    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [July 24, 1999]
    [Pages 1313-1316]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Picnic in Aspen, Colorado
    July 24, 1999

        Thank you very much. Thank you. First of all, let me say that the
    setting is too gorgeous and the day is too beautiful really to have a
    political speech. [Applause] I was hoping no one would clap when I said
    that, but anyway--[laughter]. And so I will be brief. But I want to
    thank you for being here. I want to thank all the people involved with
    the Democratic Party and all of those who were hosting events or doing
    things for us who had to go through this mad scramble of change in our
    schedule because of the death of King Hassan
    and the absolute conviction that Hillary and I have that we should go to
    Morocco to the funeral service.
        He was a great friend of the peace
    process. And after--Hillary went over
    there and went to see him. He stood with us in human rights battles;
    he's done a lot of things that were very, very good for the United
    States and for the world. And so--and he was our friend. So we're going
    to go.
        But I thank all of you for changing your schedules, and I thank you
    for your support. I want to thank our good friends, Dianne and Dick, for having us at
    their humble little place here. [Laughter] This is a gorgeous, serene,
    wonderful setting, and I thank them. I want to thank Congresswoman Diana
    DeGette. And I know that Maggie Fox is here, Congressman Udall's wife. I thank her for being here. I thank all the
    officials of the Colorado Democratic Party and the people from here in
    Aspen who met me last night. When did I get in, 12:30, quarter to one,
    some ridiculous hour? And 12 people came out, we had a little 30-minute
    discussion last night about the state of the world. It was quite
    wonderful.

    [[Page 1314]]

        I wanted to make a few points as briefly as I can. Governor Romer
    made many of them, and Hillary referenced the work that he and Bea and she and I did for many years when we were Governors
    together. First of all, this is a very different country than it was in
    January of 1993. A lot of people have forgotten that. This is a
    different country than it was in January of '93.
        And it changed because we had a different set of ideas and we
    implemented them and they worked. And I won't bore you with all the
    details, but I think it's very important. And it's very important as we
    let the next year and a half unfold, what happens in our country, what
    happens in our politics system.
        You know, I hear some of the people who oppose us now basically,
    after telling everybody for 6\1/2\ years what a bad guy I was; they're
    now basically saying, ``Oh well, Bill Clinton is like Michael Jordan; he
    just jumps higher than the other guys; now the Democrats--he's gone, so
    we'll put them in the cellar again.'' There's a sort of cynical
    political theme.
        Let me tell you something. I could not have done anything--anything
    in the last 6 years if our ideas hadn't been right, and if I hadn't had
    the help of Al Gore and Hillary and Dianne Feinstein and every Member of Congress and all the people in our
    administration and team who did that--and all of you who helped us
    throughout all these long years in the good and the bad times.
        Politics is about values and ideas and actions and whether they
    change people's lives or not. So the first thing I just want to say to
    all of you who have been with us all the time, you ought to feel pretty
    good out here--not just because this is a beautiful day and a beautiful
    place, but this is a different country than it was.
        The second thing I want to say is we have to decide two things in
    the next year and a half. We have to decide what are we going to do
    right now with our prosperity, with our surplus, and what decisions will
    we make in the next election cycle about where we go.
        I had a very interesting question in the press conference earlier
    this week. Susan Page said, ``Well, Mr. President, your approval ratings
    are back up after Kosovo and you won the war, and it's very strong
    approval ratings, but this question was asked our voters: `Do you want
    to vote for someone who will just continue the President's policies, or
    someone who will change policies?' And someone who will change policies
    won 50 to 38.''
        And I said, ``Well Susan, if they polled me,
    I'd have been in the 50 percent, too, because our country is about
    continuous renewal.'' And I had to spend the last 6 years trying to make
    sure this country could work again. Now that things are working well,
    the question is what kind of change are we going to have--not whether
    we'll change--are we going to build on what we've done and go beyond it,
    or are we going to go back to things that didn't work before in the
    blind hope that they will?
        And I'll just give you a couple of examples. First of all, in the
    moment. The big debate in Washington is, what do we do with the surplus.
    Well, let me say this. We produced a balanced budget in 1997 by cutting
    spending rigorously and saying we would keep these caps in place by 5
    years, and by continuing to grow the economy by getting interest rates
    down and investment up. Now, so we now have this projected surplus. But
    you should also know that we have an enormous number of teaching
    hospitals in cities throughout America, for example, saying we need to
    put more money in the Medicare program to take care of the health care
    systems in the country.
        I believe that we should be investing more, not less, in education,
    the environment, and biomedical research. I don't think we should cut
    back. And perhaps most important, I think this gives us a chance to meet
    the challenge of the aging of America and the challenge of giving this
    country a long-term pattern for growth. And let me just address those
    briefly.
        The number of people over 65 is going to double in the next 30
    years. There are going to be fewer people working and more people
    retired. Social Security is going to run out of money in 2034; Medicare
    is going to run out of money in 2015. I think we ought to set aside most
    of the surplus to save Social Security; to save and modernize Medicare;
    to add more preventive tests for osteoporosis and cancer and other
    things to try to keep people out of the hospital in the first place; to
    add a prescription drug benefit that is modest but will be very helpful
    to 75 percent of the people who are over 65 who don't have adequate drug
    coverage; and to do it in a way that would allow us to become, for the
    first time since--listen to this--1835, debt-free.

