[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[June 30, 1999]
[Pages 1046-1051]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Chicago
June 30, 1999

    Thank you very much. First, let me thank the leaders of the 
Democratic National Committee who are here, Joe Andrew and Beth Dozoretz, and say to 
our former chairman and my 1992 campaign manager, David 
Wilhelm, and Deegee, I'm glad to see you and all my other friends and many 
of you who were formerly associated with our administration.
    I want to thank Lew and Susan and Lou and Ruth Weisbach and 
Fred Eychaner for their work on this dinner 
tonight. This has been kind of an emotional day for me. I--Bruce and I 
and Hillary, we did drag in here one night about 7 years ago, and you 
know, I thought--I was totally out of gas when I got here, and I had 
virtually forgotten why I was even thinking of running for President; I 
just wanted to go to bed. And then I came in here, and I got all pumped 
up. I saw all this art that I didn't know anything about, and it 
certainly was interesting. [Laughter] And I sort of began to get 
educated. And then I went into the library and went nuts over the books, 
and I certainly approved of their reading tastes. And then we got to 
talking about health care and first one thing and then another, and 
before you know it, we were sort of off and going and forming a 
friendship that has stood the test of 7 years' time. And I'm very 
grateful that you had us back tonight, and I thank you.
    I want to thank all of the rest of you for being here, and I want to 
thank Chicago for being so wonderful to Hillary and to me and to Al and 
Tipper Gore, for giving us--for me, I basically won the Democratic 
nomination on Saint Patrick's Day in 1992. And I must say, I learned a 
lot from my friend Al Gore, who did well on 
Super Tuesday and then had difficulty going after that in 1998, so I 
later told him when I asked him to join the ticket, I said, ``Now, don't 
ever forget what I learned from your campaign.'' I spent enormous 
amounts of time in Illinois and Michigan. Of course, it helped that 
roughly 30 percent of the primary voters in both States were born in 
Arkansas and couldn't make a living there

[[Page 1047]]

and had to come up here. [Laughter] That was of some modest benefit to 
me at the time. But I'm very grateful for that and grateful for the way 
that this city and this State have stayed with us through thick and thin 
in the life of this administration.
    I appreciate something Joe Andrew said--apart from the fact that the 
party's out of debt; that's good news. I'm here tonight, in a way, 
because I can't run for reelection. But I believe in what I've spent my 
life doing, what Hillary and I have spent our lives doing, what Al Gore 
and I have spent 7 years working to do, and I believe in what still 
needs to be done.
    I believe that politics is a good thing for America, not a bad 
thing. It is what makes democracy work. And it becomes public service 
when it is dominated by good values, good ideas, and the ability to turn 
those ideas into action. I enjoy a good contest if it is a contest of 
ideas. And I don't mind receiving the verdict of the electorate as long 
as I'm absolutely sure that everyone who opposes us actually know 
precisely what they're doing. And I think that is something that we all 
ought to have in mind as we approach this election season.
    I say--I think I see Senator Carol Moseley-Braun smiling, and I thank her for her loyal support and 
leadership for her time in the Senate, the first 6 years of my 
administration. I'm glad to see John Schmidt 
here tonight. I thank him for his service in the administration and for 
still caring enough to be here after having run for office, which is, by 
any standard, an exhausting enterprise. And I thank Neil 
Hartigan and the whole Hartigan family for 
being here and always being there for me. And Billy Singer--I see all these people who do not presently hold 
elective office but have participated in this process.
    I'm here for the same reason you are. And if the Democrats want me 
10 years from now, I'll be there then, because I knew when I got into 
this that it was a temporary job. [Laughter] I never had any illusions 
that I could be President for life, although I confess that I love the 
job, even on the worst days. [Laughter] But what I want you to focus on 
just for a minute with me tonight is that I am grateful that time and 
circumstance and the wonderful help of my friends and a lot of gifts 
from the good Lord and my family gave me the opportunity to serve as 
President at this time of profound change in our country. And if I have 
contributed in some way to what has happened that is good for America, I 
am grateful for that as well.
    But I have to tell you something. I think that good things happen 
when good people establish good teams, and they have a good vision, they 
have a good strategy, they have good ideas, and they're good at turning 
their ideas into reality. And I used to tell our people all the time in 
the darkest days, in the early days when we were in Washington, don't 
worry about what they're saying about you today; worry about what it 
will look like 3 or 4 years from now. We need--the test of what we're 
doing is whether it improves the lives of the American people, whether 
it makes us a more secure, more humane country with a better future for 
all of our people.
    And that's why I hope you're here, because we had certain ideas that 
our party held to that basically our friends in the other party didn't 
agree with. And one of the reasons I believe, I will always believe, 
that there was so much intense effort made in Washington to try to sort 
of go after not just me but many of us, personally, and try to divert 
the attention of the American people, was they were afraid they couldn't 
compete with our ideas, and they knew they were working. And the better 
the country did, sometimes their more partisan members--the better we 
did, the madder they got, and the better the American people did, the 
madder they got.
    So let's step back from all that now, because I won't be a candidate 
in 2000. What were the ideas that were--that drove us, and what were the 
consequences? The first thing we decided is that the Democratic Party 
had to become the party of fiscal responsibility again. We could no 
longer participate in a kind of unspoken deal with the Republicans where 
we would both allow these intolerable deficits to go on because we 
wanted to spend money and they didn't want to raise any money. And 
they'd let us spend money and we'd let them avoid raising it, and the 
deficit would get bigger and bigger and bigger, and we were driving the 
country into the ditch. We quadrupled the debt in 12 years. And the 
Democrats in Congress, by the way, to their everlasting credit, tried to 
stop it. They actually spent less money than the Republicans asked them 
to, in the White House.
    And we said, we're going to bring the deficit down; we're going to 
cut spending, but we're

