    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [July 20, 1999]
    [Pages 1271-1276]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Business Council and Women's Leadership Forum
    Dinner
    July 20, 1999

        Thank you very much. I want to thank you all for your welcome, and I
    want to thank my good friend Janice for her
    instruction. I did know, as a matter of fact, that she was from a place
    called Hope. I didn't know that I had the endorsement of her father in
    quite that way. [Laughter] But I appreciate it more than I can say.
        I want to thank John Merrigan and
    Penny and Susie, and I
    want to thank Joe Andrew and Beth
    Dozoretz and all of you who have worked so
    hard to put our party on the soundest financial footing. I think Mr.
    Merrigan said we were out of debt for the first time since '91. I should
    point out that we were outspent by $100 million in 1998 and still picked
    up House seats, the first time it had happened in the sixth year of an
    administration since 1822.
        I say that to say that it is not necessary that we have as much
    money as the other side does. You know, the economy the Democrats have
    built has been an equal opportunity beneficiary. And so we have showered
    benefits on Republicans, as well as Democrats. And if they choose to
    misspend their money, there's nothing we can do about it, is there?
    [Laughter] It's a free economy. But it is necessary that we have enough.
    And if we have a good message and we stand for the right things and our
    people are excited, then that is enough, and I thank you for that.
        We were talking at our table--I have a friend who is a New York
    Democrat who heads quite a large American company, and he said he'd
    gotten so exasperated with these Republicans throwing their money around
    he started going up to his friends in New York saying, ``You

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    should give money to the Republicans--if your taxes went up in 1993 by
    more than you've made in the stock market, support them. But if the
    balanced budget and the low interest rates and the tripling of the stock
    market have benefited you more, you ought to be for us. And if you're
    not, you're not even acting in your own best interest, much less the
    country's.'' [Laughter]
        I want to talk to you just very briefly tonight, not so much about
    your own best interests, but about our own best interests. And I want to
    begin by thanking all of you. Thank you for your support, many of you
    for your repeated support over these years; some of you for your
    involvement in this administration, like Dr. Susan Blumenthal--thank you very much for being here. Thank
    you for being so good to me and Hillary and to Al and Tipper Gore. And
    thank you for doing something that has been very good for America.
        I want to make just a few brief points, in case somebody tomorrow
    gives you a quiz and asks you why you came tonight. This country was in
    trouble in 1991 and 1992. It was in trouble because we had been in a
    prolonged recession, but even more because we kept coming out of these
    recessions and dripping back in, coming out and drip back in. We hadn't
    had any sustained growth for some time. It was in trouble because the
    crime rates and the welfare rolls were rising. It was in trouble because
    our country was becoming more divided. It was in trouble because the
    political debate in Washington left most Americans cold, because there
    seemed to be a debate between people who essentially were against the
    Government doing anything and people who wanted to preserve the status
    quo of what the Government had been doing. The country was in trouble.
        I ran for President because I had some ideas about how we could
    change things. I believed that we could create a country again in which
    there was opportunity for every responsible citizen, in which we had a
    community of all Americans who were responsible for themselves and for
    each other, in which we led the world for peace and freedom and
    prosperity. But I didn't think we could do it by having the same old
    fights in the same old way. And I knew if the people gave me a chance to
    serve, some difficult decisions would be required.
        Well, it worked out. And we said, look, we're going to cut this
    deficit, get interest rates down, and grow the economy; but we still
    have to invest in education, in medical research, in technology, and the
    environment. We have to do that. We said we want more money in
    education, but we want higher standards and more competition, too. We
    said we believe you can grow the economy and improve the environment. We
    said we thought that you could create a society where people who had to
    work and had children could succeed at work and at home. And a lot of
    that just kind of sounded like political rhetoric at the time.
        But what I want to say to you tonight is when people ask you why you
    were here, say, ``Look, the country was in trouble; we elected the
    Clinton-Gore administration; they had friends and allies in the
    Government and the Congress and in the private sector; they implemented
    their ideas; most of the time--not all of the time, but most of the
    time--they were opposed by members in the other party, and it worked
    out.'' Our approach turned out to be right. That's what Janice was
    saying. This is no longer subject to serious debate.