    [[Page 1315]]

        Now, why should the liberal party, the more liberal party, be for
    making America debt-free? Because in 1999 and in 2000 and from now on,
    in a global economy, when money travels across national borders at the
    speed of light, interest rates are set in a global environment. And if a
    wealthy country is out of debt, it means that the people who live in
    that wealthy country can borrow money at lower cost, which means there
    will be more investment, more jobs, higher wages, lower car payments,
    lower credit card payments, lower home mortgage payments, lower college
    loan payments, and higher economic growth over a longer period of time.
        It also means that when a global economy gets in trouble, as Asia
    got in trouble, Russia got in trouble, and our friends and trading
    partners and people we hope will remain democracies need money, they can
    get the money they need at lower cost because we won't be out there
    taking it away from them. And I think it is an unbelievable opportunity,
    and we can do it.
        The point I want to make to you is, the Republicans are trying to
    cast the debate in Washington today as ``our tax cut is bigger than your
    tax cut.'' It's almost like the arguments we used to have when I was in
    school--[laughter]--``our tax cut is bigger than your tax cut.'' Well,
    if that's the choice, you know, that's a pretty hard deal to argue with.
    The question is, if you take our tax cut, which is smaller than theirs,
    you get to save Social Security and Medicare; you get to take the
    country out of debt; you get to continue to invest in education,
    environment, medical research.
        If they get their budget through, we will do nothing to extend the
    life of Medicare, nothing to extend the life of Social Security. We will
    imperil the future stability of the country, therefore. We will pay down
    the debt, but we won't pay off. And we will actually have to have
    drastic cuts in the investments in education, in the environment, in
    medical research, and believe it or not, even in defense.
        Now, that's what's going on here. And what I want to ask you is,
    after all--this debate couldn't even occur if we all had a clear memory
    of what this country was like in 1991 and 1992. The Democrats are being
    punished for our success.
        Can you imagine--why is the first issue the size of the tax cut,
    before we really assess how much we have to give these hospitals to make
    them whole? Did we cut them too much, and if we did, shouldn't we fix
    it? What does it take to fix Social Security and Medicare? What does it
    take to get us out of debt? What does it take to fulfill our basic
    responsibilities? Then why don't we talk about the tax cut?
        In Washington, it's all backwards again. And one of the young men
    who works for me said, ``Mr. President, this is like a family sitting
    down around a table and saying, `Let's plan the vacation of our dreams
    to Hawaii, and when we get back we'll see if we can make the mortgage
    payments and send the kids to college.''' I mean, this is--it doesn't
    make sense.
        So the Democratic Party again is telling the American people,
    remember what got us to where we are. Do we need change? Absolutely. And
    we have a plan--and I talked about it in my radio address today--to save
    Social Security and Medicare, to make the country debt-free, to continue
    to invest in education and the environment, to literally make this the
    safest big country in the world early in the next century. And none of
    it can be done if their idea prevails.
        So I think we ought to have a big debate about it. And if we look to
    the future--I just want to echo one thing Roy said--I'm convinced the
    more I think about it and the longer I live, and I'm not running for
    anything anymore, that the biggest difference between the two parties
    today is the way we think of community. It's not whether some of us are
    warmhearted and others are coldblooded. It's not whether some of us are
    nice people and others aren't nice. It's whether we believe down deep
    inside that those of us who are pretty fortunate would be better off if
    everybody else did better and that we'll be not only sort of morally
    satisfied but actually better off if we try to go forward together in a
    country where there's opportunity for every responsible citizen and in
    which everybody has a place in our community.
        And I'll just give you a few examples of that where their party
    genuinely disagrees with us, from top to bottom, from all the candidates
    to all the Congressmen. The Patients' Bill of Rights--I supported--
    unlike some people, I supported managed care, but only if the people
    didn't have to give up quality of care. I think it is unconscionable
    that a person in a managed care plan could have a doctor pleading for
    the person to go to see a specialist and some non-physician could block
    it for long enough to make the damage irrevocable.

