    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [March 16, 1999]
    [Pages 390-395]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 390]]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Stuart, Florida
    March 16, 1999

        If I had any judgment at all, I would not say a word. [Laughter] I
    had forgotten we did some of those things. [Laughter]
        You know, when we came in this magnificent home tonight and I was
    looking around and commenting on the spiral staircase, Reverend Jackson
    said, ``You know, Mr. President, you and Hillary live in the White
    House. Willie and Gloria live in a white house. The only difference is
    they've got more floor space, and they're not term limited.'' [Laughter]
        Let me say to the Garys, to Willie, to
    Gloria, to your mother, your children, your
    grandchildren how honored I am to be here with all of our crew from the
    White House tonight, along with Joe Andrew
    and Beth Dozoretz from the Democratic Party;
    how delighted I am to be here with my good friend Reverend
    Jackson who is also my Special Envoy to
    Africa. And I'll say a little more about that in a moment.
        I thank Congressman Hastings and
    Congressman Deutsch for coming down here with
    me tonight. I thank Bishop Ray and my good
    friend Bishop Graves and the other members
    of the clergy who are here, and the college presidents. I thought the
    Drifters and Ernestine Diller were both
    just great. And I thank them for entertaining us. And I'd like to thank
    the people who prepared and served our food and our drinks tonight. I
    thank them very much for what they did.
        You know, when Willie was talking about raising the average income
    of African-American households, I thought, you know, I didn't have to do
    anything; he did that all by himself. [Laughter]
        Let me say--I have to say one thing on a serious note--some of you
    are here tonight who meant to be here at noon in Palm Beach. I was
    supposed to have a lunch in Palm Beach at noon. And the reason we
    couldn't do that is that the son of two of our hosts, Mel and Bren Simon, dropped dead of
    a tragic heart attack at a very young age in London a couple of days
    ago. And they're good friends of mine; they're wonderful people. They're
    part owners of the Indiana Pacers basketball team, among other things.
    And I would just like to ask all of you tonight--I know that all of us--
    I called Hillary, who knows Mrs.
    Simon, in particular. I called her today when we heard about this, and I
    just talked to them. It just took her breath away. All of us who have
    been parents can only imagine the agony that we would feel. So I ask for
    you tonight, I want to go back to having a good time, but I ask you to
    say a little prayer for them when you go home tonight. It's going to be
    a hard night for them and a hard few days. And they were very generous
    and very kind. They've been very, very good to me, and they've been good
    citizens for our country. And I just would like for you to all remember
    them.
        Let me say--I really admire--I made a little fun of Willie tonight, but I really admire him and Gloria. And I love the fact that they have not forgotten where
    they came from. I love the fact that they had all these children up
    here. I know that we have at least one person here from North Carolina
    who is involved in a similar program of giving young people college
    scholarships for when they're at pivotal points in their life, and
    telling them, ``Look, if you'll just stay in school and make your
    grades, you can go to college.'' And I want to say a little more about
    that in a minute, but that says a lot.
        Now, I was thinking about--I've had all this on my mind a lot
    because, some of you may have noticed, over the weekend I went home to
    this little town in Arkansas where I was born, and they dedicated the
    house that I lived in with my grandparents until I was 4. And they've
    rebuilt it, and they've gotten some of the things back, some pictures we
    had on the walls when I lived there--unbelievable things they've done.
    It's just a little two-story, wood-frame house that my grandparents
    lived in when my grandfather ran a store, little grocery store, and my
    grandmother was a private-duty nurse.
        And before that, my grandfather was a night watchman at a sawmill.
    That was my favorite job he had because I used to go and spend the night
    in the back seat of his car and climb in the sawdust pile. And some of
    you from the South may be old enough to remember when not all sawmills
    were big. They used to be little bitty sawmills, and ordinary people
    could go and fool around in them. It was a great thing.

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        And I was thinking about Willie's
    upbringing and Gloria's upbringing and
    Jesse's upbringing that I know a lot about.
