    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 3, 1999]
    [Pages 1672-1678]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Beverly Hills
    October 3, 1999

        The President. Thank you very much. Clarence, I'd like to spend the night and--[laughter]--and we
    could have quite a bunking party here. [Laughter] But you'll have to
    give me a raincheck.
        I want to thank Clarence and
    Jackie and their family for having us here,
    and all the other people who helped to sell tickets and make this event
    possible. I'd like to thank my good friend Maxine Waters for being here and for her passionate leadership for
    our party. Having Maxine for a friend, a supporter, and an occasional
    rebuker has been one of the more interesting experiences of my life.
    [Laughter] And I like it. I'd like to thank Governor Romer; I'd like to thank Beth Dozoretz, our national finance chair of the DNC, for being here. I
    want to thank all of you.
        You know, I was thinking, particularly here, all of you have to come
    to so many of these dinners, and you listen to so many people give
    speeches, and I'm trying to decide what can I do to make this memorable?
    I guess I could give the talk I normally give. I remember one time Tina
    Turner came to Little Rock to give a concert, when she was just sort of
    making her comeback. It was right after she'd come out with that
    ``Private Dancer'' album. You all remember that? And she had that big
    macho saxophone player with chains and everything--it made me want to go
    pump iron and apply for a new job. [Laughter] But anyway, she sang all
    these new songs, and she was a big hit, and everybody loved her. And we
    got to the end of the concert, and the band started playing her first
    hit, ``Proud Mary,'' playing the introduction to ``Proud Mary.'' And she
    kind of moved up to the microphone, everybody cheered, and she moved
    back. She moved up and everybody cheered, and she said, ``You know, I've
    been singing this song for 25 years, but it gets better every time I do
    it.'' [Laughter] So maybe this will be a little better. [Laughter]
        But I would like to just ask you to take just a few minutes to be a
    little serious with me tonight about why you came. If somebody asked you
    tomorrow why you came, what are you going to say? If somebody asked you
    tomorrow why you contributed, what are you going to say?
        When I came to California as a candidate for President and then
    later the Vice President and I came together, this State was in trouble.
    It was in trouble economically; it was divided socially; there was a
    great sense of anxiety and frustration. Maxine
    took me into her home, and we walked down the streets and the
    neighborhoods that she represented, and people were worried about the
    future. And I had this idea that--this general idea that there was
    something

    [[Page 1673]]

    wrong with American politics in the early nineties because it was
    basically all focused on repeating the same old arguments we'd been
    having in America for years and having the same old fights with the same
    old language and seeing who could divide the pie up. And it was all
    about the politics of division. And when you got through slicing the
    citizens up, you just hoped that your share of the pie was bigger than
    the other person's share of the pie.
        It didn't seem to me to be working very well. I mean, after all, we
    had high unemployment; we had social tension; we had no driving vision;
    we had quadrupled the debt of the country in 12 years. We had a lot of
    problems. So I said, ``Give me a chance to lead the country on a
    philosophy that there should be a community of all Americans, and that
    we should look for unifying ways to do our business together. We should
    look for an economic policy that gets rid of the deficit and continues
    to invest in the education of our children. We should look for an
    economic policy that helps business and labor. We should be able to grow
    the economy and make the environment cleaner, not dirtier. We should be
    able to respect all of our differences and treat everybody with respect
    and still be more united by our common humanity.'' It sounded kind of
    Pollyanna, I'm sure, to some people, but I believe it.
        So I was making an argument to the American people, and thankfully
    the American people said, ``Okay, we'll give these guys a chance.'' And
    they did. But they didn't know. They couldn't know. It was my argument.
        In 1996 people thought there was some evidence that it was working,
    and so they renewed my contract. If anybody comes to me and talks to me
    about running for President, I say it's the world's biggest job
    interview. [Laughter] You get an employment contract if you win. And
    then you move to a place where everybody who talks to you tries to make
    you to forget who you really work for and what you're supposed to be
    doing.
        So here we are now, almost 7 years into this grand experiment. It is
    not an argument anymore. One reason you should be here is, the politics
    of community and progress together work. This country has had, in the
    last 7 years, the longest peacetime expansion in history; we now have
    the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the lowest welfare rates in 32
    years, the lowest crime rates in 26 years, the lowest poverty rates in
    20 years, the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years, and the
    highest homeownership in history. This is not an argument; there is
    evidence. What we have done has worked for America. And I'm glad that we
    have been a part of that. But that's not enough.
        We've got the country working again. What I think we have to do now
    is to look at the great, long-term challenges of the country. Once in a
    lifetime do people get a chance to do what we have a chance to do now,
    to look around and say, if we wanted to paint a picture of tomorrow for
    our children and our grandchildren, if we wanted to celebrate the new
    millennium not just with the brilliant show that Quincy is putting together for me on The Mall but with a
    really different way of living in America, where we were working for
    ourselves and for our neighbors and where things were really working in
    ways that we could all be proud of, what would we do?
        When I got here, we couldn't ask these questions. We had to get the
    country working again, you know? We had--as somebody said--what's that
    old saying? If you're up to your ears in alligators, it's hard to talk
    to somebody about draining the swamp. [Laughter] Well, now we can drain
    the swamp. Now we can look ahead. We can imagine what would we really
    like America to be like in the new millennium and what would we have to
    do to get there.
        I want us to think about big ideas. Let me just say, some of them
    are things that I can make some real headway on in the time I'm in
    office, and some of them are things that will have to be dealt with when
    I'm not President anymore. But the main reason I hope that you will
    say--tomorrow if somebody said, ``Well, why did you go there last
    night?'' I hope you'll be able to say, ``Well, I bought their argument,
    but it works; but more importantly, I share their vision for tomorrow,
    and I want to be part of it. Because elections are always about
    tomorrow.''
        I'll just tell you one other little story, then I'll go back. When I
    was a Governor of what President Bush used to call a small southern
    State, every year I would go out to the State Fair, and I would have
    Governor's day. Sounds kind of august. Really what I did was go into
    this big tin shed and find myself a little booth, and I'd sit there and
    any citizen who wanted to come up who was at the fair and talk to me and
    say anything would do it.