[[Page 1048]]

actually going to increase our investment in education and in research, 
environmental protection, and things that are fundamental to our future. 
And most people didn't think we could do it.
    Well, 6 years later, we've gone from a $290 billion deficit to, in 
1999, a $99 billion surplus, $142 billion next year. And we have cut the 
Government to its smallest size since Kennedy was President. But we have 
almost doubled investment in education and training for our children.
    It was an idea, and it worked. And we've got the strongest economy 
in a generation, maybe ever, because the idea was right. And we had a 
lot of Members of Congress actually lay down their seats in the '94 
elections because we didn't have a vote to spare when our party took the 
lead on that kind of economic policy.
    Then we had an idea about crime, that the Democrats were for law and 
order. We wanted to save streets; we wanted to save schools. And we knew 
from what was already beginning to work in a lot of our cities that what 
we needed was more police on the street and more guns off the street and 
out of the hands of kids and criminals. And we knew we needed to give 
our children something to say yes to, not just something to say no to.
    And so we fought for the Brady bill, and we fought for the assault 
weapons ban, and we fought for 100,000 police on the street. And the 
leaders of the other party said that it would have no effect on the 
crime rate, that nothing good would happen, that we would never see 
these police on the street, that no guns would be kept out of the hands 
of criminals because criminals didn't buy guns in gun stores anyway. I 
heard all that. And one of the reasons that our friends in the other 
party are in the majority today in the House is that they beat somewhere 
between 12 and 15 of our House Members, the NRA did, in 1994, scaring 
the living daylights out of rural people, saying we were going to take 
their guns away.
    Well, 6 years later, we've got the lowest crime rate in 25 years; we 
finished putting 100,000 police out there, under budget and ahead of 
schedule; 400,000 gun sales have been canceled to criminals, felons, 
fugitives, and stalkers. And this is a safer, better, stronger country. 
We were right about that. And it's an important issue going forward, 
just like the management of the economy is.
    I'll give you just two other examples--I could give you 10--where we 
had different ideas. We believed we could grow the economy and not just 
maintain but improve the environment. And a lot of people don't believe 
that to this day. But compared to 6 years ago, the air is cleaner; the 
water is cleaner; the drinking water is safer; the food supply is purer. 
We have immunized 90 percent of our kids against serious childhood 
diseases for the first time in the history of the country and set aside 
more land in perpetuity than any administration except those of Franklin 
and Theodore Roosevelt.
    And the economy is stronger. We did not hurt the economy; we helped 
the American economy by doing what was right by the environment. And we 
had to fight the other party to do that. There was an honest 
disagreement. That is relevant for us going forward.
    In the area of education, we fought for tax cuts that would, in 
effect, open the doors of college of all Americans: $1,500 tax credit 
for the first 2 years of college, other tax credits for other years. We 
fought for better student loans and more work-study positions. We fought 
to hook up all the classrooms in this country to the Internet.
    And now we're fighting to have a national ratification of what 
you're doing here in Chicago, with no social promotion but not blaming 
the children for the failures of the system, and instead giving them all 
access to summer school and after-school programs. I want to this year 
say we are only going to give Federal aid to education to States and 
districts that end social promotion but don't dub the children failures, 
and give them the after-school or summer school programs and the support 
they need to succeed.
    I'll just give you one last idea. We had an idea that we could best 
solve our social problems in this country, generally, not by asking the 
Government to do it and not by leaving the Government out of it but by 
forming new partnerships with the private sector and with individual 
citizens. So we started AmeriCorps, the national service program. We 
said, we'll give young people some money to go to college if they'll 
give a year or two of their lives to serving in their communities.
    I believed the young people, the so-called Generation X-ers, were 
not selfish people, as