    And I thought the four of us sitting here tonight--all people in
    politics would like for you to believe they were born in a log cabin
    they built all by themselves. [Laughter] And the truth is not any of us
    would be here tonight at this nice dinner if we hadn't gotten a lot of
    helping hands along the way. But still it is a great testament to the
    enduring power of the idea of this country that people who have the
    backgrounds of we four, and the backgrounds of many of the rest of you,
    could be here.
        It is also a great testament to the enduring power of the American
    idea that those of you here who were born prosperous and got more
    prosperous came here tonight to help us and our party because we believe
    we can do better when more Americans do better.
        And I've been thinking a lot about this because I had to go home and
    speak at my birthplace and talk to, among other things, three boys that
    I went to kindergarten with and all my kinfolks, many of whom are way up
    in years now, and think about my remarkable grandfather who--I was born
    on his birthday, and I loved him more than life. He died when I was
    young. But he was the first white person I ever knew in the segregated
    South who told me that segregation was wrong. And he had a fourth or a
    fifth grade education.
        And I watched him live it every day. It was a great gift. I watched
    him run a grocery store before food stamps, and if people came in, they
    were honest and working hard, and they didn't have any money, he gave
    them food anyway. And when he died, my mother told me what it was like
    when they finally found his old books from his grocery store. And he had
    been gone from there 10 or 15 years, and all these people who had owed
    him money--he carefully kept it in his book, and when they paid off a
    little, he'd carefully keep it. But he never--he always said, ``They're
    working hard. They're doing the best they can. I've got food. They
    should have it, too.''
        And I was raised in those heady days after World War II, with two
    simple ideas that I've tried to bring back to America in the last 6
    years. One is the idea that everybody should have a chance to live his
    or her dreams. And the second is that we are part of a community. It
    gives us a sense of belonging and imposes on us a sense of
    responsibility, that we can never fully realize our own aspirations
    unless we are doing our part to give others the same chance.
        And I believe that it's very important that we think about that
    today. Willie told you about all the good things that have happened in
    the last 6 years, and I'm glad he did because it would be unseemly for
    me to talk about them. But also because I don't think that that's the
    most important thing. I said to the American people in my State of the
    Union Address that one of the things that I knew before I became
    President but I couldn't see and feel until I took this job, is just how
    profoundly and how rapidly the world is changing and how we are changing
    the way we work and live and relate to each other, not just in our
    neighborhoods but in our States, in our Nation, and with people way
    beyond our borders.
        And I'll bet whatever it is you do for a living, if you think about
    it, it's different than it used to be because of technology and because
    of who can participate. And what I'd like for you to think about just
    for a few moments tonight is not just how far we've come but what do we
    still have to do. What will the 21st century look like? What about all
    these young people around here who are going to be alive much longer
    than I am; what's it going to be like for them when they raise their
    children and their grandchildren? And what could we do now at this
    unbelievable moment of prosperity and confidence, where our security is
    not seriously threatened, what can we do now to keep the good times
    going, but also to deal with the challenges of America over the long
    run, so that more people have a chance to live their dreams and so we
    have a better chance to come together as a community?
        And I'll just mention a few. Willie mentioned one. America is aging,
    and it's aging for two reasons. One is, health care is better and life
    expectancy is going up. It's already over 76 years. Anybody in this
    audience tonight over 60 who's still healthy has got a life expectancy
    of well over 80 years already. Children being born will do better still.
    And then the baby boomers are going to retire--I'm the oldest of the
    baby boomers, and when we all retire there will only be two people
    working for every one person eligible to draw Social Security.
        So we have to prepare for the aging of America. The first thing I'd
    like to say is, this a high-class problem. We shouldn't bemoan this.

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    The only big country in the world where the life expectancy is dropping
    is in Russia because their economy has collapsed; their health care
    system has collapsed; their rate of disease and other problems have gone
    up. They don't have a Social Security problem. We do. And other wealthy
    countries do. It's a high-class problem. We should be happy for this.
    And the older I get, the better it looks. [Laughter]
        But it is wrong for us to let all these folks retire and let us all
    get older, and then say, ``Well, we're not going take care of that, even
    though we have the money to do it now, because we know our children
    will.'' That would be a terrible thing to do, because the last thing we
    need to do is to have all of us in my generation retire and impose on
    our children a big burden which will undermine their ability to raise
    our grandchildren. It is not right.
