    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [July 16, 1999]
    [Pages 1233-1237]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Dinner for Senator Tom Harkin in Des
    Moines
    July 16, 1999

        Thank you very much. First of all, thank you, Jerry, for having me in your home. The last time, he took me
    to his golf club; now, he takes me to his home. I can't wait for my
    third trip. [Laughter]
        Thank you, Linda. Thank you all for being
    here. Governor, thanks for spending the day with
    me, with your Lieutenant Governor and your
    distinguished array of officials and the First Lady from the great State of Iowa. I want to thank Tom
    and Ruth for giving me the chance to come down
    here and be with them. I want to say it's wonderful to see
    Congressman and Mrs. Smith. He did everything he could to educate me about
    agriculture before he left the Congress, and I did the best I could to
    learn. I'm a little slow, but he's working on me still. [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you, first, I want you to know that I wanted to
    come here to say thank you to the people of Iowa. We had a big crowd
    over at the middle school earlier today when we were promoting one of
    the many initiatives Tom Harkin is identified with: our efforts to get a
    modest tax cut through that will lead to $25 billion in construction or
    modification or modernization of 6,000 schools in this country. And so
    we were over there, and there were, I don't know, a few hundred people
    there. And the air-conditioning was out, so the atmosphere was warm and
    friendly. [Laughter] Secretary Riley and I,
    having come from the Washington heat, felt right at home.
        And so, anyway, we were there and having a good time. And I said,
    ``You know, you folks in Iowa ought to be glad to see me; I'm the first
    guy that's been here in weeks that's not running for anything.''
    [Laughter] And I must say, after 24 years, most of which--25 now--most
    of which time I was running every 2 years, it's a little awkward for me
    to say that. But I want you to know that I am profoundly grateful to the
    people of Iowa for being so good to me and Hillary and the Vice
    President and Mrs. Gore, for voting for us twice, for supporting our
    policies, for giving us a chance to serve.
        And the second reason I wanted to come down here is I love Tom
    Harkin, and I am profoundly grateful. You know, I'm not sure--and this
    is no offense to the people of Iowa--but I bet you could get elected and
    reelected Senator from Iowa without being the world's number one
    opponent of abusive child labor in foreign countries. He just did that
    because he thinks it's wrong and because he doesn't want children
    anywhere to suffer when children everywhere should be going to school
    and growing up to decent lives.
        Yes, he's one of the greatest advocates for farmers this country
    has, and we've got an earful again today about the terrible dilemmas
    that our farmers are facing. And there's a general consensus, I think,
    on what causes it. And Tom and I both said back in 1994 or '5, when they
    passed that freedom to farm bill, that without a safety net this would
    happen sooner or later; unfortunately, sooner came before later. And we
    have to act there, and we will.
        He also is perhaps the foremost advocate for the disabled in the
    United States Senate, perhaps one of the two or three foremost advocates
    for research and development in new technologies in sciences. There is
    hardly anybody who serves in either House in the United States Congress
    that has the combination of wide interest, deep knowledge, genuine
    compassion, and effectiveness. I have rarely known anyone in

    [[Page 1234]]