[[Page 1049]]

they were caricatured. I thought they were passionately committed to the 
future of this country. And in 4\1/2\ years, we have had 100,000-plus 
volunteers for AmeriCorps; it took the Peace Corps 20 years to get that 
many. And the man who started it, Eli Segal, is 
here with us tonight, and I thank him for that.
    Then I gave Eli another job. I said, we're 
going to reform welfare, and we're going to say, ``If you're able-
bodied, you've got to go to work,'' but we don't want to hurt children. 
So we're going to say, ``If you go to work, we will give you child care; 
we will give you medical care; we will give your kids nutrition; but 
you've got to go to work.'' And then I realized that not all these 
people would be able to go to work, because they had no real experience. 
No one had ever said, ``Here's how you interview for a job; here's how 
you show up; here's how you relate to people at work.'' We had some 
serious problems there.
    So I asked Eli if he would help me go out and 
challenge the business community of this country to actually take 
personal responsibility for hiring people off welfare. We started with 5 
companies; then we had 100; then we had 1,000. In 3 years, he has gone 
from 5 companies to 12,000 businesses, hiring half a million people off 
welfare. And here's a little shameless plug. We're coming to celebrate 
this in Chicago on August 3d, and we need more help.
    So what's the point of all this? The point of all this is, this 
country is doing well, but we all know there are still challenges out 
there. It seems to me that the Democratic Party is entitled to the 
benefit of the doubt of the American people. When we go to them in the 
Congress races, when we go to them in the Presidential race, we need to 
make it clear that there is a connection between the values and the 
ideas and the actions we have taken and the consequences we see in every 
community in this country.
    And that is why we need your contributions and why we need your 
voice. This is not an accident. We cannot see this coming election as 
just sort of a--independent of the reality of the last 6 years. But our 
party also has a solemn responsibility between now and then in 
Washington to keep trying to get things done for the American people. We 
shouldn't be caught playing politics, waiting for the next election. Our 
belief is that we get paid by the American people every week, not just 
in the seasons where there is no politics--every week. They pay us to 
show up and produce.
    That's why you heard me say yesterday, ``We've got the new surplus; 
all right, here's my plan for Medicare. We'll make it stable until 2027; 
we'll provide preventive services for free, screenings for everything 
from osteoporosis to cancer screenings and all kinds of other preventive 
services; we will employ modern means of competition, but we will have 
adequate funding to keep the quality up; and we will provide a 
prescription drug benefit for the first time in history to our 
seniors.'' I think that's a big idea.
    I also think that it is a big idea to take this surplus and say to 
our friends in the Republican Party, ``Can you have a tax cut? Of course 
you can. But first things first. First, let's save Medicare and save 
Social Security and pay the debt of the country off by 2015 so that our 
children and our children's children will have a stronger economy and a 
stronger society. Then there will be money left over; we can argue about 
what to do with it, and you'll have some that you can give in a tax cut. 
But let us save Social Security and Medicare and deal with the baby boom 
generation and pay the debt of the country off.''
    Now, these are ideas. These things have consequences. So when people 
ask you, ``Why did you come tonight?'' I hope you say, ``Well, you know, 
Chicago took Bill Clinton to the race a long time ago.'' Or, ``He made a 
pretty good talk.'' I hope you say that. But I hope you'll be able to 
tell people, ``Look, I am a Democrat for the 21st century. Here are my 
ideas. Here is why I write checks to do this. This is what I believe in. 
And, oh, by the way, it works. It makes a difference. My children will 
have a better future.''
    And I could go through issue after issue after issue. But if you 
just look at--you just look at the issue of Social Security, Medicare, 
and paying off the debt. Why should a liberal Democrat be for putting 
America out of debt? Here's why: because we live in a global economy. 
And if we have no public debt, then the Government will not be competing 
not only with you but with every poor, blue-collar worker of all races 
in this country for money for a home mortgage, for a car payment, for a 
credit card payment, for a college loan, for a business loan. And if we 
don't have any public debt, interest rates will be lower in America, 
which means there

