    America who don't have it. Our country is working again and for that,
    and for the role all of you have played in it--not only the Governors
    and their staffs who are here but all the others who are here, from the
    labor organizations and the education groups and the business groups--I
    am profoundly grateful.
        What I would like to just take a couple of minutes to talk to you
    about tonight is the urgency of the Governors being involved in dealing
    now with the great long-term challenges of this country. The easiest
    thing to do when things are going well is to say, ``We worked hard to
    get here; let's take a break.'' I might say that every time our country
    has done this--you go back through the whole history of America--every
    time we have done this, it has gotten us into trouble. And we can ill
    afford to do it now when the world is changing so fast and when even
    amidst our own prosperity, as all of you know, there is a lot of trouble
    around the world. Virtually all of Asia is in recession. Our neighbors
    in Latin America, our fastest-growing markets, all have had their
    economic growth dramatically reduced because of the global financial
    trouble. There are a lot of threats to our security lurking out there in
    nooks and crannies of discord the world over.
        And I asked the American people in the State of the Union, and I ask
    the Governors here tonight, to join me in making the most of this
    opportunity that we have, because of our prosperity and equally because
    of our national confidence, to look at the long-term challenges of the
    21st century. We have a chance to guarantee for the next several decades
    that these challenges we know about now can at least be met. No one can
    foresee for sure what will happen 10 or 20 or 30 years from now, but we
    know that if we deal with the problems that we know are out there now,
    if we seize the challenges we know are out there now, that our
    successors will have an easier path and our country will do a better job
    with more of its children.
        We have to deal with the aging of America. There will be twice as
    many people over 65 in 2030 as there are now, and I hope I'm still one
    of them. You know, a lot of people go around wringing their hands about
    the problems with Social Security and Medicare. This is a high-class
    problem. We have this problem because we're living longer and staying
    healthier. The fastest growing group of Americans in percentage terms
    are people over 80. So I have asked the Congress to set aside 77 percent
    of this projected surplus for 15 years to save Social Security and
    Medicare and to improve them.
        If we do that, we will also be able to pay down the national debt so
    that in 15 years, instead of half our annual income, which is what it
    was when I took office, it will be 7 percent of our annual income.
    That's the smallest percentage it has been since 1917, before this
    country entered World War I. Instead of spending 14 cents on your tax
    dollar to pay interest on the debt, which is what we were paying in
    1993, we'll be spending 2 cents. And if future Congresses have the
    discipline to stay on this track, we could actually be a debt-free
    nation in 19 years. Just think of it and what it would mean for our
    children.
        We can save Social Security. We can do something about the
    inordinate rate of women on Social Security who are still living in
    poverty. We can lift the earnings limit that now is imposed on people on
    Social Security, which I think is a mistake, since we have more and more
    older people who are healthy, who are strong, and who want to work. We
    can add

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    20 years to the life of Medicare and add a prescription drug benefit
    with some significant, but doable, reforms if we will have the
    discipline to set aside 77 percent of this surplus. That leaves us
    plenty of money to have tax cuts. I think we should have them dedicated
    to helping middle class people save for their own retirement, to have
    more investment in education, and to pay for our military needs. We can
    do all of that.
        Now, the easy thing to do--we'll say, ``Well, we've got this
    surplus, we waited 30 years for it, let's just give it away. It will be
    popular.'' There are a lot of Americans who could use all the money now.
    But it would be a mistake. And believe me, if you look at all this
    turmoil around the world--and the Governors that are going on the trade
    missions, that are seeking foreign investment, that want to do more
    business, you understand this. I don't know--and I'll say more about
    this in a minute--I don't know whether the United States can rectify a
    lot of these problems in the global economy in the next couple of years;
    I'm going to do everything I can to get that done. But I know this: If
    we have the debt going down, we'll keep interest rates down and
    investment high; if things go wrong overseas, they will be better than
    they otherwise would have been; and if things turn around overseas, our
    boom will be greater than it otherwise would have been if we have the
    discipline to do this. And I implore you to help me.
        The Governors--Democrat and Republican alike--complained for years
    and years that everybody in Washington talked about balancing the
    budget, and no one ever did anything about it. And after I got here and
    I saw all the blood that was on the floor after the '93 economic plan, I
    understood why nobody did anything about it. Dick Riley, my Education
    Secretary, another of our former colleagues, used to always tell me
    after that, when I'd be moping around, he'd say, ``Just remember my old
    saying: `let's change; you go first.' '' [Laughter] But we're here now,
    and we don't want to turn around. We want to keep going.