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        And so in 1989, in October, this month, 10 years ago, I'm having
    Governor's day at the fair. And there's another election coming up in
    1990, at which time I will have been Governor for 10 years and four
    terms, because we went from 2- to 4-year terms. So this guy comes up to
    me, about 70 years old in overalls, and he looks at me and he says,
    ``Bill, are you going to run again?'' Except he said, ``again.''
    [Laughter] And I said, ``Well, I don't know. If I do, will you vote for
    me?'' He said, ``Yeah, I guess I will; I always have.'' And I said,
    ``Well, aren't you sick of me after all these years?'' He said, ``No,
    I'm not, but nearly everybody else I know is.'' [Laughter] And this guy
    might have won me the election in 1990.
        So I had this conversation. So I got sort of hurt and huffy, and I
    said, ``Well, don't you think I've done a good job?'' He said, ``Yeah,
    but''--this is exactly what he said--he said, ``Yeah, I do. But,'' he
    said, ``you did get a paycheck every 2 weeks, didn't you?'' [Laughter]
    He said, ``That's what we hired you to do.'' He said, ``If you want to
    win this next election, you'll have to tell them what you're going to do
    next time.'' He said, ``The fact you did a good job doesn't mean much.''
    He said, ``We paid--we gave you a salary, gave you a nice house to live
    in, you know.''
        And that's very important. But the reason that the achievements of
    our administration and our party and our Members of Congress like
    Maxine matter is that they are some evidence
    that if we're going to change, we need to keep changing, building on
    what we've done that's right, rather than changing by taking a U-turn
    and going back to what got us in trouble in the first place. Neither she
    nor I should get some sort of gold star. The question is, is it evidence
    of whether we're moving in the right direction as a country?
        Now, here are some of the things that I think we ought to be doing
    if we want America to look like it should. Number one, we've got to deal
    with the aging of America. When the baby boomers retire, the number of
    people over 65 will double. There will be two people working for every
    one person drawing Social Security. I am the oldest of the baby boomers.
    Tony told me tonight--Tony Robbins--that he
    was the youngest. I wish I could switch positions. [Laughter]
        But I can tell you that my people, the people I grew up with, middle
    class people, people without a lot of money, they are plagued by the
    notion that the retirement of the baby boom generation will impose an
    intolerable burden on our children and our grandchildren. And we have a
    chance now to take care of Social Security and Medicare, so we take care
    of the elderly, but the income of their children is free to raise their
    grandchildren. It's a big deal.
        The second thing we ought to do is to recognize that we have an
    extra-special responsibility to children and families because we've got
    more kids in school today than ever before, from more diverse
    backgrounds. The school district across the river from me in Washington,
    DC, in Alexandria, Virginia, has people from 180 different national and
    ethnic groups, speaking 100 different languages--one school district--
    even slightly more diverse than the Los Angeles county schools,
    unbelievably enough.
        Now, this is a godsend in a global economy with a global society if
    we can figure out how to take our conviction that all these children can
    learn and turning it into an educational environment in which all of
    them do learn. We ought to have after-school and summer school programs
    for the kids who need it. We ought to end social promotion but not blame
    the kids for the failure of the system, so you've got to give them the
    support they need. There ought to be universal access to the Internet.
    We ought to have more teachers for smaller classes and modern schools.
    These things are all terribly important. And you should know that
    there's a big difference in the parties on these two things: what to do
    for the seniors, what to do for the children.
        The third thing we ought to do is to do something about poor people
    who haven't been part of our prosperity. It really bothers me that we've
    got the greatest economy in the history of America, the lowest poverty
    rate in 20 years, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever
    measured--we've only been measuring it about just under 30 years--but if
    you go to any inner city, if you go to the Mississippi Delta, if you go
    to Appalachia, if you go to the Indian reservation--unemployment on the
    Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota is 73 percent--you will
    see that there are people who have not participated in our prosperity.
    And we cannot do it by just Government programs alone, because we still
    have to--I'll say more about that in a minute, but we've got to find a
    way to bring enterprise to these people.