        And the reason I've said we ought to save more than half of this
    surplus for Social Security is that we can save the Social Security
    system without imposing a burden on our children. We have to do the same
    for Medicare. We have to give families tax credits for long-term care.
    More and more people are taking care of their own parents, or their
    parents are doing something other than going into a nursing home. We
    need to make provisions for this. There are going to be a multitude of
    different things that older people will do when they need some help, but
    they don't have to be completely taken care of 24 hours a day. And we've
    got to help families deal with that.
        So that's the first thing. The second thing we have to do is to keep
    the economy going and reach out to people who have not been part of this
    free enterprise system yet. And let me say--I just went up to Wall
    Street with Reverend Jackson for his second
    annual conference where we're trying to get the people on Wall Street
    and in New York to invest in the areas of America from neighborhoods in
    New York City to Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to south Texas,
    to the Indian reservations of this country, to East Los Angeles, which
    still haven't felt the economic recovery. And increasingly, that
    includes more and more farmers who are getting hurt because of the
    problems around the world.
        And I presented to the Congress a plan that would get private
    capital--not Government money, private capital--into the inner cities,
    into these small rural areas, on the same terms that we give people to
    invest in other countries today. And I think we ought to do it.
        We've got all these people who are dying to go to work, and there
    aren't any jobs in their neighborhoods; there aren't any jobs in their
    towns; they don't have any investment opportunities; or they're
    businesses that would like to expand, and they can't get capital. And
    all I've asked the Congress to do is to provide the tax credits and the
    loan guarantees for people to invest in high-unemployment areas in
    America that we give them to invest in other parts of the world, not to
    take away the investments from the other part of the world but to just
    give poor American communities the same shot we're trying to give to
    people in other countries. And I think it's the right thing to do.
        The third thing we have to do is to guarantee 100 percent of our
    kids a world-class education. I like this college program because I
    tried to open the doors of college to all Americans. Now every child in
    this country who comes from an upper-middle-income family down can get a
    $1,500 tax credit for the first 2 years of college, tax credits for the
    last 2 for graduate school. We've improved the student loan program and
    more work-study programs. We've now got a mentoring program going on
    where we're bringing college kids in to help work with children who are
    in the seventh and eighth grade, to get them to think about going to
    college.
        But if we can have more people doing what you're doing and telling
    these kids, ``Okay, here's what you can get from the Government in tax
    credits; here's what you can get in the student loans; and by the way,
    here's a scholarship to help defray your costs,'' it will make a huge
    difference.
        We did pass the first installment on that 100,000 teachers. Let me
    tell you what a big deal that is. We have 53 million kids in school
    today. We've got the largest number of children we've ever had and by
    far the most diverse student population. In my little hometown in
    southwest Arkansas, there is an elementary school they have named for
    me, in a little town with 9,700 people now--it's a lot bigger than it
    was when I was born there--9,700 people. In my one little grade school
    in southwest Arkansas, there are 27 children whose parents were not born
    in America and whose first language is not English.

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        In Fairfax County School District, across the Potomac River from
    Washington, DC, there are children from 180--let me say this again--180
    different racial, national, and ethnic groups speaking over 100
    different native languages--in one school district.
        Now, if we're growing more diverse--this also is a high-class
    problem--if we're living in a global society, where we have to relate to
    people all around the world, it is good that America is the place that
    has the largest number of people that come from everywhere if, but only
    if, we can have a uniform educational system that gives opportunity to
    everybody and then if everybody has a chance to make a decent living.
    But it's got to start with the schools, which is why we want smaller
    classes, better trained teachers, higher standards, no social promotion.
    But don't brand the kids failures if the system fails them. Give them
    the after-school programs. Give them the summer school program. Give
    them the tutoring programs they need. That is what we need to do.