    public office that I thought was as truly good a person and as truly
    good a public servant as Tom Harkin. And you are very lucky to have him.
        And I just want to say a couple of things. You're going to become--
    Iowa is once again at the vortex of America's political concerns. And
    everybody is coming here to tell you how great they're going to be if
    you vote for them. And one of the things I think we should posit is that
    most everybody who comes here will actually believe what they say.
    Having been criticized, as Tom noted inside, fairly mildly for a few
    years--[laughter]--it has been my observation that most people in
    politics in both parties actually pretty much believe what they say and
    believe in what they do and show up every day and try to pretty well do
    a good job.
        Forty years ago this year, I took eighth grade science from a guy
    who was a coach and a science teacher named Vernon Dokey. Now, to be
    charitable, he was not the most handsome man I had ever seen. And he
    knew it. He was--he looked sort of like a grizzly bear that had been
    through a meat grinder, but walked out. [Laughter]
        And he would come--it wouldn't be politically correct to do so
    today, but in those days it was bearable--he used to smoke these cheap
    cigars that he had in a cigar holder which he would grit in his teeth
    like that--[laughter]--and he had this sort of highly prominent, well-
    chiseled nose, and he was a big, burly guy. And he was not particularly
    conventionally attractive. Interesting--he had a beautiful wife who was
    our social studies teacher, who had a beautiful sister who was my
    geometry teacher. [Laughter]
        And we were 13, and we were crazy, and we were trying to figure out
    how the world works. So old Vernon Dokey says one day in science class,
    he says, ``You kids won't remember a thing I teach you about science,
    but I want you to remember some things I teach you about life.'' He
    said, ``Now, look at me.'' He said, ``I want you to know something.
    Every morning, I get up, and I go in the bathroom; I throw water in my
    face; I put shaving cream on; I shave my face; I wash that shaving cream
    off; I look in the mirror, and I smile, and I say, `Vernon, you're
    beautiful.''' [Laughter] And he said, ``Now, if you kids remember that,
    you'll get a lot further in life.'' [Laughter]
        Now, you think about that. Forty years later, I still remember. So
    if you notice when I fight with the Republicans, no matter how hard I
    fight with them, I don't question their motives or their patriotism or
    their love of country. When I think they're wrong, I say they're wrong.
        Iowa and New Hampshire, because you go first, have a heavy
    responsibility to help to render judgment, if you will, for the country
    about not only candidates but issues. What I want to say to you is that
    I came to the Presidency in 1992, having been Governor of what my
    predecessor affectionately called a small southern State. And I loved
    every day of it. And to me, politics was about ideas, action, and
    people. It was not about Washington rhetoric, personal destruction, and
    who looked good in the morning paper. It was about ideas, action, and
    people.
        And we believed that we could bring new ideas based on old-fashioned
    Democratic philosophy that everybody who was willing to work for it
    ought to have opportunity in this country; that we had to change to meet
    the changes of the time; and that everybody who was a responsible
    citizen ought to be part of America's community. It was pretty simple,
    really.
        But if that's what was guiding you, then we no longer believed that
    you couldn't, for example, balance the budget and still increase
    investment in education; that you couldn't have a strong and effective
    Government and reduce the size and burden of Government. When you heard
    Tom say that the Vice President ran our
    reinventing Government plan--this is one of those--if you do a survey on
    this, people say, ``I don't care; I still don't believe it.'' People do
    not believe it, but we have the smallest Federal establishment since
    1962 when John Kennedy was President. We have eliminated hundreds of
    programs, and you can't name one of them. I'll give $5 to anybody in
    this audience who can name two of the hundreds of programs we have
    eliminated. And we have a more vigorous, more effective Government.
        We've got the longest peacetime expansion in history, the lowest
    crime rate in 26 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest
    unemployment rate in 30 years, very high wage growth, high business
    startups, highest homeownership in history, the lowest minority
    unemployment in history--all that is only evidence of the important
    thing: All elections are about tomorrow. All elections are about
    tomorrow. And a good record is only evidence of what

    [[Page 1235]]

