    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [August 5, 1999]
    [Pages 1382-1385]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Unity Event
    August 5, 1999

        Thank you so much. First, let me thank Senator Daschle and Leader Gephardt
    for their outstanding, passionate eloquence today and their consistent
    leadership for the best interests of all the American people. And I
    think that all of us on this stage feel that way. And I just wish every
    American could know them as we do, could see how hard they've worked,
    how consistently they've worked, and how steadfast they have been.
    Nothing that I have been able to achieve as President would have been
    possible without their leadership and without the men and women on this
    platform today. And I thank them so much.
        They have already spoken about what we need to do. What I want to
    say to you is that I want to echo something Mr. Gephardt said. We are
    here united as a party, but we want to work with the members of the
    Republican caucus to do things that are good for America.
        Let's remember that in the past years, when we have done that, we
    have been successful. Last year, in the teeth of the election process,
    they eventually did join us to put a downpayment on hiring 100,000
    teachers, to do more to clean up toxic waste, to increase our
    investments in science and technology, to set aside a part of the
    surplus for Social Security, which they have continued to agree to do.
    And we made real progress with our agenda, even though we weren't the
    majority party.
        Now, what was the result? Because we made real progress and because
    in 1998 we said, ``Here's our future agenda: Save Social Security; keep
    the economy going; pass a Patients' Bill of Rights; continue to invest
    in our children's education,'' the public responded. And we moved closer
    to being a majority in that historic election in 1998. And now, thanks
    to Mr. Forbes, we're quite a bit closer
    still, and I want to thank him.
        I would like to use him to illustrate
    the point I really wish to make today about our position. We are held
    together by unity of conviction, and we don't agree on everything. You
    ought to hear some of the arguments these folks have among each other.
    You don't have to agree on

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    everything to be a member of our party, but we have certain core
    commitments.
        I have letters in my files that Mike Forbes wrote me when he was a member of the Republican caucus
    about the importance of our education agenda to the children that he
    represented. And I have numerous accounts of his passionate commitment
    to a Patients' Bill of Rights and how frustrated he was with over 200
    organizations, all the doctors, all the nurses' groups, all the consumer
    groups pleading for the protections of people in HMO's to be able to see
    a specialist and go to the nearest emergency room and keep their doctor
    during treatment and enforce those rights--how frustrated he was that
    the leaders of his party would not permit that sort of bill to become
    law. So we are united by what we believe is best for the vast mass of
    the American people.
        And I think it is important to remember that that is the source of
    our strength. In 1776 Thomas Paine said, ``It is not in numbers but in
    unity that our greatest strength lies.'' But our unity must be rooted in
    conviction. We think we ought to keep the commitments we made in 1998 to
    modernize 6,000 schools and put teachers out there, 100,000 of them, so
    the class sizes will be small in the early grades. We think we ought to
    have that strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights. We think we
    ought to reform campaign finance, and we think we ought to raise the
    minimum wage for the people who are out there working who should not be
    in poverty because they're willing to go to work.
        We believe that we ought to make commonsense efforts to keep guns
    out of the hands of criminals and children, and we have lots of evidence
    that we have work to do. So I urge the conferees in both parties to stay
    here during the recess and do whatever is necessary to get us a good
    juvenile justice bill to protect our children.
        And we believe it's right to stay with the economic strategy of
    fiscal discipline and investment in our people that we started in 1993.
    You know, we Democrats have a lot of fun reading those quotes that Dick
    and Tom read about what the Republicans said about our economic plan in
    '93. But, to be fair to them, at the time they could argue that it
    wouldn't work. It violated all of their sort of ideological
    inclinations, and they could argue.
        But now there is no argument. And that's why this discussion we're
    having is so important. We don't have to debate this anymore. Now we
    have 6\1/2\ years of evidence. We have the longest peacetime expansion
    in history. We turned the biggest deficit into the biggest surplus.
    We've got 19 million new jobs, the highest homeownership in history, the
    lowest minority unemployment in history, a 30-year low in the welfare
    rolls. There is nothing more to argue about. This economic strategy
    works, and we should not abandon it in this moment.