        So the fourth thing we have to do, let me mention, is to deal with
    the problem of balancing work and family. Hillary and I had an evening
    at the White House last night, one of these Millennial Evenings that she
    has organized to discuss big issues that we'll face in the next 20
    years. And we talked about the changing role of women, what had happened
    to women in the 20th century, how women got the vote, how women began to
    get economic rights, how women assumed larger and larger influence in
    our national life. And I said something about the role of women that
    also might be true for the role of African-Americans and other racial
    groups. I said, you know, for most of this century we've been focused on
    giving people more rights, stopping them from being oppressed, then
    making sure they had absolute opportunity. Once you get those things,
    you then run into questions of how you balance the different rights you
    have, how people work out the different opportunities they have. With
    most families now, both the husband and wife work if there are two
    parents in the home. And most families, they have to do it. Others, they
    choose to do it, and everyone should have the right to do it. But I
    predict to you that one of the biggest challenges for this country for
    the next 10 or 20 years will be how we're going to work out the balance
    at home and work, because no society has any more important job than
    raising children. And if we could do that just right, we'd have about 10
    percent of the problems we have today. There is no more important job.
        So if we put parents in the position of having to choose between
    being successful at home and successful at work, we have lost before we
    start. There is no way to win that, no way for America to come out
    ahead.
        That is why I've asked to expand the family and medical leave law.
    That's why I've asked for another increase in the minimum wage. I don't
    think anybody that works 40 hours a week and has a kid at home should be
    in poverty. I just don't believe that. I don't think that's right.
    That's why I've asked Congress to pass a child care program that would
    give families on modest incomes a tax credit and other support, so they
    could get quality child care while they have to be at work. That's why
    we have tripled the amount of money we want to give to the schools for
    the after-school programs and the summer school programs--to help people
    balance home and work.
        And the next thing I'd like to say is I think we have to broaden our
    horizon of community and what it means to be a good citizen. I think we
    need, all of us, to think of ourselves in terms of not just the jobs we
    do and how well we do it, not just whether we pay taxes or not and obey
    the law, but whether we have some way of serving our community.
        I was very moved when the bishop told me
    that these fine young athletes who were all introduced earlier and their
    families are members of his church and participating in the mission of
    reaching children and helping them. And I thank them for that. One of
    the things that I am proudest of is that we passed what I like to think
    of as a domestic Peace Corps bill to set up AmeriCorps, our national
    service corps, and now over 100,000 young people, some from very poor
    backgrounds, some from wealthy, many in-between, have taken a year or 2
    years of their lives, earned some money for college, just like GI's do
    under the GI bill, and served in their communities, helping to do all
    kinds of things.
        We need to create in our children an ethic of service. And it needs
    to be a part of what it means to be an American. And we need to do it in
    a way that gets us all in touch with people who are different from us,
    so we can learn what the world will be like.

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        We need to make sure that we relate not only to ourselves but to the
    rest of the world. I told you Reverend Jackson
    is my Special Envoy to Africa. Today we had members of the governments
    of 46 African nations meeting in Washington. They'll be there tomorrow.
    I talked to them today. He's going to talk to them tomorrow. We're
    trying to have a new partnership with Africa. We're trying to turn a new
    page. We're trying not just to say, ``Oh, yes, 30 million Americans have
    roots in Africa, and yes, we're sorry about the legacy of colonialism
    and slavery.'' We're trying to say, ``Let's open a new chapter. Let's
    have a new future. Let's help both countries. Let's do something good.''
        And I just got back from Central America last week. We have millions
    of people in the United States who trace their roots to Central America,
    one of the few regions of the world where we have a trade surplus. All
    those countries racked by civil war, military dictatorship, all kinds of
    oppression--for decades. Now they're all governed by people who got
    elected in honest elections. They all have parliaments full of people
    that used to be at war with each other. They want to be our friends and
    neighbors.
        We see all kinds of people concerned about illegal immigration. We
    ought to be good neighbors. If we're good neighbors, good partners, and
    they can make a living at home by selling to us and buying our things,
    then they won't be coming up here as illegal immigrants. They'll be
    home, raising their kids, because they can make a decent living. That's
    being a decent neighbor, and we ought to do it.
        So I want you--tomorrow my people are coming to the White House.
    Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day. And it has been my great honor to be
    the first American President deeply involved in the Irish peace process.