    [[Page 1675]]

        And I'll just give you two examples, two ideas I have. Number one,
    if you want to invest in the Caribbean and Latin America, in Africa, in
    poor countries in Asia, we will give you significant loan guarantees and
    tax credits to do so. I think we ought to give people the same tax
    incentives to invest in poor areas in America we give them to invest in
    poor areas around the world. Let me be very clear: I don't want to take
    away those other things. I want Americans to help other people work
    their way out of poverty. I'm trying to pass an Africa trade bill right
    now that will bring us closer to Africa. I'm trying to pass a Caribbean
    Basin initiative right now that will bring us closer to the Caribbean
    and do more to help those people, but I want to help people here at
    home.
        The other thing--think about this. I was in northern California the
    night before last with a bunch of people that worked for eBay. Did you
    ever buy anything off eBay? Do you know eBay? Do you know there are now
    over 20,000 people who make a living not working for eBay, the company,
    but trading on eBay the Internet site? Many of them used to be on
    welfare. They actually make a living trading on eBay.
        Now, think what we could do for the economy of America, for poor
    people, if we could, within the next couple of years, make access to the
    Internet as universal as access to the telephone is--access to the
    Internet as universal as access to the telephone. Giving investors in
    America the same incentives to invest in poor areas they have to invest
    around the world, we can do something to bring enterprise and
    opportunity to people who aren't part of our prosperity. And I think we
    ought to do it. It's the right thing to do.
        One last economic thing, a big idea that I think I've sold most of
    my fellow Democrats on, that no one ever thought the more liberal party
    in America would advocate: if we follow the budget outline that I gave
    the Congress, we can actually afford a modest tax cut and still get this
    country out of debt in 15 years for the first time since 1835 when
    Andrew Jackson was President.
        Now, everybody in this room who is over 40 years old who studied
    economics was taught that the country ought to be in debt a little bit;
    a little debt was a healthy thing. Why do I think we ought to get out of
    debt? Because everybody in this room that is in the global economy in
    any way, shape, or form--whether it's in entertainment, investment, or
    anything else--you know that there is a worldwide market for money.
    Every time a country gets in trouble, they find out they can't keep
    their money in if people want to put it somewhere else.
        If we got this country out of debt, what would it mean? It would
    mean lower interest rates forever. It would mean lower interest rates if
    Berry wants to start a new business in his
    second childhood. [Laughter] It means more jobs. It means higher
    incomes. It means you can send your kids to college cheaper. It means
    you can buy a home cheaper. It means that our friends around the world
    who are poorer than we are can borrow money that we used to take away
    from them. This is a big deal. We can give our children a generation of
    prosperity if we make America debt-free.
        Let me just give you a couple other ideas. We've got the lowest
    crime rate in 26 years. Does anybody seriously think that it's low
    enough? Don't you think America is still a pretty dangerous place? Don't
    you think we're still losing too many of our kids? Don't we still have
    too many people in prison?
        Okay, now, we can talk all day about this, but I just want to say
    one thing. I think America should adopt as a goal, say, okay, for a long
    time we didn't think we could get crime down. Now we know we can drive
    crime down, 7 years in a row; big deal. It is a big deal. And it's the
    lowest it has been in 27 years. There are some places where the murder
    rate is half what it was 5 years ago. This is huge. But no one believes
    this country is safe enough.
        Why don't we adopt a big goal and say we're going to make America
    the safest big country in the world? If we're the most prosperous
    country in the world, if we're the freest country in the world, why
    shouldn't we be the safest country in the world? Well, I'll tell you one
    thing. We're going to have to do more to keep kids out of trouble and
    help them and support them. We're going to have to do more to keep guns
    out of the wrong hands. It's crazy.
        You know, every time I have a fight with the NRA, they say guns
    don't kill people, people do. They say this is about evil. So I said the
    other day, I said, ``Okay, it's about evil. I agree with that.'' I mean,
    this guy shoots this Filipino postalworker out here and shoots at these
    little Jewish kids. Yes, that's evil. But do you believe America is more
    evil than any other country