        You know, this is a moment of testing for the generation of leaders
    represented on this platform, and those in the other party as well. I
    think generations as well as individuals have certain moments in their
    life where they can make a decision that will have profound consequences
    that go far beyond the moment, and this is such a moment.
        A lot of you who are here were in the World War II generation. I had
    the great honor to go to Normandy to represent the United States at the
    50th anniversary of D-day, and say, when they were young this generation
    saved the world. Well, there have been a lot of disparaging remarks made
    about the baby boom generation over the last 30 years, how we were self-
    indulgent, and all the things you've heard. Well, we are about to be
    tested, because we have the opportunity of a lifetime.
        If I'd come to you 7 years ago and I said, ``Vote for me, and vote
    for them; 7 years later we'll come back, and we'll talk about how to
    spend the surplus''--[laughter]--after the debt of this country had been
    quadrupled in 12 years--just think about it--I'd be home doing deeds and
    things in a law office in Arkansas. If I had run on that platform,
    ``Vote for me; 7 years from now, we'll come back and talk about how to
    spend the surplus,'' you'd say, ``You know, he seems like a nice young
    fellow, but he's totally out of touch.'' [Laughter]
        But here we are. Why? Because these people said, ``We are not going
    to let America go down the drain. We're going to stop this deficit
    spending. We're going to get interest rates down. We're going to get the
    economy going again. And we're going to do it in a way that does not
    require us to walk away from our obligations to our seniors, to our
    children, to the environment, to the defense. We can do it.'' And we
    have done it.
        Now we have, perhaps, an even bigger test. You know, when times are
    tough, sometimes people don't have many options, so they just

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    take a deep breath and go on and do the hard thing. When times are easy,
    we are vulnerable to making our biggest mistakes. And that is what this
    decision before us is about. Now we have this projected surplus, about
    two-thirds of it coming from Social Security taxes, about a third of it
    coming from the other revenues paid by the American people. What are we
    going to do with it? What we do with it will determine the shape of
    America for decades to come. What we say is, ``Deal with the big
    challenges first; deal with the aging of America; save Social Security;
    save Medicare; add a prescription drug benefit; add the preventive
    tests; and get America out of debt for the first time since 1835, so our
    children can have a good economy, too.''
        Now, what they have said is, ``Let's pass this big tax cut first;
    make everybody happy tomorrow; and then we'll talk about these long-term
    challenges.'' And normally, that's better politics. Normally, that's
    better politics. Everybody knows we've got a surplus; let's give a lot
    of it back. The distributional problems are enormous, as Senator
    Daschle pointed out. But that's what they
    say.
        Here's the problem. There will be twice as many people over 65, 30
    years from now, as there are today. The Medicare Trust Fund goes broke
    in 2015; Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money in 2034. Now,
    those of us who have lived a little know that 15 years passes in the
    flash of an eye. I was talking to somebody yesterday about something I
    did 15 years ago--seemed like it was yesterday. And we are the stewards
    of this country's future. We must respond to that. We cannot let this
    opportunity go. This is a chance of a lifetime. We've got to take care
    of Medicare now. We've got to extend the life of the Social Security
    Trust Fund now.
        You all know, also, that Medicare benefits have not kept up with
    medical science. Today, there are preventive tests that can catch
    diseases like cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis early and save lives
    and keep people healthy. Medicare will pay for you if you get cancer,
    osteoporosis, or heart disease and go to the hospital. But we don't pay
    for these preventive tests that will save huge amounts of money but,
    more importantly, save lives and save the quality of life and make the
    later years better. So we say, ``Let's do something to make it more
    accessible for people. We want more people to take these preventive
    tests.''
        Every day, millions of seniors pull out their plastic pillboxes,
    each pill with today's ration of medicine, don't they--medication today
    that was unknown 35 years ago when Medicare was created, that keeps you
    healthy, that keeps you out of the hospital, that lengthens life and
    improves the quality of life. But today, three out of four of our
    seniors lack dependable, affordable prescription drug coverage. And the
    percentage with good coverage goes down as the price of the prescription
    drug goes up. Medigap coverage, for example, gets more expensive for
    people as they get older and have less money to spend on it.