    [[Page 1316]]

        I think it is unconscionable that in cities every day somebody gets
    hit by a car and has to go to an emergency room and has to drive by the
    nearest one to one, two, or three down the way because that's the one
    covered by the plan. I think it is wrong for a person working for a
    small business who has cancer and is in the middle of chemotherapy, or
    who is pregnant and having a difficult pregnancy, to have to change
    their doctor in the middle of the treatment because the employer has
    changed his coverage.
        Why? It doesn't affect me. I'm the President; I have great health
    care. It doesn't affect you. Most of you have got--you can pay for
    whatever you need. So why are you here? Because we feel that our country
    is better if more people are healthy and if people are treated fairer.
        I'll give you another example--it may not be popular in all parts of
    Colorado. I grew up in a State where half the people had a hunting or
    fishing license or both. But I think that we did the right thing to pass
    the Brady bill. I think we did the right thing to pass the assault
    weapon ban. And I think Dianne Feinstein
    did the right thing to pass the assault weapons ban and then keep trying
    to close all the loopholes in it.
        Why is that? Because I think--not because I don't think people ought
    to be able to hunt or go to sporting events, but because I think that
    all of us ought to be willing to make reasonable compromises for the
    safety of the society as a whole, just like we do when we walk through
    an airport metal detector. You know, it didn't take too many planes to
    be hijacked before nobody screamed anymore when they walked through an
    airport metal detector, ``You are interfering with my constitutional
    right to travel.''
        Now, think about it. This is crazy. So look at the fight in
    Washington. All of them, from the candidates to the Congress, were
    against closing the gun show loophole. We don't do background checks at
    gun shows and urban flea markets where a lot of criminals buy guns, and
    we have the technology to do it with very minor inconvenience. We think
    we should do it. And I think it is unconscionable that we would run the
    risk that one person would lose his or her life next year because we
    don't do that.
        We're for the employment nondiscrimination act, and we're for hate
    crimes legislation. And we believe that it ought to specifically mention
    no discrimination against people because of sexual orientation. And
    we're not afraid of that.
        Now, why is that? Because we think all law-abiding citizens ought to
    be part of America's community. Now, so I ask you, when you think about
    what we're doing in Washington now and the politics of the next year and
    a half, and if people ask you why you're here--in Colorado a lot of
    people would say you're nuts; they'd say, ``Don't you understand,'' if
    you'd go to a Republican fundraiser, ``that you'd get a great tax cut
    right now? Why are you here?''
        Tell them because the country is better off, because we changed the
    direction of the country, and you want America to go forward into the
    new century together.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:55 a.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard
    Blum, who cohosted the picnic; Representative Mark Udall's wife,
    Margaret L. Fox; former Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, general chair,
    Democratic National Committee, and his wife, Bea; and USA Today
    journalist Susan Page.