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    in the world because we have a higher murder rate? I don't.
        Or what about this; listen to this. The number of children killed
    accidentally by handguns in America--accidentally--is 9 times greater
    than the number of children killed accidentally by guns in the next 25
    biggest industrial economies combined.
        Now, do you believe we're more stupid than any other country?
        Audience member. Yes. [Laughter]
        The President. So are we, like, 9 times more stupid than--you see
    where I'm going with this? Look, I grew up--I was shooting cans off
    fenceposts with .22's when I was 12 years old. I governed a State where
    we shut factories and schools down on the opening day of deer season
    because there wouldn't be anybody there anyway. [Laughter]
        But this is madness, to let people go to gun shows and buy guns with
    criminal records and go out and shoot people when you can stop it. And
    don't let anybody tell you we can't do something with reasonable
    restraints; 400,000 people have not been able to get guns because they
    have criminal backgrounds since the Brady bill passed. And don't you kid
    yourself for a minute; that's one of the reasons we've got the lowest
    crime rate in 26 years. Let's make America the safest big country in the
    world.
        And I want to say just two other things, one thing that people
    normally--maybe you wouldn't see raised in a group like this. But I
    think environmental issues are too little discussed outside
    environmental groups. You know, the economy has gotten better in the
    last 7 years; the air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is
    safer; we set aside more land than any administration in history, except
    those of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. But we're still in the grip of
    a big idea that's not right anymore.
        Most of you now believe--I think you do--that global warming is
    real. I hope you do. Nine of the 11 hottest years in the last 500 years
    have been in the last 12 years. If this thing happens--I just was down
    in New Zealand near the South Pole, the polar ice cap melting, big
    chunks of it coming off. If the planet heats too much, the polar ice
    caps melt, the water level rises, island nations can be flooded.
    Sections of Louisiana and Florida can be flooded. The whole center of
    agriculture, the people who produce our food that we live by, will be
    moved to the north, changing and disrupting societies. This is a big
    deal.
        You have malaria now today in places in Africa where it has never
    been before at altitudes it has never been before because the mosquitoes
    are going higher because it's hotter up there. This is a serious thing.
    Now, what's that got to do with all of you? It's a big deal.
        For a long time, it was true that you could not build a rich country
    unless you put more greenhouse gases into the air by burning coal and
    oil. It was true. But it isn't true anymore, and most people still think
    it is.
        So the Indians and the Chinese, they think they can't get rich, and
    when I tell them they don't have to do this, they think, ``old Bill
    Clinton's trying to hold us down on the farm.'' In America, in Congress,
    there are people who think that I have some dark plan to wreck the
    American economy. Well, if I wanted to wreck the American economy, I've
    done a poor job of it.
        But I'm telling you, we now can conserve our way to greater wealth.
    We will be a wealthier country if we are environmentally responsible. We
    will be a wealthier planet if we protect the Earth. And the young people
    in this room, you mark my words. Someday you'll remember I said this; 10
    years from now, if you go to one of these events, I'll bet you
    environmental issues take up 30 percent of the discussion, maybe more.
        So why don't we turn it around now while we can? Why don't we say
    we'll make America the first country in the world to give up an idea
    that's not true anymore and embrace the future?
        The last thing I want to say is this. The thing I most worry about
    of all is that we're on the verge of a new millennium with these
    unbelievable technologies and these unbelievable scientific discoveries;
    a lot of the young women in this room tonight will have babies in the
    future, will have your children after the human genome project is
    completed and we have decoded all the mysteries of the human gene. So
    literally, this might start in 5 years. You have a baby, and then you
    come home from the hospital, and you have a road map of you child's
    future. And it's a little scary because it says, well, your child may be
    more likely to develop heart disease at an earlier age, but it will also
    say, but if you do these five things for the first