        I was told for 2 years--I saw the Republicans go into the '94
    election telling everybody how we'd raise taxes on people we hadn't
    raised taxes on and how terrible it was and how it was going to bankrupt
    the country and run the debt up. And we went from the biggest deficit in
    history to the biggest surplus in history, the longest peacetime
    expansion in history, almost 19 million new jobs, the highest
    homeownership in history, the lowest minority unemployment ever recorded
    since we started keeping that data almost 30 years ago. In addition to
    that, we have the lowest crime rate in 26 years, the lowest welfare
    rolls in 30 years; and teen pregnancy, teen drug abuse, teen smoking are
    declining. Things are moving in the right direction in this country.
        So I say to you, first, thank you because we have moved this country
    in the right direction. We did it and proved you could have a better
    environment. The air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is
    safer. Ninety percent of our kids are immunized against childhood
    diseases for the first time in the history of America. Over 100,000
    young people have served their communities in AmeriCorps in 4 years; it
    took the Peace Corps 20 years to get to 100,000 people. We have
    virtually opened the doors of college to every American with the HOPE
    scholarship and the other tax credits and student

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    loans. This is a stronger country than it was in 1992.
        And we have done it by relentlessly pushing to bring people
    together, standing against discrimination and against hatred and against
    the politics of division. When I say ``we,'' I don't mean ``me'',
    ``we''--I mean, ``we'': we, our party, our allies, the people that
    believed as we did. And along the way we've been a force for peace in
    the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Bosnia, in Kosovo. We stood up
    against terrorism and stood up for trade and human rights around the
    world.
        Today I asked the United States Senate to ratify the Comprehensive
    Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, first advocated by Presidents Eisenhower and
    Kennedy, first signed by the United States. I signed it at the U.N. a
    couple years ago. We are moving the country in the right direction,
    toward a world that works better for all the people. That's the first
    thing I want to say.
        We're entitled to the benefit of the doubt on the great debates
    going on in Washington today because we just had 6 years of argument and
    it turned out we were right. And I say that in all humility. I am
    grateful for that. The point I'm trying to make is, Joe Andrew always
    says, ``Well, why is Bill Clinton doing this? He's not running for
    anything.'' I came here to say not that I was right, but that our ideas
    were right. And I am grateful that I had the chance to be President, to
    be the instrument of bringing the country together and moving it
    forward. But it wasn't me; it was that the ideas we had were right. And
    you've got to get out there between now and the next election cycle and
    hammer that home.
        Before I took office they were killing family leave because it was
    going to bankrupt small business. I signed the family leave bill, first
    thing I did--so we'd have 15 million people take advantage of it. The
    largest number of small businesses formed in any given year--every
    single year I've been President has broken a new record. So the family
    leave law did not wreck the small business economy; it made America a
    place where you could have work and family.
        And they vetoed and killed the Brady bill before I became President.
    So I signed it first chance I got. And 400,000 people couldn't get guns
    because they had criminal backgrounds. And we have a 26-year low in the
    crime rate. And we've got 100,000 more police on the street, even though
    on the other side of the aisle they said, ``This won't make a lick of
    difference; these police will never get out there.'' Well, we funded
    them ahead of time and under budget, and we have a 26-year low in the
    crime rate.
        So as Democrats we should be proud--not proud as if we did it, proud
    that the ideas we stood for were the right ones and that it actually
    works when you try to create a society where everybody has a chance, all
    the rest of us who are going to do fine regardless, do even better; that
    we all do better when we try to create opportunity for each other, when
    we try to make sure we're responsible for each other in an appropriate
    way and we try to pull together.
        Now, the second thing I want to say is we have to take that fast-
    forward to today. What's the great debate in Washington today? What are
    we going to do with the surplus? Now, if I had been running in '92 and I
    had come to you and you had never seen me before, and I said, I want you
    to vote for me so that 6 years from now we'll be having a debate about
    what to do with the surplus, you would have sent me home to Arkansas.
    [Laughter] You would have said, ``This guy has lost it; he doesn't
    understand. We've got a $290 billion deficit; we will always have
    deficits.''
        So what are we going to do with it? First, the good news. There's a
    bipartisan agreement that we shouldn't spend the Social Security
    surplus. That means until we need it to pay for Social Security, we can
    use it to pay down the debt, and that's good. I think we have that
    agreement. I want to see the details, but I think we do. That's good.
    Now the question is what to do with the rest of the surplus.
        Here's what we feel. We feel what we should do is to do the
    following things. Number one, we should fix Medicare and provide a
    prescription drug benefit. Number two, we should have appropriate money
    set aside to continue to invest in education, national defense,
    biomedical research, and the environment. Number three, we believe that
    as the interest on the debt comes down, because our interest payments
    will come down as the debt comes, we should put the savings into Social
    Security so we can run the Trust Fund out to 2053. So when I leave
    office everybody will know Social Security is all right for at least 50
    years, and we can quit worrying about it. Now, that's what we think.

