[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.