    [[Page 1677]]

    10 years of his or her life, you'll add another 20 years to their life.
        The average 65-year-old person today has a life expectancy of 82.
    The children--Quincy said thank you. [Laughter] You think about this.
    Think about young mothers bringing home their children thinking their
    kids are going to be 90 or 100 years old, and they'll be alert and
    active and healthy and strong. It will be great.
        So you've got all this, and we're all hooked in on the Internet, and
    all this stuff is happening. And whoop-dee-doo, and it's wonderful. And
    there are more rich people than ever before. But what is the biggest
    problem in the world today? What do I spend my time worrying about? That
    there are still people who insist upon killing each other and preventing
    the children of their areas from having a decent future because of their
    racial, their ethnic, their religious, their tribal differences.
        And what's the biggest problem we're dealing with in America today?
    From the bombing in Oklahoma City to stretching poor, young Matthew
    Shepard out on a rack and killing him a year ago in Wyoming this week to
    dragging James Byrd until he came apart, literally, in Texas to what
    happened out here at the Jewish school and with the Filipino
    postalworker to what happened in Illinois and Indiana with that young
    man who was a member of a church that said they didn't believe in God
    but they did believe in white supremacy, so he went--he murdered a
    former basketball coach at Northwestern and murdered a young Korean
    coming out of church--the guy was coming out of a church and he got shot
    in the back and killed--what do all these people have in common?
        They are on the verge of a new millennium that is the most modern of
    times, absolutely in the grip of the most primitive and ancient of
    hatreds, the fear, the hatred, and the dehumanization of people who are
    different from them.
        And that's the last thing I want to say to you. All these other
    things I've said to you are important, but they're by and large mental
    problems. This is a spiritual problem. But it should be part of the
    political platform of any group of citizens that really seeks to make
    the future America's greatest days. You have to ask yourself if you
    really believe that what we share in common is more important than what
    divides us.
        And if you just think about it, I mean, here, we're--I'm trying to
    get this thing done in Northern Ireland, where my people grew up--in my
    family there were both Catholics and Protestants, and they lived on the
    line between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and this has
    been going on for a few hundred years now. It's not like we're
    unacquainted with the issues. And they've been fighting for 30 years,
    and now they've all agreed what to do and everybody's agreed that they
    all have to do what they're supposed to do and everybody's agreed they
    all have to do what they're supposed to do by a certain date. And a lot
    of people are prepared to let it all go back to smithereens again
    because they want to have an argument about who goes first, like you
    used to have when you were 6 or 7 years old on the playground.
        I'm just telling you, just think about it. Look, we all wake up
    every day with, like, little scales inside of hope and fear and light
    and darkness. We all do. Everybody has bad days. But it is unbelievable
    that we're almost in a new millennium and the world is in a grip of this
    level of primitive hatred and destruction. My party believes that we are
    one America. My party believes that I did the right thing in trying to
    stop the slaughter of the Muslims in Bosnia and the Albanians in Kosovo.
        I believe that when my child is my age, she will live in a golden
    age if, but only if, we have married all this modern science and
    technology to a higher level of humanity. Thank you very much.

    [At this point, dinner host Clarence Avant,
    chairman, Motown Record Co., made brief remarks and presented a gift to
    the President.]

        The President. Thank you. Let me say, you know, one of the things
    that all this money you give to the Democratic Party does is to finance
    a lot of the election activities in 2000, and my wife may be part of those election activities. And she
    has--the reason I can't spend the night with Clarence and participating in this bunking party is that she
    has to go on a trip tomorrow. And I am going to get home before she
    leaves, because I want to see her before she leaves for a week, so I
    can't stay. But I thank you for this, and I thank you for your
    friendship and support. I wouldn't take anything for the last 7 years,
    warts and all. And a lot of you made it possible for me to serve and for
    us to do what we've done. Just don't quit.

    [[Page 1678]]

        Believe me, these are big issues, and I hope I gave you some things
    to think about tonight that'll make you want to keep on fighting all the
    way through next year. Thanks.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:15 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Mr. Avant's wife, Jacqueline; former Gov. Roy
    Romer of Colorado, former general chair, Democratic National Committee;
    musician Quincy Jones, a coordinator of the planned millennium
    celebration on The Mall; motivational speaker Anthony Robbins; and Berry
    Gordy III, founder, Motown Records Industries.