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        And you can do what we suggest and still have a tax cut, a
    substantial one. They believe that virtually all the non-Social Security
    surplus should go to a tax cut. And they think it sounds really
    popular--``my tax cut is bigger than your tax cut.'' Well, if that were
    the whole story that would sound like a pretty good argument. But I say
    we ought to save Social Security and Medicare and not just pay down the
    debt but make this country debt-free for the first time since 1835 and
    continue to invest in education.
        We'll still have money for a tax cut to help families save for long-
    term care, for child care, for investments in our country. But we will
    continue--we will not risk running a deficit, destroying the education
    budget, not meeting our defense responsibilities, or not doing one
    single thing to add a day to the solvency of Medicare, and not providing
    the prescription drug benefit. That's the difference. That's the choice.
        So it's just all back to 1993 again, or even back earlier than that.
    Most of you in this room, what are you doing here? You're all in upper
    income groups; you ought to be at their deal, not ours. Why are you
    here? You get more money out of their tax cut. This is very important,
    why you're Democrats, why I am. But 5 years from now you're going to be
    a lot better off, and so is America, if we pay down the debt, save
    Social Security and Medicare, continue to invest in education, and have
    a modest tax cut we can afford.
        You know, if you just think about just three great challenges this
    country faces, we're going to double the number of people over 65 in 30
    years. We hadn't been in this kind of financial shape in forever and a
    day. What in the world are we going to say to our children if we walk
    away from this opportunity to run the Social Security Trust Fund out at
    least 50-plus years? What are we going to say if we walk away from our
    obligation to run the Medicare Trust Fund out until 2025 or beyond, and
    to provide all these elderly people--not all of them poor, a lot of them
    middle class--a little help in dealing with the prescription drug
    program?
        What are we going to say if we adopt a tax cut which causes us to
    cut education when we ought to be investing more in it? What are we
    going to say when 5, 10 years from now some Kosovo comes along and
    America is asked to stand up for human rights around the world? We'd
    say, ``Well, we'd like to do it, but we had that tax cut''--[laughter]--
    ``and I needed that tax cut.''
        Closer to home, what are we going to say--I've been waiting for
    this, and I never wanted to be the first to raise it because I wouldn't
    have had credibility on it, but now it's in the press--what are we going
    to say if they cut taxes and the markets say, ``Well, we don't need a
    tax cut in the economy like this; we better raise interest rates?'' So
    you get it with one hand and get it taken away with the other, and
    everything gets squeezed.
        So I say to you we ought to save Social Security and Medicare; we
    ought to continue to move forward in education. And I want to talk just
    a minute about this paying the debt down. A lot of people--it just seems
    so alien; it's like an alien subject--we haven't been out of debt since
    1835. And for most of this century we shouldn't have been out of debt.
    We needed to have a little debt to invest in infrastructure or to expand
    the economy in times of recession or outright depression. But it's
    different now. Why is it different now?
        I want you all to think about this. You may not agree with me on
    this. I've really thought about this a lot. Why should the Nation's
    progressive party be for taking the country out of debt in 1999 when we
    have still an unconscionably large number of poor children and any
    number of things that we ought to be spending this money on? Here's why.
    We're living in a global economy. Interest rates are set globally; money
    moves globally. The best thing we've done for poor people in America is
    create 19 million new jobs and give tax relief to lower income working
    people and raise the minimum wage--to create an economy, in other words,
    that they could be a part of; to support the Vice President's empowerment initiative and the community
    development banks and all the things we've done to try to bring jobs.
        Now, if we get out of debt and if everybody knows we're on the
    target, we're going to be out of debt in 15 years, what happens?
    Interest rates stay down, investments stay high, more jobs are created
    with inflation low, more money for wage increases. Average people pay
    lower interest costs for home mortgages, car payments, credit card
    payments, and college loan payments. And the next time a global
    financial crisis comes along, like the one in Asia, nobody has to worry
    about America gobbling up scarce dollars and driving the price of money
    up. So when

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    our trading partners, who are poorer than we are, need to get money
    because times are tough, they can get it and get it at a lower cost,
    which means they will recover more quickly and we'll start doing
    business more quickly.