        You know we have to do something about the children and families in
    21st century America. We have more kids in our schools--they have more
    diverse backgrounds; more of them come from parents who don't speak
    English, or whose first language is not English--than ever before. A lot
    of them are going to school in trailers or in school buildings so old
    they can't even be hooked up to the Internet. I thank you for your
    support of our agenda to help you hire more teachers, to help you build
    or modernize schools. I ask you to continue to support our efforts to
    raise the standards. Governor Carper had
    the right slogan for this year's Governors' meeting: raising student
    achievement. We ought to end social promotion, but help the kids with
    after-school programs and summer school programs. We ought to turn
    around the failing schools. We ought to give the parents the report
    cards. We ought to do what it takes for educational excellence.
        We also ought to do more to help working families afford quality
    child care. One of the great ironies is when we fought very hard for
    welfare reform--the Democratic Governors stood with me in insisting that
    we get billions of dollars in that welfare reform bill for child care--
    that we keep the guarantee of medical care and nutrition for the kids.
    The welfare rolls have dropped by nearly 50 percent. The people that are
    left are harder to place. We can't just let them be thrown into the
    streets. So a lot of you are using your surplus funds to put more money
    into child care and more money into training. It is an irony that a lot
    of people who have never been on welfare, but who have young children,
    cannot afford their child care needs.
        In our balanced budget this year, we have a comprehensive program
    that will allow millions of children to have comprehensive child care
    while their parents go to work. And succeeding at home and work ought to
    be America's family mission for the 21st century. I ask you for your
    support for that and for our efforts to expand the family leave law, to
    raise the minimum wage, to pass the Patients' Bill of Rights, to do more
    to support equal pay for equal work--a bigger and bigger issue among
    working husbands, as well as working women. All these things need to be
    done if we are going to have the proper balance between work and family,
    so that our parents can do their job if our schools do theirs.
        We have to build the right quality of life for the 21st century. We
    talked a lot at the Governors' meeting today about the livability agenda
    that I put forward with the leadership of the Vice President, Carol Browner,
    Rodney Slater, Dan Glickman, to try to help our communities manage their traffic
    problems, their

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    toxic problems, their need for more green space with no Federal
    mandates, and a lot of empowerment. I hope you will help me pass that.
        And finally, as the Governors get more and more and more involved in
    the global economy--and you've been leading us that way for 25 years
    now--I hope you will help me in my continuing effort to convince the
    Congress and the country that there is no longer a clear dividing line
    between our interest beyond our borders and our interest within our
    borders. I'll just give you one example.
        I want to keep this economic expansion going. I am convinced that to
    do it we have to have more economic growth at home and more economic
    growth abroad. Governor Patton invited me to
    Kentucky's Appalachian region to push my America new markets
    initiative--tax credits and loan guarantees to get people to invest in
    the high unemployment areas of America. Mayor Archer here, in Detroit, got one of our first enterprise zones,
    and the unemployment rate in Detroit is now one-half of what it was in
    1993. Detroit's unemployment rate is about at the national average. We
    can do that in rural areas and urban communities all over America.
        And then we have to reach out beyond our borders to create a
    financial system and a trading system that works for ordinary people in
    the 21st century; to have labor standards, environmental standards and
    more open markets; to make it possible for money to go into places, but
    to make honest loans and open loans and protect against these wild
    fluctuations that have not only hurt overseas countries, but have hurt
    American farmers, have hurt our companies like Boeing, and have been a
    killer for the steel industry. We have got to put a human face on the
    global economy, but we cannot run away from it. The Governors know that.
        And I ask you to help to build a national consensus for that
    approach--not for running away, but not for saying, ``Well, we'll just
    open things up and forget about how it affects ordinary people.'' In the
    end, the test of all of our efforts as Democrats is, are people out
    there in the country, who never come to a fundraiser but get up every
    day and work their hearts out and raise their kids and do everything
    they're supposed to do, are they going to be better off if this policy
    prevails? That is the heart and soul of what drives our party. And if we
    can deal with the aging of 21st century America, the challenges of
    children and family in 21st century America, the challenges of our
    environment in 21st century America, the security challenges of 21st
    century America, we're going to do just fine.