    The next day we have a group from Israel coming. And many people in this
    audience tonight have worked with me on the Middle East peace process. I
    have tried to do this because I want America not to see the world as
    either a hostile place or just a place where we try to make a buck. I
    want us to have a larger conception of our community responsibilities.
        We have common environmental challenges, like global warming. We
    have common public health challenges, like HIV and AIDS. We have a
    common future to make. And I believe with all my heart if we think about
    the 21st century as a period where we will work on creating opportunity
    and community, where we will realize our interdependence, one with
    another, where we will celebrate all these differences and all this
    diversity, but underneath understand that we're basically all the same,
    I think we're going to have a very good future.
        And let me just close with this story. I want to tell you a story
    that I thought about that I told the folks at home when I went to
    dedicate my birthplace. Last year I had a 91-year-old great uncle who
    died. He was my grandmother's brother. And I loved him very much, and he
    helped to raise me when my mother was widowed and went off to study so
    she could be a nurse anesthetist, and my grandparents were raising me.
    And this old man and I were close from the time I was born.
        He and his wife were married for over 50 years, and she came down
    with Alzheimer's. And they had one of these old-fashioned houses with
    gas stoves, so they had to take her to the local nursing facility that
    was tied to our nursing home in this little town because they were
    afraid she'd turn on the stove and forget about it and blow the house
    up. We can laugh--we all laughed about it. It's okay to laugh. I've lost
    two relatives to Alzheimer's; you have to laugh to keep from crying half
    the time.
        And it was an amazing deal. When she got over to the nursing
    facility, for weeks she'd know who she was for about 15 minutes a day.
    And she'd call my uncle, and she said, ``How can you abandon me in this
    old place? Get your rear end over here, and take me home. We've been
    married for 56 years.'' And he'd get over there, and half the time by
    the time he got there she wouldn't know him again. [Laughter]
        And any of you who have had this in your family know. I mean, I lost
    an aunt and an uncle, and you have to laugh to keep from crying. It
    grinds on you. So anyway, my uncle, who also had a grade-school
    education, was one of the smartest men I ever knew. All he ever did the
    whole time I was a boy, no matter how sad I was, or I missed my mother
    or whatever, or whatever was going on, or when I got to be a grown man
    and I lost an election, all he did was keep me in a good humor. He'd
    tell me jokes. He'd tell me not to feel sorry for myself. He'd always
    say funny things.
        So I went to see him one night, about 10 years ago, after his wife
    went into this nursing

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    home. And they'd been married over 50 years. And the first 20 or 30
    minutes we talked, all he did was tell me jokes and tell me stories and
    think about the old days. And I was walking out and for the only time in
    our life, he grabbed me by the arm. And I looked around, and he had big
    old tears in his eyes. And I said, ``This is really hard on you, isn't
    it?'' And he said this, he said, ``Yes, it is. But,'' he said, ``you
    know, I signed on for the whole load, and most of it was pretty good.''
        When you were up there singing ``Stand By Me'' tonight and I thought
    about how the American people have stood by me through thick and thin, I
    would just like to say to all of you, when I talk about community,
    that's what I mean. [Applause] Now, wait a minute. You don't have to sit
    down, because I'm nearly through. [Laughter] Don't sit down. Don't sit
    down. I'm nearly through. Here's the point I want to make: The reason I
    wanted you to come here tonight, the reason I'm thankful for your
    contributions, the reason I'm thankful for what you do is, this country
    has got to get over believing that our political life is about beating
    each other up and hurting people, instead of lifting people up and
    bringing them together. That is what I've tried to do. That is what we
    stand for. And if we remember that, we're going to do just fine in the
    21st century.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:55 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Willie E. Gary and Gloria Gary;
    Joseph J. Andrew, national chair-designate, and Beth Dozoretz, national
    finance chair-designate, Democratic National Committee; Bishop Harold C.
    Ray, Redemptive Life Fellowship, who gave the invocation; Bishop William
    H. Graves, vice chairman, NAACP Board of Directors; vocal group the
    Drifters; and Ernestine Diller, who sang the National Anthem.