[[Page 1050]]

will be more investment, more jobs, higher wages, and less debt for 
ordinary people.
    It means, furthermore, that the next time we have a global financial 
crisis like we had in Asia 2 years ago, the United States will be less 
vulnerable, and our friends in the developing countries will be able to 
get more money at a lower cost because we won't be taking any away from 
them. And that's good, because as they get richer, they can buy more of 
our stuff. So I'm making a good Republican argument for my position 
here.
    This is a big deal. You need to go tell--this is a huge idea. Do you 
know when the last time the country was out of debt? 1835. [Laughter] 
This is a big idea. And we can do it in a way that saves Social Security 
and Medicare. But liberals, as well as conservatives, should be for it, 
for the reasons I said--big idea--matters. It matters.
    It matters whether we close this gun show loophole. The same crowd 
that said nobody, no crooks, bought guns at gun stores--and now they 
know they were wrong, because we've got 400,000 sales were canceled in 5 
years--now they say that we shouldn't do background checks where they 
admit the crooks do buy their guns, not just gun shows but also urban 
flea markets. And we're for it, and the leaders of the other party are 
against it.
    This is an important issue; this is a big idea. Kids' lives are at 
stake--not just in scenes of carnage, like what happened at Littleton, 
but every day of the world, 13 kids die from gun violence--nameless, 
faceless kids you don't know because they die one and two at a time. A 
lot of them are poor kids in inner cities, that don't have any votes, 
any influence, nobody to speak up for them if we don't do it.
    It matters. This is a big idea. This is not some trivial thing, 
that, oh, these parties are having a little dispute. This matters. And I 
believe we're right. And I think all the evidence is that they're wrong. 
And I could go through the environment and health care and the Patients' 
Bill of Rights and every other issue, and make the same case.
    You go home tonight, and you just think about the three things I 
talked about. Think about the economy; think about Social Security and 
Medicare; think about education policy, what I said--what a difference 
it's made to Chicago that you've finally got your schools getting juiced 
up again because somebody believes that all kids can learn, and somebody 
believes that kids should be held to high standards, and there are 
consequences, and you don't just get patted on the back whether you know 
what you're supposed to know or not--but we don't point the finger at 
kids and call them a failure when the system is failing them.
    You just think about this stuff. It matters what you do in life. 
Politics is no different than your family life, no different than your 
business life, no different than your school life. This matters. And on 
the great ideas of the age, we have been right in preparing America for 
the 21st century. It's not Bill Clinton being President. It is, we have 
a party that is best for all the American people, that has become a 
party of permanent change, of restless, constructive, positive change.
    And this is a better country because of that, because people like 
you are thinking about tomorrow. You know, nearly everybody here would 
be better off, in the next 6 months, in the next year and a half, going 
to a Republican fundraiser. I mean, they'll give you a bigger tax cut 
than we will. [Laughter] They will. You'd be better off in the next year 
and a half going to a Republican fundraiser. It wouldn't be--the house 
wouldn't be as interesting as this. [Laughter]
    You know, the people that were good enough to serve us dinner 
tonight, they're the ones that we're going to help immediately. We're 
trying to make sure their parents can afford to have prescription drugs 
so they don't have to bankrupt their kids and their ability to raise 
their grandkids. We think we ought to raise the minimum wage. We think 
their kids ought to be able to go to college.
    But most of you who paid to get here tonight would be better off in 
the short run if you were over with the Republicans. But you aren't 
because you know that in the long run and in the not-so-very-long run, 
people who think about what's best for all Americans and how we reach 
across the lines that divide us and how we think about our children's 
future--that is what is best for us.
    If I told you--suppose you'd all been here with Lew and Susan, back in 1991, and 
I'd said, ``Now here, folks, I want you to vote for me for President.'' 
Just keep in mind, 1991, we're in this big old creaking recession, and 
everybody is feeling bad, and there's about to be a riot out in Los 
Angeles in a few months.