        We can only do that if we deal with one last challenge, which I
    believe today more than any other thing is the distinguishing difference
    between the two parties. And that is, we believe that 21st century
    America must be one America, united, indivisible, with liberty and
    justice for all.
        Every night for the last several nights, I have made a call to the
    Secretary of State, who is over in
    France trying to broker a peace agreement in Kosovo, trying to avoid
    another horrible ethnic slaughter in a country right next door to
    Bosnia. And you know what we went through there. Every week I try a
    little harder to use the time I have remaining to get a just and lasting
    peace in the Middle East. In the last several weeks, I have exerted what
    efforts I could, so far without success, to avoid a brutal, murderous
    conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, to minimize the other tribal wars
    in Africa.
        Now, after years of work, we've hit another snag in the peace
    process in Northern Ireland, and we are doing our best to try to get by
    this last tough thing. All you have to do is to read the papers to know
    that there are continuing tensions between India and Pakistan, between
    Greece and Turkey, that have old, deep ethnic and religious roots. All
    over the world, in the so-called modern world, ancient animosities are
    driving people to the point of war and are keeping people down. Ordinary
    people in other countries, the kind of folks we try to represent here,
    cannot build a normal life because their leaders are determined to
    continue conflicts based on racial, religious, or ethnic lines.
        And it's why we have to guard so hard against that sort of thing
    here at home. We think we're doing great now and we can indulge
    ourselves in conflicts that we know better than to pursue; that is
    wrong. And we have to honestly say the great test of our democracy, in
    the end, is whether in good times and bad, America not only tries to do
    good abroad but to be good at home. In the end, we will be judged by
    that. We have to be a country where we all serve together, which is why
    I've worked so hard for AmeriCorps. We have to be a country

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    where we're pushing back constantly the frontiers of discrimination,
    which is why I have supported so strongly the ``Employment Non-
    Discrimination Act.''
        And we have to be a country that relishes our racial, our ethnic,
    our cultural diversity and says we celebrate all this, but we know that
    underneath what God gave us all in common--in spite of all of our
    differences--is more important; that the framers of our Constitution so
    long ago were pretty smart when they talked about the inalienable rights
    given to every human being. And if we recognize that, then we ought to
    be able to find a way to live together.
        I have done everything I know to do for 6 years to move us toward
    that one America. Should we have differences; should we have arguments;
    should we have elections; should we have discussions? Of course we
    should. But when you leave here tonight, if you don't remember another
    thing I said, you just remember this: No country throws away its common
    values and common humanity, even for an instant, without paying a price.
    And every night--every night--I thank God that we have the chance to be
    a force for peace, from Northern Ireland to the Middle East to Kosovo to
    Africa. I ask for the opportunity every night to make one stab to work
    out the problems between Greece and Turkey on Cyprus, to try to bring
    India and Pakistan closer together. And I thank God every night that we
    have not been cut apart by those things.
        But America is growing more and more diverse. One of our new
    Governors here, Governor Davis, while he is
    Governor--while he is Governor--may preside over a State that has no
    majority race. Now, this is a good thing in the world of the 21st
    century if--but only if--America not only preaches our doctrine to
    people abroad but lives by it at home.
        The Democratic Party in the 1990's has constantly been for
    opportunity, for change, and for community. I like to joke that at the
    end of the 20th century, looking back on over 200 years of American
    history, our party leaves this century and enters the next as not only
    the party of Jefferson and Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt but also now
    the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. And I am very proud
    of it. I want you to stay proud of it. And I want us to live by it.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:58 p.m. at the National Building Museum.
    In his remarks, he referred to Governors Frank O'Bannon of Indiana, DGA
    chair, Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, DGA vice chair, Thomas R. Carper of
    Delaware, Gray Davis of California; former Governors John Waihee of
    Hawaii, Bob Miller of Nevada, Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Roy Romer of
    Colorado, general chair, Democratic National Committee; Katie Whelan,
    executive director, Jennifer Rokala, national finance director, and Mark
    Weiner, treasurer, Democratic Governors' Association; Mayor Dennis W.
    Archer of Detroit, MI; Joseph J. Andrew, national chair-designate, and
    Donald L. Fowler, former national chair, Democratic National Committee;
    and media consultant Frank Greer.