        And if you don't think that's a big issue, look what is happening to
    America's farmers because of the collapse of the markets in Asia. Here
    we are at the most prosperous time perhaps in this country's history
    with an absolute disaster in the family farms of America.
        So that's why it makes sense in a global economy for the world's
    richest country to be debt-free, and why it is a progressive thing to
    do--and why, by the way, when you do it, we won't be paying interest on
    the debt anymore. If you were a Member of Congress, you would find that
    before you did anything else you'd have to take about--it used to be 15
    and now 14 cents on every tax dollar to pay interest on the debt we have
    accumulated, largely in the 12 years before I took office. So don't
    forget, you get out of debt, you've also got 14 cents you used to not
    have. And 14 cents of every dollar, all of you pay in taxes, is a pretty
    tidy sum of money. So that's why this is a good thing.
        So I say to you we need to go to the country and say, tax cut, sure,
    but first things first: Save Social Security and Medicare and deal with
    the challenge of America's aging; continue to invest in our children's
    future and in the other basic things we have to have; pay that debt off
    for the first time since 1835, and guarantee America a generation of
    prosperity. Then have a tax cut that we need and can afford. That is the
    debate we ought to have.
        And I can tell you there are lots of other examples. I think we were
    right on closing the gun show loophole, and I think they were wrong. I
    think we were right on the Patients' Bill of Rights, and I don't think
    they were. I say that not because I take any joy in that. I liked it
    when we got together. I liked it when we had big majorities of both
    parties in both Houses voting for welfare reform. I liked it when we had
    big majorities of both parties in both Houses voting for the Balanced
    Budget Act of 1997. I wish it can be that way again.
        But I am telling you, we've got to stand up for what's right for all
    the people. What brings us together as a community? What gives other
    people opportunity they wouldn't otherwise have? What purges our spirit
    from the kind of awful, arrogant hatred that led that terribly disturbed
    young man to kill those people
    because they were of different races in Illinois and Indiana and claim
    it was a religious imperative?
        I had today a bunch of civil rights lawyers in my office and a bunch
    of high-toned business lawyers who don't practice civil rights law, to
    commemorate the 36th anniversary of John Kennedy bringing 200 lawyers to
    Washington to ask them to lead America's charge in civil rights. And I
    asked them to lead America's charge in trying to integrate our law
    firms, integrate our corporations, and use pro bono legal work to help
    solve the economic and social problems of low income people around the
    country.
        I'll just close with this. One of the greatest weeks of my
    Presidency was a couple of weeks ago when I had the privilege of going
    to Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to East St. Louis, to the Pine
    Ridge reservation in South Dakota, to south Phoenix, and East L.A.,
    because I believe that we can keep this economy going better if we get
    people to invest in the areas that have felt none of our recovery. And I
    have a simple proposal: Give Americans like you the same tax incentives
    to invest in poor areas in America we give you to invest today in the
    Caribbean, in Africa, in Asia, and Latin America. I want you to have
    those incentives. I just want poor areas in America to be as attractive.
    Our best new markets for America are here in America.
        But what it reminded me of is all these people, they're just like
    us. Just because they don't have a nice necktie and a nice suit to wear,
    life dealt them a little bit different hand. You know, Janice and I, we'd like to have you believe we were born in
    log cabins we built ourselves. [Laughter] But the truth is, you take one
    or two different turns in life and she and I both are back in Hope,
    Arkansas, doing business with each other in our little hometown. Some
    days I think it wouldn't be too bad. [Laughter]
        But I'm just telling you, you think about it, every one of you--you
    think about this when you go home tonight. Why did you come here? Why
    did you come here? If they ask you why you came, tell them because you
    believe we're better off when we all go forward together. Tell them
    because you believe this ought to be one community. Tell them, guess
    what, we tried our ideas in the crucible of excruciating combat for 6\1/
    2\ years, and the country is better off.
        So it's not like there's no evidence. And before we squander this
    surplus, let's take care

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    of the aging of America; let's take care of the children of America; and
    let's get this country out of debt so we can go forward together.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:22 p.m. in the Main Ballroom at the St.
    Regis Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Janice Griffin, chair, and
    Susan Turnbull, vice chair, Women's Leadership Forum; John Merrigan,
    chair, and Penny Lee, vice chair, Democratic Business Council; Joseph J.
    Andrew, national chair, and Beth Dozoretz, national finance chair,
    Democratic National Committee; Susan Blumenthal, former senior adviser
    to the President for Women's Health; and alleged murderer Benjamin
    Nathaniel Smith.