    will be good in the future--however, very important evidence.
        And many of these things we've had to fight with our friends on the
    other side, and Tom Harkin was always leading the fight. We said we
    could lower the crime rate, but you had to help these communities put
    police on the street, and you had to take more guns out of the hands of
    criminals. Well, they said, ``If you try to put 100,000 police on the
    street, it wouldn't make a lick of difference. And if we checked the
    backgrounds of people that tried to buy handguns in gun shows, all you
    would do is make the hunters mad. And criminals didn't buy guns at gun
    shows, anyway.'' Well, years later, we haven't inconvenienced a single
    hunter, and 400,000 people--400,000 people--were not able to buy guns,
    because of their criminal backgrounds, at gun stores. So our arguments
    were right, and theirs were wrong.
        They said we couldn't balance the budget, and we were going to
    provoke a recession. But we balanced the budget, biggest surplus in
    history, and we doubled our investment in education while we were doing
    it. So we have evidence here.
        So I say to you as you think about the future of your State and
    Nation, there is evidence here. And what I want to say to you is, Tom
    Harkin and I--I'm not running for anything, and he's not running for
    anything right yet--[laughter]--but we and all the people that are
    running who are in public office, we're still drawing a paycheck from
    you every 2 weeks, and we should show up for work, and we should do
    things. I tell all the Republicans and Democrats in Washington all the
    time, if we agreed on everything I'm asking us to agree on, there would
    still be stuff for us to fight about. There will always be something to
    have a next election on. But we get hired to show up for work.
        Now, the big question we have before us today is: What are we going
    to do with the surplus; what are we going to do with this period of
    bounty we have? And I would argue--I don't want to repeat my whole State
    of the Union Address, but I want to tell you, I would argue three things
    for sure. Number one, we ought to do whatever we can to deal with the
    aging of America, because when the baby boomers retire, we're going to
    have more people retired and fewer people working to support them. And
    if you want the seniors of this country to be able to have their Social
    Security and their Medicare, and you want them to have it in a way that
    is secure and does not bankrupt their children so they can't afford to
    raise their grandchildren, now is the time to set aside most of this
    surplus to save Social Security and Medicare and provide a prescription
    drug benefit with Medicare. So I think that is a big deal.
        The second thing I think we ought to do is everything we can to keep
    this economy going and then, to reach out and touch the people who have
    not been affected by the recovery. And let me just say on the first, the
    way I want to save Social Security and Medicare will keep us from
    spending that surplus and devote the interest savings on the surplus to
    making Social Security last longer, so we'll make Social Security last
    for more than 50 years, make Medicare last for more than 25 years, and
    make the country debt-free in 15 years, for the first time since 1835.
    Now, these are big things. We should not wait for another election to
    deal with these big things.
        On the economy, the last thing we've got to do is to try to reach
    the people that aren't affected by the recovery. There are a lot of
    disabled people, as Tom would tell you, who want to go to work and could
    go to work. There are still people on welfare who want to go to work,
    who could go to work. There are whole regions of our country--from
    Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the Indian reservations to the
    inner city--that need new investment. And of course, there is the
    problem of the farm, which you are very well familiar with.
        But consider the irony of the lowest unemployment rates in the
    country being in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, all these farming
    States where we're at risk of losing a huge percentage of our family
    farmers unless there is both an emergency response and a different long-
    term course that they have available. So I say to you, yes, have the
    election; yes, have the debate; but let's keep on working for what's
    good for America, and let's not avoid the big choices; let's not pretend
    that we don't have to make them.
        We're in the shape we're in today because we made the tough choices
    and we kept at it, and that's what the country needs to do. And that's
    the gift I want to give you, is that when you see me, you think I'm
    working and not enjoying the sunshine of our prosperity.
        The last point I want to make is this--I thought about this today
    when I was in Iowa.

    [[Page 1236]]