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And I said, ``Now, I want you to vote for me, and in 7 years you'll have 
nearly 19 million jobs and the longest peacetime expansion in history 
and a $100 billion surplus and trillions expected in the surplus over 
the next 15 years. And we'll be able to solve the problems the baby 
boomers present to Social Security and Medicare. And along the way, 
we'll have a 25-year-low in crime, and we'll cut the welfare rolls in 
half. And we will be a leading force for peace, from Bosnia to Kosovo to 
the Middle East to Northern Ireland. And we will have extra money to 
make sure we're working hard to be prepared for the security problems of 
the future. But we will double our investment in education, clean up the 
environment, and we'll be moving this country forward.''
    If I'd told you all that, you'd have said, ``There's another lying 
politician, if I ever heard one.'' [Laughter] Wouldn't you? You would 
have said, ``That kid needs to go home to Arkansas. He's, you know, he's 
not living in the real world.'' We did better than I thought we could. 
Why? Because we didn't do it alone. All we did was to unleash the 
incredible potential of the American people and give everybody a chance.
    So I say to you, I thank you for being here. I thank you for what 
you've done for me, for Hillary, for Al and Tipper. I thank you for what 
you will do. But don't kid yourself; part of the reason that we've done 
as well as we have is that people like you, with good values and good 
common sense, with an ability to see the future, had the right ideas. 
And you hired us, and we turned them into action. And when you go home 
tonight and you go about your business tomorrow, and people ask you why 
you came and why you're a Democrat, you tell them, ``Because we've got 
good ideas, and they've changed America for the better, and here's what 
we want to do tomorrow and next year and in the new century.''
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:07 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, Beth Dozoretz, 
national finance chair, Democratic National Committee (DNC); former DNC 
chair David Wilhelm and his wife, Deegee; dinner hosts Lewis and Susan 
Manilow; Lou Weisbach, chief executive officer, HA-LO Industries, Inc., 
and his wife, Ruth; Fred Eychaner, president, Newsweb Corp.; Bruce 
Lindsey, Deputy Counsel to the President; former Senator Carol Moseley-
Braun; John R. Schmidt, former U.S. Associate Attorney General; Neil 
Hartigan, former State attorney general; and attorney William S. Singer, 
member, Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the 
United States.