        So I say we have a chance now, because of our economic good fortune
    and our surplus, to extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund, to
    provide a modest prescription drug benefit so that we can keep more
    people healthy and out of the hospital and improving their quality of
    life, and to make much more aggressive use of these preventive tests.
    And we ought to do it. The drug benefit is totally voluntary. It is
    affordable, and it will help a lot of people.
        Now, rather than respond to the Medicare plan, I was hoping that the
    Republicans in Congress would say, ``Well, Mr. President, this is your
    plan. This is our plan. There are differences. Let's work it out.''
    Rather than do that, they said, ``Before we spend a penny to extend the
    life of the Medicare Trust Fund, we want to pass this tax cut that's so
    big, so bloated, and so weighted towards special interest and upper
    income people that there won't be any money to extend the life of the
    Medicare Trust Fund''--not a penny to extend it a year under their plan.
        Now, they've decided to vote on this plan today, but for some reason
    they don't want to send it to my desk. [Laughter] Now, I say again, we
    should not be doing this until we figure out how we're going to save
    Medicare, save Social Security, and pay the debt off. We ought to figure
    out, what is it we have to spend to educate these kids here; to provide
    for the national defense; to invest in medical research; to do the basic
    things. Then we ought to ask ourselves, how much is left? And whatever
    it is, we ought to give it back to the American people in a tax cut.
    That's the way we ought to do it.
        Next month the Senate Finance Committee has promised to take up
    Medicare, and I hope they do. I hope that they will give me their

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    idea of a plan that will extend the life of the Trust Fund and deal with
    the challenge of prescription medicine and preventive tests and say how
    they're going to pay for it.
        But you know--let me just say what's going on here. On the one hand,
    the Congress passes large tax cuts. On the other hand, they say they
    want to spend more money--for veterans, to deal with problems that a lot
    of our teaching hospitals are having with Medicare, to deal with the
    legitimate problems that our farmers are having--which is not just a
    one-year thing, it needs to be dealt with on a longer-term basis--but
    they want to have this big tax cut.
        Their plan does nothing to extend the life of the Social Security
    Trust Fund, nothing to extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It
    will not pay off the debt. And if we do both things, one of two things
    is going to happen: We're going to do nothing about Medicare; we're not
    going to pay off the debt; we're going to have huge cuts in the things
    they say they're spending more money on--or we're going to totally erode
    this surplus; and we're going to squander the opportunity of a
    generation.
        One of the young men who works for me said the other day that their
    approach is sort of like a family that sits down at dinner tonight,
    around the table and says, you know, ``Let's take the vacation of our
    lifetime. Let's blow it out. Let's take the vacation of our dreams, and
    when we get home, we'll figure out whether we can make the mortgage
    payment and send the kids to college.'' [Laughter]
        Now, you wouldn't do it. You didn't do it. And we shouldn't do it.
    So I will say again, this is a remarkable moment in history. We can't
    take advantage of it if we don't work with the Republicans. They have to
    work with us. We are here to say, ``We can't support this tax plan
    because it squanders the opportunity of a lifetime, but we have worked
    with you before, and we will again.''
        President Johnson, who signed Medicare, said, ``There are no
    problems we cannot solve together and few we can solve by ourselves.''
    We need an American solution here. But we say, ``First things first;
    meet the challenge of the aging of America; save Social Security; save
    Medicare; add that prescription drug benefit; meet the challenge of our
    children's generation by getting us out of debt for the first time since
    1835, so we'll have low interest rates, high investment, more jobs, and
    people will be able to afford to live better; invest in our education,
    do the things that we have to do. Figure out what it costs and then give
    the rest of it back to the American people. But do first things first.''
        We will be judged, 20, 30, 50 years from now by whether we use this
    historic opportunity to think of the twilight years of Americans, to
    think of the morning years of Americans, to think of how we can bring
    our country together. It is the opportunity of a lifetime, and we, those
    of us on this stage, intend to use it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:12 a.m. in the Russell Caucus Room at
    the Russell Senate Office Building.