    Politics is really personal to me. You know, in this debate we just had
    over the Patients' Bill of Rights, several doctors who are here today
    thanked me for that, thanked Tom for fighting for that. Look, here's the
    issue: More people than not are in managed care plans. A lot of them
    have done a lot of good; they've cut down on a lot of inflation and
    health care costs. But if your doctor says you need to see a specialist,
    no accountant should be able to stop your doctor from sending you to a
    specialist. If you get hit in an accident, you ought not to have to go
    by the nearest hospital to one that's farther way because that's the one
    covered by your managed care plan. Now, if you are working for a small
    business and your small business--your employer has to change coverage
    at some point and you're 6 months into a difficult pregnancy, you ought
    not to have to get another ob-gyn to finish your pregnancy. If you are
    halfway through a difficult chemotherapy treatment, you ought not have
    to get another oncologist to finish your treatment. Now, every physician
    in this audience will tell you this happens all the time in America.
    This is not some radical notion; this happens all the time. So all we
    said was that basically everybody in America ought to have the same
    protections that I gave all the people in the Federal programs--
    Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal health employees program, the veterans
    program--by Executive order. And we were actually attacked by our
    friends in the other party. Tom was attacked, because, they said, ``Oh,
    you're relying on personal stories. You're trying to play on the
    emotions of the people.'' Well, get a life. [Laughter] I mean, what is
    politics about anyway? Why are we doing this?
        Every time I come to Iowa, I think of two things. One of them I got
    hit right between the eyes with today. When I was here for the flood in
    1993, I'd go out to sack my--you know, my sandbags, you were talking
    about that--I'd go out and do my sandbag deal. And I look up, and there
    is this child about so big, with a head
    about so big--huge bones coming out of her eyebrows--very short, large
    head, knobby elbows, gnarled knuckles, knobby knees. This child has
    brittle bone disease. She's 12 years old. She has been operated on
    already more than a dozen times. Her bones shatter at will. She has come
    all the way from Wisconsin to stand in the flood in Iowa to help people
    who are putting the sandbags up, literally risking her life.
        So I talked to this kid, and I said,
    ``Where are you from?'' And she said--and I said, ``Well, how's your
    condition?'' Because I've seen--you know, she's actually done pretty
    well. There are a lot of children who have that disease never get out of
    bed, they have to be prone for their whole life. But this kid is up
    walking. She said, ``I told my parents I wanted to go down there.'' She
    said, ``I can't hide my whole life. I've got to serve; I've got to be a
    citizen. I've got to do this like everybody else.''
        Then that child started coming to the
    National Institutes of Health for help. Tom Harkin--you know, all this
    money is put in the NIH all these years. So am I playing on your
    emotions? You bet I am. What else is there? What else is life about?
    What is politics about? This child has a chance at life.
        And you know what happened? Six years later I go to American
    University and give a speech, and here is this girl, beaming, a freshman at American University, still
    growing, still getting stronger, still out there taking chances, doing
    things other kids wouldn't do with those problems, being brave. We
    didn't--none of us--Tom Harkin and I didn't have a lick to do with her
    courage, her bravery, her heart, her soul, her character. But because of
    what he did, she had a better chance. She had a better chance.
        And I'll tell you another story: 1992, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, huge
    rally we're having out in front of Quaker Oats. And I'm working the
    crowd--[laughter]--after the speech, grasping for votes. And there is
    this lady there, this tall white woman, holding
    an African-American baby. And I said, ``Whose
    baby is this?'' She said, ``This is my baby.'' And I said, ``Well, how
    did you get this baby?'' She said, ``From Miami.'' She said, ``This
    child was born with AIDS, and no one would take her, and she was going
    to be homeless, and so I took her.''
        Now, this is a good story, right? But what you need to know is this
    woman was living in a rented apartment with her
    two kids because she had been left by her husband. And she barely had
    enough money to support her own kids, but she couldn't bear to see this
    child be left alone, so she took in the other
    child. Okay, fast-forward to today. Today, at that middle school, Mama
    was there, since remarried, doing fine, with her daughter, giving me a
    report on her son, holding that beautiful child

    [[Page 1237]]

    who is almost too big for me to hold. And she has come repeatedly to the
    National Institutes of Health.
        And I held her today, and I said, ``Jimiya, how you doing?'' She is so beautiful. And I have seen
    her a half a dozen times. She is so beautiful. And she said, ``Oh, Mr.
    President, I'm giving myself my own shots now, and I'm going to be just
    fine.''
        Now, is this playing on your emotions? You bet it is. What is life
    about anyway? Tom Harkin didn't put a heart in that little girl or a heart in the mother. But
    she has a chance because of the kind of things he's fought all his
    public life for. And it is a beautiful story.
        So I just ask you to be faithful to your friend Tom Harkin, to fight
    for the things we believe in. If your friends and neighbors wonder
    whether the President is right or whether the Republicans are right in
    saying we ought to take all the non-Social Security surplus and spend it
    on a tax cut right now and make everybody happy right here before the
    election, tell them that you think we have earned the benefit of the
    doubt with our record, and that, you know, we should not squander this.
    We ought to think about our children's future. We ought to think about
    what we're going to do when the baby boomers retire. We ought to think
    about how we can make everybody a part of this economy. And remember the
    stories. That's part of what makes us who we are.
        It's not about power. It's about ideas and action, and in the end,
    it's about people. When you breathe your last breath, you are not going
    to be thinking about what some arcane political philosophy was that you
    embraced. You're going to be thinking about who you liked, who you
    loved, how you felt when the seasons changed, and what you're proud of
    that you did for somebody else. And I want to be part of a political
    party that tries to give those gifts to America.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Jerry and Linda Crawford; Gov.
    Thomas Vilsack of Iowa, and his wife, Christie; Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson
    of Iowa; Senator Harkin's wife, Ruth, former President and Chief
    Executive Officer, Overseas Private Investment Corporation; former
    Congressman Neal Smith and his wife, Beatrix; American University
    student Brianne Schwantes who suffers from brittle bone disease; and
    Laura Poisel and her adoptive daughter, Jimiya, who was born with AIDS.
    The President also referred to the Federal Agriculture Improvement and
    Reform Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-127). A tape was not available for
    verification of the content of these remarks.